New York News Today

Photo: King of Hearts , CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed Central Park first. Then they went to Brooklyn and, by most accounts including their own, did it better. Prospect Park is the pair's second act — 526 acres of meadow, forest, and water where the lessons of the first park got applied without the compromises. Central Park gets the postcards. Brooklyn kept the masterpiece, and Brooklynites will tell you so, repeatedly, without being asked. If your itinerary has room for one long green afternoon outside Manhattan, spend it here. Start with the Long Meadow Enter at Grand Army Plaza (the triumphal arch alone is worth the trip) and the park opens onto the Long Meadow, a mile of unbroken lawn that rolls away from you like something out of an English landscape painting. No skyline looming over the trees, no crosstown traffic humming underneath. On weekends it fills with picnics, pickup soccer, and barbecue smoke; early on a wee...

Photo: Fordmadoxfraud , CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Labor Day lands on September 7 this year, which hands you a three-day weekend (September 5–7) and a city determined to squeeze every last drop out of summer. Sitting it out would be a mistake. This particular weekend contains one of the biggest street celebrations in North America, the last legal beach swim of the season, and a tennis major in full swing, all reachable by subway. Monday belongs to Brooklyn The main event is the West Indian American Day Carnival, which takes over Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights on Labor Day itself. It's a Caribbean carnival in the full sense: elaborate feathered costumes, steel pan bands, soca and reggae from truck-mounted sound systems, and food stalls selling jerk chicken, oxtail, doubles, and roti along the route. The parade officially steps off mid-morning and rolls for hours; over a million people typically line the parkway. Real talk for first-timers: it's crowded, loud, an...

Photo: Christopher Down , CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Ride the A train past Harlem and something odd happens: Manhattan gets hilly. The street grid gives up, the buildings shrink, and by the time you climb out at 190th Street (there's an elevator carved through solid rock), you're standing in a part of New York most visitors never see and most locals quietly adore. Welcome to Washington Heights and, just north of it, Inwood — the top of the island, in every sense. A medieval monastery with a Hudson view The anchor attraction up here is the Met Cloisters, a museum assembled from pieces of actual European monasteries and perched above the Hudson in Fort Tryon Park. It holds the Met's medieval collection, including the famous unicorn tapestries, arranged around quiet courtyard gardens that smell like lavender in summer. Here's the practical part people miss: your Met admission covers both the Fifth Avenue building and the Cloisters on the same day. Adults pay $30...

Photo: Tomwsulcer , CC0, via Wikimedia Commons The check arrives. The card reader swivels toward you, offering 18%, 20%, and 25% like a multiple-choice test you didn't study for. Behind you, the server waits. If you're visiting from a country where tipping is a small courtesy rather than a system, this moment can feel like a trap. Take a breath. The rules are simpler than they look, and once you know them, the anxiety mostly evaporates. Here's how it works in New York. Why tipping is non-negotiable here The first thing to understand: in American restaurants, tips aren't a bonus, they're the wage. Servers are typically paid a reduced base rate on the assumption that tips make up the difference. Skipping the tip doesn't send a message to management; it just shorts the person who served you. So unless something went seriously, memorably wrong, you tip. Restaurants: the 20% default At any sit-down restaurant, 20% of the bill is the standard. A bit less (18%) ...

5 Pointz in 2013, the year it was whitewashed. Photo: Ezmosis , CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons One night in November 2013, a developer had the graffiti mecca known as 5 Pointz painted over in white. The Long Island City warehouse had spent two decades becoming the world's most famous legal graffiti space, with artists flying in from every continent to paint it. The whitewash happened under cover of darkness; the building came down the following year. Then something remarkable happened: a federal jury decided the destroyed artwork had real legal standing, and the artists won a $6.75 million judgment. Street art, the case effectively said, is art. New York has been arguing about that question since the first tagged subway car rolled out of a Bronx yard in the 1970s. The difference now is that the murals are celebrated, mapped, and — in the best neighborhoods for it — constantly changing. Here's where to look. Bushwick: the open-air museum Start at the Bushwick Colle...

Photo: MusikAnimal , CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons There's a particular quiet that settles over New York in the last two weeks of August. Half the city seems to be at the beach, upstate, or in Europe. The subway feels roomier. You can walk into restaurants that normally require reservations made weeks out. Locals complain about the heat and then admit, usually in the same breath, that this stretch is secretly one of their favorite times of year. If your trip lands in late August, don't apologize for it. Lean in. The reservation window cracks open This is the practical magic of late August: the places that are normally hard to book get easy. That buzzy spot in the West Village? Check for a table this week — you might be shocked. Restaurant staff are more relaxed, dining rooms are calmer, and sidewalk tables linger into the warm evenings. Some spots still run summer specials into late August, so it's worth a look at menus before you go. Our budget guide has more ...

Photo: Carine06 , CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Here's a secret that somehow still hasn't gotten out: for one week every summer, the US Open lets you in for free. Not a watered-down fan festival, either. Real professional tennis, on the real courts in Flushing Meadows, with some of the best players in the world fighting for a spot in the main draw. It's called Fan Week, it runs August 23 through 29 this year, and if you're in New York during that stretch you'd be a little crazy to skip it. The free week nobody talks about Fan Week is essentially the tournament's opening act. The centerpiece is qualifying, played Monday through Thursday (August 24–27), where 128 men and 128 women battle for the last 16 spots in each singles draw. These aren't nobodies. Qualies are full of rising teenagers, former top-20 players coming back from injury, and veterans you'll recognize the moment you see them. You can sit close enough to hear the ball being struck ...