We all know the number of Chinese visitors to New York City is growing very,very fast.  It has quintupled since 2009 and will soon top a million a year - a faster build than even the most optimistic projections.  And much of the increase is in the high-spending FIT sector.
It's this speed of growth that is shocking, and it's not just in tourism.  FDI (Foreign Direct Investment), which excludes tourism, education, personal real estate transactions, etc., reached $15.7 billion in 2015.  Here's the thing: that was up 20% 0n 2014, just one year earlier.  Projections for 2016 have it flirting with $30 billion of deals already in the pipeline.  This is despite the fact that economic growth in China in 2015 slowed to a 25 year low of 6.9%.  Chinese companies now employ 90,000 people across the U.S.  Carolyn Maloney's 12th Congressional District accounts for 1,230 0f them, so you know she's paying attention.
Almost any bit of math you perform with the Chinese results in an enormous number.  You remember all the talk a few years back about U.S. investments in China?  Well, in the five years between 2002 and 2007 U.S. FDI stock in China was up a kind of impressive 181%.  In the following five year period between 2008 and 2013 it fell to a mere 14%.  But wait, look at the flow the other way round: Chinese FDI stock in the U.S.  during the same two periods rose from 52% to a skyscraping 631%.




Back to our industry segment.  We all know Anbang bought The Waldorf Astoria for $2 billion (minus a few room amenities).  Now, Blackstone has flipped Strategic Hotels and Resorts to the same company: a slew of luxury properties with a total of 7,532 rooms across the nation.  The lesson here is that China will continue to affect our industry dramatically over the coming years in terms of visitorship and ownership.
A little knowledge of Chinese customs and practices will go a long way:  A welcome sign (in simplified Chinese), a targeted room amenity, a knowledge of what room number to put them in (and certainly, for many, not on the 4th floor).   Slippers are a must, and a toothbrush with paste.  Attractions need translated brochures.  A cigarette anyone?  You may hate smoking, and you may not allow it in your restaurant or attraction, but if you ignore it (by not having a designated area, or by not having advice about outside spaces where it is permitted) you'll be ignoring a quarter of the world's smoking population.  Do not decorate rooms with white flowers.  There's a great deal more...
We're certainly taking this burgeoning sector seriously.  Urban Cart provides  New York's visitors with high quality maps.  Millions are handed out by concierges in the largest twenty  hotels in the City and by another 200 properties in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. We have formed an alliance with Attract China, perhaps the leading U.S. gateway to this market, and  have now published the Chinese Passport, a map guide to New York in Mandarin.  100,000 are being distributed this summer in both China and New York to the trade and to the independent traveler.  Attract China has offices in both countries and together we are offering (to organizations as diverse as The Frick, The Guggenheim and MoMA, Broadway's Phantom, One World Observatory and Century 21) a combined digital and print campaign along with social media engagement.  There are "Passports" in Boston, Chicago and Seattle already, with a Los Angeles edition joining New York's this month. Other cities across the country will follow.  A phone app can give directions, but a paper map gives a sense of geographical context and therefore a sense of control in a new landscape. "Many claim it's a digital world, so it's wonderful to see travelers and concierges embrace a paper map like explorers of yore," says David Becker, CEO of Attract China.
Culturally aware, practical plans are vital in the face of such an opportunity. We'll be holding China 101 seminars in New York for those who want to get a little more China Ready.  If you would like to be kept up to date on this let us know.
And, by the way, I'd love to hear China anecdotes.

​Clive Burrow

Lighthearted graphics, drop-shadows and icons are all integrated into our accurate street maps with subway lines superimposed.

The map comes in two formats: the one shown at the top of this post is a hardcover "gift" version suitable as a valuable room amenity.  The other is an easy to open accordion fold for use at the concierge desk and for rapid reference.

 Katharine Hepburn lived in a brownstone at 244 East 49th Street from 1931 until the 1990s.  The four-story house is located in Turtle Bay Gardens, two rows of houses on 48th and 49th streets with their gardens arranged as a common space, with a wide stone path down the center and a fountain said to be modeled after one at the Villa Medici in Rome.

Spot the iron turtles built into the railings separating the houses from the sidewalk.

Other famous residents of Turtle Bay Gardens have included composer Stephen Sondheim and famed singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.  E.B. White wrote Charlotte's Web while living here.

Find Turtle Bay Gardens on the summer 2014 edition of our Midtown Concierge Map at grid reference C5

Clive Burrow

945 2nd Avenue at 50th  646-895-9585

Crave Fishbar is a two level restaurant with a bar on each floor, with some outdoor seating at street level and on a terrace above.

