Apple of our eye

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”

The F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, from The Great Gatsby, sits framed in my living room up on the Hudson River, 45 minutes north of Grand Central Terminal, which is 18 blocks south of the Queensboro Bridge. My brother wrote it in a card he sent me to celebrate my move to New York City almost a decade ago. It still hits.

“New York is dead!” “It’s just not what it used to be” “This city has lost its soul”… Such noisy affronts are often lobbed my way. Typically, from boomer Brits who love to remind you of their days at Studio 54. Or hedge funders who packed up for Palm Beach during Covid. But I’ve never heard them from a New Yorker. New Yorkers just complain about the rats.

It’s true that the city has its ebbs and flows, and the pandemic brought it to virtual standstill. Empty streets. Restaurants shuttered. Offices deserted. Subway silent. Yet, five years on, against a volatile economy and shifting global order, the city has come roaring back.

For starters, it’s impossible to get a restaurant reservation. (The New Yorker even ran a piece about it). But no matter; ensuring there’s always somewhere to go are the private members’ clubs that seem to be popping up like wild flowers in spring. That is, for those who can afford the membership fees… and get accepted.

One outpost from London, The Twenty Two, just off Union Square, boasts a day-to-night private club alongside a 78-room hotel and new Levantine restaurant, Cafe Zaffri, from the buzzed-about Vitagliano twin sisters behind Raf’s. It’s open to the public but — you guessed it — securing a table after 6pm can be a stressful affair.

You’ll have better luck dropping by during daylight hours, as I did. Sunshine poured down from the glass-covered atrium, lighting up the mosaic floor as I typed this story (mercifully, they allow laptops at lunch). The crowd was diverse, hip, and easygoing, as were the staff. Collectively, it evoked a specific vibe: upmarket, swish, yet distinctly unpretentious. It’s not often I use the phrase “laid-back luxury” without irony, but here we are.

Downtown, in what was formerly the beloved “Jane Hotel”, San Vicente Bungalows has unveiled an East Coast sister (designed by Rose Uniacke) to the original in West Hollywood. However, you’ll find the cool kids at People’s, the evening club and art salon in Greenwich Village run by Margot Hauer-King and Emmet McDermott. “New York has an amazing ‘pull up a chair’ mentality”, says Hauer-King describing the club’s business model, which is designed to reflect the organic way friendships and communities are made.“We operate on a reservation-by-referral model. There’s no public booking, but we’re also not charging fees or taking formal applications.” In other words: you have to know someone. Their strategy is working. People’s is packed and enjoying a reputation as one of the few places (outside of Brooklyn) to dance, unimpeded by cringeworthy bottle service or roped-off VIP areas.

A little further north is the glamorous Chez Margaux, a cabaret-like cavern luring chic people back to the Meatpacking District. Inspired by 1930’s Paris, Margaux is all moody opulence, claret-coloured damask walls, cut crystal glassware, and a genuinely fantastic French restaurant courtesy of Jean-Georges Vongerichten (as well as a sushi lounge and caviar service). I went last November as a guest of a Belgian fashion designer and former model. We sat at a long table, drank champagne, and ate French fries as crisp and delicate as the crunch of an Italian loafer meeting pristine gravel.

This autumn, a 1,000-foot skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan will play host to “Moss New York.” It’s a new concept, which appears to shift the focus of the private members’ club away from social pedigree towards intellect and ideas. There will be supper clubs, podcast recording studios, musical performances and art exhibitions, as well as the more typical spa and dining facilities. Platform, the online art marketplace from David Zwirner Gallery, is curating Moss’ art collection with the goal of mixing emerging and established names that tell the “many stories of New York”. Richard Thayer, Platform’s COO & Head of Marketing explains, “We were excited about Moss because of its commitment to art being a meaningful part of the club — not just for decor or prestige — and in owning work from a diverse roster of artists.”

