If you’re in Manhattan, you have dozens of amazing museums at your disposal — so why would you make a trip out to Queens to see a lesser-known museum, with lesser known artwork? One word: PANORAMA. The Queens Museum of Art, located just behind the unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, home to the New York World’s Fairs of old, has a mixed bag of exhibits, but the Panorama of New York City really steals the show.
The panorama is a giant, 3D, scale, changing (the buildings aren’t glued down, so when the city changes, the panorama changes) map of all boroughs of New York City. (Yes, if you live anywhere in NYC and have a sense of direction, you can find your house!)
Check out the picture above carefully and you can see people on the platform in the background — that should help give you a sense of scale. The entire panorama is bigger than the average Manhattan apartment (according to CNN, the average Manhattan apartment is about 1300 square feet, in which case the panorama seven times larger at 9,335 square feet)! It was created for the 1964 World’s Fair and contains over 895,000 individual structures. The panorama is to scale, 1 inch equaling 100 feet.
Museum Info: Hour long tours of the panorama are offered at 4pm Saturdays and Sundays, but you can visit the Panorama during any museum hours without a tour. Although the museum web-page suggests that museum entry costs about $5, I got in for $2 with a student ID. As for travel, you can get there by bus, train, subway, or car (free parking), all modes of transport are described on the museum’s web-site. You can make a day of it and visit the World’s Fair grounds, right outside the museum’s front door, at the same time.
If you want more info on the panorama, or you want to see a person standing in the middle of it, check out this NY Times article from last year.
Remember to check out all of my articles on Flushing here — more will be added throughout the week!
On my recent trip to Philadelphia I happened to stop in a funky homeware store called Foster’s. It was full of bright colors, fantastically designed kitchen & houseware products, and unique gift items (you know, like Sigmund Freud action figures). You can find this cool place at 399 Market Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania or you can (luckily) shop online at shopfosters.com. (I’ll feature some cool products I found there later this week!)
Need a pretty Mexican Restaurant to coincide with your visit to the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art? Of course you do! Xochitl is the place to go (the picture above is actually from Time Out New York Online) — especially considering it currently has a special Frida Kahlo three course meal filled with all of Frida’s favorite dishes. (Unfortunately, it’s $35 per person!) If you can’t afford that, you can purchase a single appetizer, dessert, or meal that is also included in the Frida full-course meal. For example, I recommend the $7 Sopa Azteca (tortilla soup).
I know this is an art & design site, so it’s a bit out of my realm to advertise a soup, but this soup gets design & creativity points all its own. At Xochitl the soup portion of the dish was poured out of a jug over a bowl of tortilla strips, avocado, and cheese (which delightfully melted in the warm soup).
If you aren’t in Philadelphia, (more…)
BKNY (stands for Bangkok New York) is a Thai place in far Flushing, Queens (the Auburndale / Bayside area). While the food is tasty and not too expensive, the atmosphere is what’s most impressive. The place looks like it could have popped right out of Manhattan, somehow accidentally misplaced in Queens.
The best part?
Pictures and logos on this page were collected from the BKNY web-site which offers more information on menus, pricing, location, etc.
If you are ever in the Lower East Side at… whenever o’clock… stop in at the Yaffa Cafe (97 St. Mark’s Place). It is “Open Always” and it is Always Cool. The decorating is Vintage Random: the wallpaper ranges from flowers to leopard print, the Christmas lights are up year-round, and the paint is cheerfully exuberant.
For more information check out NY Magazine’s Restaurant Listings. (Three images on left gathered from New York Magazine. Two images on right are my own.)
