NYC Holiday Windows 2019

As 2020 draws to a close, I'm so glad I've treated myself to so much time enjoying the natural beauty of Jamaica Bay, out on the outskirts of NYC - but it just wouldn't be Christmas without my annual trip to see the holiday windows with Mandy! We did this after work on the day after Christmas this year, as the weather forecast was lovely. We've been out on some bitterly cold days for this, this year we didn't even need gloves! 

We have kind of pared this down over the years - or had it pared down. In the past we'd been known to start at Bergdorf Goodman at 5th Avenue and 58th Street and finish at Macy's. Macy's was always kind of optional, but we loved Lord and Taylor's, and when that venerable store closed, with the last "windows" being videos instead of the animated models of charming holiday scenes that they used to be, we pretty much lost interest in going south of Rockefeller Center.

So this year, we started with Tiffany's and Bergdorf Goodman, walked down to Rockefeller Center for the Sak's windows and light show, and wrapped it up with the Rockefeller Center tree.

We started with dinner at the Knickerbocker Steak House, a favorite of ours when we're in the mood for a bit of a splurge. I walked up from the office - here's the tree under the arch in Washington Square.

Then we were off to midtown. We caught the bus up and got off at 57th street, right near Tiffany's, which featured mice frolicking among Tiffany boxes and goods. 

Next stop, Bergdorf Goodman. These are always my favorite windows - ridiculously lavish and over the top, and just so much fun to look at. This year's theme was Berdorf GoodTIMES, with festive fun in every window. They played with perspective this year, as they do from time to time, setting up the scenes as though you were looking down into the view from above.

Here was a surrealistic chess game - 

A 1950's slumber party that made me think of a variant of the Aqua hit "Barbie Girl" - "I'm a Claes Oldenburg girl, living in a Claes Oldenberg world"...ok maybe not quite as catchy.

And this one represented a scavenger hunt, and completely reminded me of a gigantic page from a Walter Wick book. No clever poem to tell you what to look for, but still fun to look at. 

Our next stop was the Peninsula Hotel. They always have their front entrance done up nicely, but we've never thought to go inside - this year, um, well, I was ready for a pit stop. Glad we went in, too, the lobby was spectacular. We were also admiring the menu for their restaurant - we may come here for dinner next year.

Here are the front stairs - 

This was actually a piece of art on the theme of "Home". Interesting enough for a photo.

Calls of nature answered, we moved on to Sak's Fifth Avenue, across the street from Rockefeller Center. They always have a big light show set to music - we got there just as that was starting and found a nice open spot, so decided to watch that first. Here are 3 of many many many permutations!

Their windows were scenes from Frozen 2. Or I'm guessing they are, I have not seen that movie. Actually haven't seen the original, either, so I was maybe not the target audience for these - but here, this was pretty!

And then, the tree.

And one look back as I headed for the B train, wrapping up the Mandy and Bonnie Holiday Windows Extravanganza for another year!
Want to see more photos? Click here for a Google album with more.  

NYC Holiday Windows 2017

Bergdorf Goodman's window in honor of the New-York Historical Society, part of their To New York With Love theme. Click here for the evening's Flickr album.

I can't remember why we skipped last year, but Mandy and I resumed our annual holiday window viewing this year, braving an icy cold night to do so. We usually finish with Bergdorf Goodman and Tiffany, which tend to be the best, but this year we went the other way around in case we ran out of steam early.

We made it down to Lord & Taylor, at which point Mandy jumped in a cab and I headed for the Herald Square subway station. Since I had to go right by Macy's anyways I did finish with a look at their windows - we aren't always crazy about them so generally that's the one we skip if we're feeling like we've had enough, which is usually the case, but I was kind of sad to discover this year Mandy would really have enjoyed them - they were these very cute New York cityscapes populated by cartoon animals. Sorry Mandy!

Here were my quick impressions as I was putting up photos on Facebook late late late at night:

Bergdorf's - Salute to NYC with window themes honoring local cultural institutions - the NY Phil, NY Botanic Garden, New-York Historical Society, Museum of the Moving Image, and the Natural History Museum. Pretty nice!

Tiffany's - Vignettes with silver artists' dummies and some of the items from their odd "Everyday Items" collections, which features things like tin cans and paper plates and high school geometry tools and bird nests and other ordinary objects made out of sterling silver. Not as cool as some of their past displays, in my opinion, although the ice fishing scene was done nicely and I did like the miniature Metropolitan Opera chandeliers in the sculptor's studio scene.

Saks - 80th anniversary of Walt Disney's Snow White, main windows featured scenes from the movie, light show a castle theme with music from the movie. I would love to know how many light bulbs they used! Side windows had fairy tale themed fashions, a couple quite gorgeous.

Lord & Taylor - Apparently snow globes was the theme, I didn't quite get that as the first one we saw had some kind of Jules Verne/steampunk sense to it and I was thinking more along those lines - also the Hallmark Channel sponsorship which was clearly stated on all of the windows had me thinking this was supposed to represent some television special I hadn't seen. Fun to look at but kind of confusing. They also had some neat small paper-cutout NYC vignettes that reminded me of Tiffany's in other years, just needed a few more sparklies!