Things are even booming in Midtown. Broadway tickets have hit record sales, with seats commanding more than $1,000 (£740) thanks to fresh interpretations of plays bolstered by a Hollywood cast. George Clooney just made his Broadway debut in Good Night, and Good Luck, while Succession’s Sarah Snook is currently taking on all 26 characters in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey. Her TV co-star, Kieran Culkin, is starring in David Mamet’s 1983 hit Glengarry Glen Ross. Nicole Scherzinger, formerly of pop group, The Pussycat Dolls, has earned critical praise for her performance in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard.

Can we attribute this to a renewed appreciation for the art of the in-person gathering following the imposed, screen-laced isolation of the Covid era? Before 2020, ghosting on an invitation would barely raise an eyebrow, but today there’s a newfound respect for the time, energy, expense and spectral magic that goes into creating memorable offline experiences. Vogue editor Lilah Ramzi just attended the long-awaited reopening of the Frick Museum, fresh off its $220m (£167.9m) renovation. “Imagine a museum full of candlelight, the room thick with flowers. You had everyone from [model] Ivy Getty to [theatre producer] Jordan Roth there, but what struck me most was the mood: less flash, more reverence.” Ramzi also helped organize the Vogue Vintage Market, sourcing personal donations from Kendall Jenner, Cindy Crawford and Katie Holmes, with 100 per cent of proceeds benefiting those affected by the LA wildfires in January. More than a thousand guests attended on the first day, with everyone from Anna Wintour to Gigi Hadid to mother-daughter duos showing up.

The market took place the same week that Printemps, LVMH’s prized department store, opened at One Wall Street. It’s been a long time since bricks-and-mortar have been sexy enough to draw queues snaking round the block. It launched with the slogan “Not a department store”, and resembles a stylish, five-star funhouse. There’s the Murano light fixtures, parquet wood floors, a multicoloured marble “playroom”, rose quartz stairs, spa, and seemingly countless bars and restaurants to explore. Perhaps most notably, the amount of product on display is limited. As Ramzi says, it’s “Less add-to-cart, more come-and-see.”

Hope, youth, creativity, and genuine heterogeneity has always been the fuel that drives Manhattan; it’s the flame that sets the melting pot ablaze. The most vibrant periods in the city’s history have emerged not from multi-billion dollar renovations, (which have helped) but more from an effervescent symbiosis between the elites — those that have, ostensibly, “made it” — and those who are relentlessly chasing that dream, often against the odds. It’s what Frank Sinatra immortalised when he sang, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.”

It’s as true now, maybe even more so, than it was back then. Today, the average rent for a studio apartment is more than $3500 (£2,590) per month, up nearly 5 per cent from last year. As New York becomes evermore prohibitively expensive, it’s at risk of squeezing out the very force that sustains it. “You step outside and New York charges you $20 just to breathe the air” says Jordan H., 29, a social media creator (@itisjor). She religiously tracks the city’s hospitality scene and reaches a monthly audience of more than 1 million. With many priced out of restaurants and clubs, or confined to small apartments working remotely, people are getting a taste of the Big Apple online.

And there’s an increasing bank of this kind of content available to become absorbed by. Whether it’s the hot new opening, how to find love, what stylish people are wearing, or scene-y gossip such as where magazine employees are getting their Ozempic, substackers such as Emily Sundberg (Feed Me), Jalil Johnson (Consider Yourself Cultured), Kaitlin Phillips (Gift Guide), Laura Reilly (Magasin) and Andrea Hernández (Snaxshot), as well as social media creators such as Jordan are tracing the city’s cultural current online. “Based on the comments people were making, I realised there is always a certain group of viewers who are watching just to hear about the buzz”, Jordan says.

Beyond New York, she also has a strong following in Chicago (where she’s from), Canada and the UK. There’s something compelling about this democratised form of access, where the only barrier to entry is a working smartphone. It’s where anyone can drop a comment, be a part of the conversation, without setting foot onto the street. Arguably, New York has, to some degree, always existed more potently in the imagination than in reality. But, without the visceral charge of person-to-person interaction or the random real-life encounters between different worlds, something is undoubtedly lost. Uptown, downtown, near the Queensboro Bridge or not, New York still winks with the wild promise of all mystery and all the beauty in the world. Whether she can deliver on this promise depends on where you look and who you ask. Which may be what Fitzgerald meant all along.