New York City (Fodor's, 2012) - Fodor's [41]
GLAM, NIGHTLIFE, AND THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS
The Meatpacking District is concentrated in a few blocks of the West Village, between the Hudson River and 9th Avenue, from Little West 12th Street to West 14th Street, with some fringe activity heading toward West 16th Street. Besides beloved meat purveyor Pat LaFrieda, there are few meat markets left in this burgeoning cobblestoned area, but it’s certainly a metaphorical one at night, when the city’s trendiest frequent the equally trendy restaurants and bars here. Attracting a late-day shopping crowd, affluent-angled retailers and services line West 14th Street and include boutiques of fashion designers Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney. For one of the city’s most extensive and expensive shoe departments, visit Jeffrey, the district’s pioneer retailer. The ever-popular High Line, a formerly abandoned railroad track recently turned promenade and park is becoming a runway of sorts for fashionistas as they strut past the gleaming windows of the new über-chic hotel The Standard.
The city’s recent crop of slick mega-restaurants seem to have found their homes in the streets between Little West 12th and West 16th, with huge Asian-food and Asian-style “temples” like Buddakan (16th Street and 9th Avenue), Morimoto (16th Street and 10th Avenue), Matsuri (16th Street and 9th Avenue), and Ajna Bar, formerly Buddha Bar (Little West 12th between 9th Avenue and Washington Street). Equally sexy but somewhat smaller, Jean-Georges’s Spice Market has a rich Southeast Asian design, Tanuki Tavern dishes up Japanese tapas, and late-night hot spot Pastis is a wall-to-wall French bistro scene. Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich’s huge Italian restaurant, Del Posto, one of the city’s newest four-star restaurants, can also be found nearby (85 10th Avenue). The scene-y Hotel Gansevoort is brilliant purple at night and has a rooftop pool and bar. From the top, look down at the pool at the private SoHo House, used in Sex and the City. A notable exception among all the glitz is the rough-and-tumble Hogs and Heifers, a neighborhood drinking hole infamous for its bra-covered bar and the movie Coyote Ugly, based on it.
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TOP ATTRACTIONS IN CHELSEA AND THE MEATPACKING DISTRICT
Chelsea Hotel.
The shabby aura of the hotel is part of its bohemian allure. This 12-story Queen Anne–style neighborhood landmark (1884) became a hotel in 1905, although it has always catered to long-term tenants with a tradition of broad-mindedness and creativity. Its literary roll call of live-ins is legendary: Mark Twain, Eugene O’Neill, O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, Vladimir Nabokov, Mary McCarthy, Brendan Behan, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, and William S. Burroughs. In 1966 Andy Warhol filmed a group of fellow artists in eight rooms; the footage was included in The Chelsea Girls (1967). The hotel was also seen on-screen in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) and in Sid and Nancy (1986), a dramatization of the real-life murder of Nancy Spungen, stabbed to death here by her Sex Pistols bassist boyfriend Sid Vicious. Read the commemorative plaques outside, then check out the eclectic collection of art in the lobby, some rumored to have been donated in lieu of rent. | 222 W. 23rd St., between 7th and 8th Aves., Chelsea | 10011 | 212/243–3700 | www.hotelchelsea.com | Subway: 1, 2, C, E to 23rd St.
Fodor’s Choice | Chelsea Market.
In the former Nabisco plant, where the first Oreos were baked in 1912, nearly two-dozen food wholesalers flank what is possibly the city’s longest interior walkway in a single building—from 9th to 10th avenues. Snack your way from one end to the other, nibbling Fat Witch brownies, Ronnybrook farmer’s cheese, and Amy’s Bread sourdough,