Macy's - As mentioned, NYC scenes populated by cute cartoon animals, plus Santa. Loved the nod to the local whales, of course, and the subway worker rats (with pizza!) were a fun touch.

A couple of other landmarks interspersed.

Finished with Newkirk Plaza - Be it ever so humble!

Rock Center Tree and Dyker Heights - A little more holiday stuff.

Karen's on her way back to Texas now after a great visit, everything worked out nicely and it was so nice to see her again after a long time! We'd gone separate ways on Christmas Day, TQ and I had already accepted an invitation to dinner at his parents' home before I knew she was coming, and although she would've been more than welcome, she was really enjoying seeing NYC in all its holiday finery, and also had a whole laundry list of restaurants she wanted to get to, so she stayed down here, and then we got a couple more seasonally-festive things in later in her visit too. Her last day in Manhattan was on Sunday; that's when we saw my friends at VolvoTango on the pier, and after a long walk around various areas in lower Manhattan, we headed for Rockefeller Center to see the tree.

I think that of everything we did while she was here, that was about the only thing we might have skipped given a do-over - it was lovely and warm and the weekend and not too late at night and that area was mobbed like I'm not sure I've ever seen it before. Seriously, you could've populated a fairly respectable small town somewhere with the people present. We shouldered our way in, looked at the tree, looked towards the Teuscher store, decided it wasn't worth the trouble of getting there (we'd had a big, late brunch, and the walking areas on either side of the skating rink in front of the tree were absolutely jammed with people who didn't appear to be moving at all), shouldered our way back out, and called it a night. I did get some nice tree pictures though. 

The next day I went to work while Karen did some more solo sightseeing. She met me at work at the end of the day and then we met TQ at Purple Yam (she'd originally hoped to go to Onomea, the terrific Hawaiian place in Williamsburg, but they're closed on Mondays, but some good Pinoy cuisine was an acceptable substitute, mmmm adobo) and then after dinner, although the temperature was dropping and a drizzle with a bit of ice in it was starting up, TQ was a good sport, nay a great sport, and drove us out to see the famous holiday lights of Dyker Heights. Going on a cold (well, slightly colder than it has been) and sleety night after a long stretch of semi-tropical (or at least they felt that way compared to normal winter weather) temperatures turned out to be a great way to see these world-famous displays; this is a pretty well-off neighborhood, the residents who go in on the annual extravaganza actually hire decorating companies to do their displays, and according to a couple of articles (like this one) about the illuminated displays, the neighborhood draws around 100,000 visitors per year - but we were one of a very small numbers of sightseers to brave the first frozen-ish precipitation of the season. 

Here are some photos - that's it for the write-up, click on the first one to get to a slideshow view. 

NYC Holiday Windows Part 3 - Tiffany's and Berfdorf Goodman - saved the best for last!

These kids loved the sparkly Bergdorf Goodman windows - couldn't resist taking their picture, they were so cute as they oooh'd and aaah'd!

Part 3 was after the carol service, which was very nice, as I think I mentioned in the last post. The sun had gone down while we were there, which makes the windows show up better, and we'd saved our perennial favorites for last, those being Tiffany's, which always does these lovely little themed vignettes in their smaller jewel-box windows, each showcasing some nice little Tiffany's baubles, and then Bergdorf Goodman's, which is always very very very WOW. This was especially the case this year as they were sponsored by Swarovski and apparently had unlimited mountains of crystals with which to cover EVERYTHING - so they did! Tiffany's had made each window into a perfect little theatre, with little footlights and a different stage set in each one. Click here for a short photo album of these two. Enjoy! 

Holiday Windows, Part 2: Daylight Hours

Sneak preview of Part 3. Happy Honu-days!

We made a little bit of a change to our usual holiday-window-viewing routine this year. I think we usually go after work, or later in the day if we go on a weekend. We were trying to remember how we settled on that and we think it's because when we went on a weekend day once and the crowds were just too much. There are always too many people out there, that's just part of the deal, but there are degrees of crowdedness and apparently our one daytime outing featured a degree or ten more than we could handle.

Mandy was interested in some holiday music this year, though, and a couple of weeks ago it hit me that the Brick Presbyterian Church has a lovely carol service. I sang with the choir there years ago and Keith Toth, who was and still is the music director at the church, always picked interesting and beautiful carols and hymns for the choir to perform, combined with a few old favorites for the congregation to sing. That was at 4. Mandy picked Jane, a restaurant on Houston Street, for brunch; they turned out to be pretty popular*, with no reservations between 10:15 and 4, so we decided to take the 10:15 reservation, eat, go see windows until it was time to go to church, and then finish off whatever we'd missed afterwards (the service wasn't that long).

