Editors note: This dispatch is a little different. I’m not talking about a single restaurant or coffee shop or bar. I’m talking about a single, glorious, New York event called Summer Streets.
I don’t have much to review since the entire goal of the event is to walk. Not eat and drink. Just walk. And sorry for the video footage. I brought a GoPro then realized the memory card tanked at some point in the heat so I tried to walk heal-to-toe using my phone and I should have brought an extra memory card for the GoPro. Boo.
It’s a terrifically enjoyable, purely New York walk. And a great way to wipe out your Sunday.
Takin’ it to the streets
When we first heard of Summer Streets, we thought “darn, New York City could be the coolest city in the world!”. (We were coming from San Francisco, another pretty cool city, although this was 20+ years ago when it wasn’t as bad as it’s reported it is today even though it seems places were always better when you were there.)
Then, free of cars and other vehicular traffic, we walked down Park Avenue. Walked right down Park Avenue!
It was then we decided that NYC is the coolest city on earth.
I don’t know when Summer Streets started (www.google.com I’m lazy), however, according to Swarm, we’ve walked down Park Avenue in the hot and humid August weather four times, starting in 2013.
And we’ve enjoyed every single walk.
We even have a general plan:
Walk down to the Grand Central Terminal overpass
Duck into a CVS, Starbucks or something cool for a beverage
Tail off at Bond Street and head for the Art Store
Walk to the West Side for breakfast at an Ecuadorian restaurant
Head home and crash for the weekend (kidding) (sorta)
Since the last time we did this was pre-Covid, we expected some places to be closed or maybe they open a little later these days. What we didn’t anticipate was our pace. We were burnin’ down Park Avenue!
Unfortunately, that meant we ended up standing in line for a 10:00am opening for a restaurant when the restaurant didn’t open until 11:00am.
(If there was only a site that provided up to date information on very good places. Ahem.)
A recent visit…
We left to walk across Central Park after 7:00am on Saturday and checked into Summer Streets on Park Avenue and 70th Street on Swarm at 7:47am. The image above was my first shot taken, looking down towards the Park Avenue at the Met Life building.
Glorious!
Our plan, changed a bit as noted above, looked like this:
That’s a lot of Starbucks stops!
We knew it was going to get hotter throughout the day and the humidity was already thick in the air.
While we stop at all those Starbucks, I added those for regular water or coffee stops. We ended up at the Starbucks on the other side (Southwest) of Grand Central Terminal.
(If you are in a hurry, not a Starbucks I’d recommend.)
(Spoiler: We didn’t make it to Café Habana, Tacombi, Morrison Hotel Gallery or Beastie Boys Square.)
Summer Streets
Address. Manhattan (map)
Hours.
Select Saturdays: 7:00am-3:00pm
Website. www.nyc.gov
Email. sponsorship@dot.nyc.gov (for sponsorships)
Socials.
Eat this...
We normally stop for a full breakfast at this little Ecuadorian restaurant on the West Side, then take the subway home.
This time, since we hadn’t walked Summer Streets in a bunch of years and we missed some of our favorite LES spots, we decided to aim for Café Habana. Their website and all related sites showed them opening at 10:00am.
We ended up getting to Prince Street around 9:45am.
Perfect.
Except, Café Habana doesn’t open until 11:00am. (We literally stood inside the restaurant for three minutes while folks were setting up. It wasn’t until we asked if we should just grab a seat did someone mention they didn’t open for another hour. Nice one.)
So, we didn’t eat there.
I think we just ended up going home from there.
(I would very much recommend Café Habana! Maybe just call ahead of time.)
(Tacombi was on our list, too. They used to do amazing breakfast tacos and their coffee and morning drinks were fabulous. They didn’t open until 11:00am, either.)
(Highly recommend Tacombi, too!)
Drink this...
I was very much looking forward to a Cubano coffee or something fun to drink.
But, see above.
Tips & tricks…
Walk (or run or bike) Summer Streets - it’s fun!
Pay attention to the signs (pedestrians/runners on the right)
Pay attention to the coppers (stop when their signs are up)
Look up!
That was fun!
Thanks again for joining me—I hope you enjoyed reading about Summer Streets!
Another fun location coming next week!
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