For Some Actually Cool New York–iana

piccolinyshop.com

most new yorkers may prefer to ignore the Statue of Liberty tchotchkes and Milton Glaser–inspired artwork being peddled all over the city, but sometimes, especially when it’s in kid form, New York–iana can actually be done right. A hand-knit hot-dog rattle ($20), a wooden pull-back taxicab ($22)—these are the (not cheap but certainly highly giftable) items that have long drawn devoted customers to PiccoliNY, a cozy boutique that opened a decade ago on the border of Chinatown and Little Italy. “We’ve been going since 2013, the year our first child was born,” says Mike Chau, who is better known by the Instagram handle @foodbabyny and now has three kids. A New York Mets teether is one of his most beloved purchases from the place, and a neonpink beanie—bearing the store’s “Hot Dog Pretzel NY” logo—“is a favorite accessory of both my wife and daughter,” he says. (Eva Chen has Instagrammed her daughter in gear from the store too.) Owner Alexandra Zagami Ng, who works closely with an artist to create these popular in-house designs, has had to take the business online-only since the pandemic and hopes to reopen eventually in its new space in the Navy Yard. In the meantime, the website has a lovely, not dizzyingly large selection of toys, like multilanguage alphabet puzzles and “craft and sensory kits for older kids.” Plus, for newborns’ gifts, the keepsake knitted rattles are made with ecofriendly dyes and happen to come in the shape of apples and MetroCards.