That worked out really nicely; the weather was spectacular, the crowds were surprisingly not as horrendous as we'd expected (plenty of people certainly but we've seen worse), the carol service was splendid (I almost can't believe I used to sing with that choir, they're really really beautiful), and since we started downtown and headed uptown, that left our favorite windows for last (and also for after dark, which is when they really show to the best advantage. Plus that put us at the Rockefeller Center Teuscher shop well before their closing time of 6:00 - treating ourselves to Teuscher is an integral part of our holiday ritual and we were absolutely crushed the first time we got there after closing time!

I took a LOT of pictures, as usual, so I decided to split it into 2 sets - click here for the afternoon set, I'll post the evening pix next.

Crystal honu above was actually from a high-speed preview of the Bergdorf Goodman windows Mandy and I took a couple of weeks ago - we'd gone to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and swung by Carnegie Hall to see if we could get Mandy registered there for the NYC ID program (free admission in 2016 to 33 cultural institutions, but you actually had to appear in person at each one to register - I didn't even try but Mandy has been doing this amazing cultural marathon through the fall getting herself set up, which was fun for her friends as we took turns joining her) so we were in the neighborhood and couldn't resist taking a quick look. I think this was the weekend before Thanksgiving, and the designers were literally putting on the finishing touches, which was fun to see. See the designer here? 

What a cool job that must be. The Bergdorf windows are always pretty spectacular but this year they were sponsored by Swarovski, so extra extra sparkly. 

Tomorrow - Holiday Windows Part 2: After dark! 

*Brunch was actually a little bit complicated - first we thought we would hit the Popover Cafe, which we went to once and enjoyed very much, but I asked that we reserve that for days when we had other uptown plans because the subway trip was a bit on the long side for just brunch - Brick Church counts as uptown, crosstown buses work pretty well, but I went to look at the menu or hours or something and discovered that they'd closed last year. Bummer bummer bummer! My  

. My next idea was Sarabeth's, which was even MORE popular than Jane - reservations there were going to be at 8:15 am or 5 pm, nothing in between. Whoa. We'll save that for sometime when we're planning a little more in advance - with Mandy signed up with the NYC ID thingy at the Met I'm sure we'll get back up there sometime next year, plus getting back up to my old neighborhood reminded me that used to love visiting Cooper Hewitt, the Museum of the City of NY, and the formal garden in Central Park that are all up there, all of which Mandy would love, so we are multiple excuses for returns to that neighborhood). Boy, am I ever spoiled by Courtelyou Road - I don't think I've ever made brunch reservations in my neighborhood!

Holiday Windows Part 1: Jewelry for Buildings

 Yesterday's Jedi Traffic Cop and numerous colleagues in blue were helping maintain the traffic flow in midtown Manhattan. What was I doing in midtown Manhattan on a weekend day? Same thing I do once every year around the holidays - yep, on Sunday it was time for my annual holiday shop-window viewing and Teuscher chocolate splurge with Mandy! 

We couldn't have asked for nicer weather, we've been having this ridiculously springlike warm spell for a while here that's got all the flowering bulbs confused and coming up - boy will they be in for a shock when winter finally gets around to hitting us, but in the meantime, what excellent weather for strolling outdoors. I actually did that on both days this weekend; TQ and I joined a pleasant crew from Sebago in a tour of Green-Wood Cemetary (tour of a cemetary may sound a bit weird and macabre to those who are not from NYC, but it dates back to the early 1800's, is a beautifully landscaped and well-cared-for green space, and became a very popular burial site during the Victorian era, when mortuary art reached wild heights, leaving some astounding memorials behind. It's also the final resting place of some fascinating people, and Commodore Emeritus Tony did some good research to prepare for the tour and led us by familiar names, good and bad (Tiffany, Ebbetts, Tweed) and some less familiar names (Henry Chadwick, anyone? Eliza Gilbert?). That was a lovely day, and then Sunday was just as nice. 

I have a ton of pictures to sort through but I thought I would start off with a set showing jewelry for buildings! Here's Cartier, Tiffany, Bulgari, and Harry Winston, all dressed up in their holiday sparkle. 

NYC Holiday Windows 2: The Flickr Set

After sorting through the rest of the pix, I still ended up having a few more than I wanted for a blog post, so I just put up the full set on Flickr. If you already looked at the Bergdorf window post, you can just skip through those. We started there (well, actually we started at a gingerbread display at the Parker Meridien, but my pictures there didn't come out that well and we weren't that impressed anyways) and then we moved on to our other favorites -- Tiffany's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center (oh my the crowds), and Lord and Taylor. We thought about Barney's but we were working our way north to south and by the time we thought of it it would've required a massive backtrack (plus the live figure skater - !!! - wouldn't have been on duty); we have finished with Macy's in the past but it was getting pretty late and we were ready to head for home after Lord and Taylor.

Click here for the Flickr set.

Blog bonus picture - this is the Palm Court Restaurant at the Plaza. Someday we are going to start our annual holiday window viewing with tea at the Plaza. It's wildly expensive, of course, and will probably require a little more advance planning than we usually do, but it would be fun to do at least once!