This is not a general restaurant review. It's a heads up for oyster freaks with not inexhaustible resources. If you look at Crave's Raw Bar menu http://cravefishbar.com/menu/ you'll see a good selection of East and West Coast bivalves at normal prices: $2.50 - $3.85.  So, you might treat yourself to the odd half dozen.  But here's the thing, Crave's Happy Hour (5.00 - 7.00) has any oyster on the list at a single, salty dollar.

So, we ordered:
6 Black Duck (Hog Island Bay, Virginia)
6 Blue Point (Long Island Sound)
6 Island Creek  (Duxbury, Massachussetts)
6 Nisqually (Henderson Inlet, Washington)

I'm not going to describe them in detail.  Oyster snobs have hard shells.  Those that hate them are seldom converted.  I'll simply say that the West Coast Nisqually are tiny and delicious; the Black Duck are luscious and plump.   People pooh-pooh Blue Point, but if the pleasure you get from eating oysters is the sensation of devouring mother ocean, they do the trick.

We narrowed our sights on the second 24 to 12 Nisqually and 12 Island Creek.

​Dessert?  6 Black Duck

54 oysters, $54.  Our bottle of wine added $35.  Pretty much a blow out feast.

​By the way, they also have a Prosecco special - at $30.

Well, it ain't all new.  This GT-R NISMO lapped the Nürburgring in a handsome 7 minutes, 8.679 seconds - but in September 2013.  I'm not up on the orthodoxies of Auto Show display, but this seems, well, over two years old.  Like, in human terms, a 60 year old photographer hanging out in The Dream hotel, ponytail swinging.  Still, the paint job is epileptically admirable.

On the other hand, there's a lot of cool heat, too; a lot of it home-grown.

And then, there are always the concept cars.  Check out Toyota's FU2 (I suppose that's what it says), a slide-in-lie-back 3-wheeler and its boxy neighbor.

The point is, this show is consistently good value: for car seekers, car lovers (and that includes most children), and those simply interested in design that is sleek not for mere show, but for aerodynamically sound screeching, keep-me-on-the-ground reasons.  You can spend a day here for $16.00 ($7.00 for children) - but beware the rip off "convenience fee" that Starbucks charges (as it does in airports, but not in hyper-expensive Midtown)  Have your coffee before entering, and take a bottle of water. 

Earlier map above
There are 3 streets on our current maps, like the one below (any map from summer 2015 onwards) that do not appear on the map above.  They are small, but one of them is historically fascinating.  Can you spot them?
Later map below.

This is where he worked,  Of course, in the office, as Clark Kent, he wore his underwear on the inside.
​

It was built in 1929-30 and was headquarters to The Daily News until 1995, and was known simply as The News Building.
Glance in the lobby and up at the black glass-domed ceiling, then down to the half-sunken globe - still the world's largest?

​Clive Burrow

Daily News Building.  220 East 42nd Street, between 2nd and 3rd avenues.

Walk into this postage stamp park on the north side of 51st Street between Second and Third avenues and the fighting turbulence of New York City…

... simply disappears.

Hundreds of tons of water tumble down 20 feet of rock face every hour.  A side river leads towards the falls over a bed of pebbles, rustling the air with a gentler acoustic perfume.

There are chairs and tables, some right up close where a soft mist adds to the sense-surround experience.

The air is laden with ozone lending a feeling of well-being.

Sight, sound, touch, smell.

A five minute holiday, far, far away.

Grid reference D5 on our Midtown maps.

Finding a hidden mews or a yard in London is always a delight, and relatively easy.  In Manhattan it's nearly impossible.  But not quite.

Look on the north side of 49th street between 2nd and 3rd avenues (close to 3rd) for the cast iron gates that can, but usually don't, close off the narrow carriageway into the yard.

It was originally sculpted (out of a mishmash of buildings and open space) by designer James Amster at the end of the Second World War.  He envisaged an artists' colony, and Isamu Noguchi created several works here.

The Instituto Cervantes (a Spanish government-sponsored cultural center) occupies most of the buildings around the Yard. They redeveloped the site in 2001/2.

It's a public space but is often deserted.

Find Amster Yard on our Midtown Concierge Map at grid reference C4   -  Clive Burrow

Times Square boasts an odd bit of urban art that very few know about - for all its centrality.  For a start, it's invisible.

Stand on the grating in the middle of the street just below 46th and, depending on your mind-set, you'll hear a low pitched moaning, a reverberating base bell,  or an overworked organ.  "I wanted a work that wouldn't need indoctrination," says Max Neuhaus, the artist, explaining the work's complete lack of signage.  He doesn't want it to be a piece of destination art, he wants people to discover it.  But, hey, you're an insider.

A "sound sculpture,"  he says; a "rich, harmonic sound texture resembling the after-ring of large bells;" an "impossibility within its context."   Ease Elmo aside and make your own decision.

We sometimes give grid references to help you find the subjects of these posts, but if you can't find Times Square……                                Clive Burrow