Culture Archives - My Secret NY

Our lockdown silver linings

Left: The Cindies (photo credit: Isabella Boylston); upper right: Half Baked Harvest Instagram account (photo credit: Tieghan Gerard); lower right: Family Way The past months have been disruptive to say the least, but we’ve learned that good things can come from lockdown. While New York is slowly starting to reopen, we wanted to share some nice discoveries that we have made during this peculiar stay-at-home period. Here are some of our favorite silver linings (that you will still be able to enjoy after quarantine…

Tasting New York

New York is a city you experience through food! It’s the smell of roasted peanuts on Manhattan’s streets, a happy hour at a West Village oyster bar, the line in front of Chinatown’s best dim sums, the iconic $1 pizza slice, the latest refined creation of a Michelin star chef or the crackling of a grilled hot dog at a Central Park food truck. New York is a culinary melting pot delight. No surprise then that the city got itself a museum of food and…

Beyond magic

It’s a new show – but we can’t tell you about it. It is an original and surprising experience – but we can’t reveal anything. Anyone who saw it will urge you to go, but no one will give you any details. So how do you talk about a show when you can’t disclose anything? It is a performance at the crossroads of a haunting one-man play, a bewildering magic show and an immersive theater experience. A one-of-a-kind hybrid concept. When you enter the small…

A day in Westchester

So we’re back to winter time. It’s the beginning of a long tunnel of too short days and too cold nights. To give you a little boost, we put together a special daytrip upstate, close to NYC. A culture / hiking / gastronomy trilogy that that will cheer you up. First stop: the charming hamlet of Katonah, one hour north of Manhattan. The Katonah Art Museum is a hidden gem under the radar of most art-lovers. The space is tiny (managing expectations here: it is…

Get ready to be surprised

What we love in New York is discovering hidden gems, finding oneself in exceptional places and being surprised. Recently we had the chance to attend a cello concert in a chocolate factory lost in the far shore of Brooklyn with a beer and chocolate tasting. Magical moment! Or listening to a string quartet in a remote artists’ studio on the beach 50 minutes from Manhattan. Total change of scene! How? By way of Groupmuse. Groupmuse is a classical music collective which invites itself in exceptional…

You said Jersey City?

There is a huge cultural space right next to Manhattan that you probably never heard of. Intrigued ? Welcome to Mana Contemporary – perhaps one of the art world’s best-kept secrets. So yes, you’ll have to cross the Hudson River and venture over to Jersey City but we guarantee the discovery is worth the detour. This former tobacco warehouse and factory occupying 6 floors and stretching over 450,000 square feet was converted into a contemporary art center. A gigantic space. At a time of deep cuts in arts funding for museums, Mana is a refreshing…

All-in-one movie date

Movie buffs and gastronomes do not always mix well together. A movie screening indeed often ends in a sugar high after the usual orgy of buttered popcorn and an overdose of candy bars. What if you could have a proper meal during your screening? Just to reconcile the Seventh Art adepts and food-lovers. Syndicated is among the (too) rare cinemas offering an all-in-one movie date: screening and dinner in the same evening. Find your seat, get cozy while looking at the menu and order food…

Concert in a living room

8pm, somewhere in Soho. A small crowd is gathering in front of an old industrial building. Where are they heading? To a concert. Who’s playing? They don’t know. NY cultivates the art of secrecy like no other city. Glorious legacy of Prohibition, it is the kingdom of the speakeasy, hidden bars, and confidential rendez-vous. Good news because we LOVE secrets. And even more to share them with you. So let us tell you about the underground concerts organized by Sofar Sounds: concerts every night all…

A gallery unlike any other

Visiting an art gallery too often resembles a visit to the museum. You come to admire the works, not to buy them. Why? Because the established galleries, the famous ones, can easily be intimidating: large white spaces, no talking, no touching, prices on demand only (and often exorbitant). Interested in experiencing something different? You will have to ring at 153 Lafayette Street in Soho and climb to the 4th floor. You enter Michele Mariaud’s apartment and step into the intimacy of a large loft converted…

Vintage screening

Notice to all movie-lovers: if, like us, you feel helpless witnessing the slow disappearance of independent movie theaters in New York, asphyxiated by the multiplexes and the distribution mastodons, we have some good news to share. A beautifully bespoke two-screen theater discreetly opened a few months ago in the Lower East Side: it’s called Metrograph. Metrograph is a true ode to the Seventh Art. Vintage atmosphere and old school flair in this neighborhood cinema where you can see the projection booth from the screening room through…