Results tagged “Christmas” from Percival Perspectives
(Photographs by LP; digital treatment of picture one by Kim Gerard)
It's twilight in Manhattan. I stand in Rockefeller Plaza, agog at the energy of the place. Shoppers weave pell-mell through the clogged pathways, jostling their swanky carrier bags: Abercrombie, Ralph, Tiffany's. Skaters glide past a golden Prometheus to seasonally cheesy music. Giant illuminated dolls, sailors and soldiers, glow contentedly. Flags flutter in the chill winter air. The trees are ablaze with a galaxy of lights, and the mood itself is sheer electricity. Framed by the soaring elevations of Deco towers, the spire of St Patricks points to the heavens, and points us back to what Christmas really is - it's easy to forget amidst the bonkers theatre of a Manhattan midwinter evening. To round off the cosmic juxtapositions, a nearly full moon appears low over the cathedral. I capture the moment, the last shot of a perfect New York day.
I'd never encountered such a richly creative environment, and I just wanted to be here. No wonder it so inspired Woody Allen and George Gershwin and countless others; the power of ideas was tangible in the air.
We eat at achingly trendy fusion eateries - Ono in the Hotel Gansevoort, Mai House, we have brunch in the Eighties, shop in the Sixties and Seventies (until you walk round Barneys, you think Harvey Nicks has a lot of brands!), see art at the Whitney, and sample the districts - Meatpackers, Tribeca, Upper West Side, much of it completely new to me.
Giuliani, however much of a darker-than-you-thought entity he is turning out to be, has transformed the city. London alone can match the energy of diversity, but not even London can match the spectacle of the cityscape. I feel completely alive and realise I have been totally in denial.
It's twilight in Manhattan. I stand in Rockefeller Plaza, agog at the energy of the place. Shoppers weave pell-mell through the clogged pathways, jostling their swanky carrier bags: Abercrombie, Ralph, Tiffany's. Skaters glide past a golden Prometheus to seasonally cheesy music. Giant illuminated dolls, sailors and soldiers, glow contentedly. Flags flutter in the chill winter air. The trees are ablaze with a galaxy of lights, and the mood itself is sheer electricity. Framed by the soaring elevations of Deco towers, the spire of St Patricks points to the heavens, and points us back to what Christmas really is - it's easy to forget amidst the bonkers theatre of a Manhattan midwinter evening. To round off the cosmic juxtapositions, a nearly full moon appears low over the cathedral. I capture the moment, the last shot of a perfect New York day.
I am falling in love, again. Long long ago, a 6th form schoolboy, I spent two summers here, wandering the streets as today with a camera in hand, absorbing the addictive energy of the place, and planning my future here. My sister Vanessa lived here (as she does now), and by night she and her then partner would take the starstruck teen to some of NY's finest eateries of the time - Mamma Leone's, The Four Seasons, Luchow's. Some are still there, many have gone. To a boy from Seventies London, beset by binman strikes, three day weeks, and a numbing sense of relative poverty (oddly forgotten by the popular myth of the seventies, all glitter and big heels and fun), it was undiluted magic.
I'd never encountered such a richly creative environment, and I just wanted to be here. No wonder it so inspired Woody Allen and George Gershwin and countless others; the power of ideas was tangible in the air.All through university I clung onto my New York dream, and jumped on the Laker Skytrain after my finals to try and find a job here.
Then as now, getting a foothold was no easy thing, and anyway I soon landed my first London advertising job. And then - as you do - I met someone and there was marriage and baby Sophie and suddenly life was all exciting here, I had a house and family, my career was taking off and I let New York go.
Or did I?
Over the years, I returned on various photo shoots and business trips, and talked the place down. Had I really wanted to come here?
Truth is, the pre-Giuliani NY of the eighties and early nineties probably wasn't that great. I remember genuine fear of getting mugged, scuzzy streets, a crippled infrastructure - it was very easy to be dismissive of my old love.
But now I have a friend here, and she sets up a weekend of shopping, art and sightseeing to show me her New York. She's an artist and entrepreneur, utterly hardwired into The New York Of Now.
We eat at achingly trendy fusion eateries - Ono in the Hotel Gansevoort, Mai House, we have brunch in the Eighties, shop in the Sixties and Seventies (until you walk round Barneys, you think Harvey Nicks has a lot of brands!), see art at the Whitney, and sample the districts - Meatpackers, Tribeca, Upper West Side, much of it completely new to me.I love the place. Always have done, always will do. It makes me want to take pictures, to write, and to sing out like Gene Kelly and Frank in 'On The Town'. (Luckily for my friend, I desist on the last one.)
So as I fly back on Silverjet's silver jet, I make a firm decision that this mad city just has to be a part of my future. How did I ever live without you?
I love New York.
