The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bypass Times Square for a better city experience
Sure, you can go to Times Square on your next trip to New York. Or, you could venture to a square with a lovely park.
High-wattage Times Square
Without a doubt — and as we are vacuously reminded every New Year’s Eve — Times Square is the heart of Manhattan. Nearly 380,000 pedestrians enter the square each day to experience an LED-led assault on the senses: rolling and blinking messages exhorting visitors to drink Chinese beer or eat more vegetables, amid honking cab horns and the scents of hot dogs and pretzels from food carts. Times Square is also a selfie nirvana, the ultimate tribute to conspicuous consumption and the epicenter of the city’s vital theater scene. And as oft happens with hearts, it relies on so many clogged arteries that a bypass — or better yet, a complete transplant — is desperately needed. Even Adolph Ochs, whose newspaper gave Times Square its name (it was called Longacre Square until 1904), moved the paper’s headquarters away less than a decade later. The endless parade of chain stores and mostly taste-free, overpriced dining options may leave visitors wondering why anyone gets worked up about an ultra-high-wattage outdoor mall.
Location: Where Seventh Avenue and Broadway converge, between West 42nd and West 47th streets; timessquarenyc.org.
Union Square
For a square that encompasses everything that Times Square isn’t, make your way roughly 25 blocks south on Broadway to Union Square, home to a lovely park where children’s laughter rings out as they scoot down the slides. History resides here, yet the area remains fresh and engaging. Within a roughly threeblock radius, you’ll come across quirky shops, a landmark restaurant, one of the city’s oldest bars and a timeless purveyor of books.
Instead of wandering endless levels of fast-fashion, you can tread aged wood floors at Strand Book Store, a New York institution “where books are loved.” A few steps away, a split Captain America shield guards the door to Forbidden Planet, a fantasy world populated by Deadpool and Wonder Woman figurines and row upon row of comic books and graphic novels. Need to bring back a gift? You’ll find offbeat wares at Fishs Eddy and Flying Tiger Copenhagen.
When you’ve worked up an appetite, head to the venerable Gramercy Tavern, celebrated for special-occasion service and farm-fresh ingredients. If you don’t want to splurge for the fixed-price dining room, try the wood-fired a la carte fare in the (no reservations) tavern area, such as shrimp toast, roasted oysters and a rich mushroom lasagna. Stop for a beer (the Pete’s 1864 Ale hits the spot) at Pete’s Tavern, still buzzing three deep at the bar on a Friday night more than 150 years after it opened. Legend (and a humble sign) holds that O. Henry penned “The Gift of the Magi” in a booth here in 1905.
Bed down at the modern and sleek W New York-Union Square, where we drew back our drapes on a Saturday morning to see vendors setting up for the Union Square Greenmarket, a wonderland of fresh fruits, vegetables, pastries, wine and more. The intoxicating smell of fresh bread awaits at Breads Bakery or the just-opened Ole & Steen, an artisanal Danish newcomer. Its “cinnamon social” — evidently the Danish words for cinnamon roll didn’t translate well — provides one more sticky reason to keep us from leaving Union Square.
Location: Between East 17th and East 14th streets in Manhattan, where Broadway meets Park Avenue South; wapo.st/UnionSquare