Zoe Strimpel

How to spend 48 hours in New York

  • From Spectator Life
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Armed with a US passport, I fly to New York for just two days to interview John McWhorter, an African American professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is America’s fast-rising star of the anti-woke movement and I am there to talk to him about his brave and funny new book, Woke Racism. I zip over to meet him on one of dozens of daily flights between Heathrow and JFK in advance of America’s reopening on 8 November. The good news is that, after 8 November, the rest of Europe’s jet setters can join me.

It is strange flying transatlantic in the final days before the US reopens after nearly two years: there are almost as many planes as passengers. This is particularly true on the route from London to JFK – my destination, thanks to a US passport – where British Airways alone flies six flights a day, two of them leaving just five minutes apart. This is, I gather, so that they can keep their airport slots, which will be essential when the full flux of travel, fueled by enormous pent-up demand, cranks into gear next month. And so I find myself flying nearly alone in BA’s premium economy on what, pre-pandemic, must have been one of their busiest red-eye routes.

New York is ready and waiting and, so long as you have proof of vaccination, in fine fettle. McWhorter lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, which has become a must-visit destination for the foodie traveler, and is easy to get to from Manhattan. If you have 48 hours in the city, here’s how to spend it, Queens included.

To begin the weekend, New York art museums’ collections of modern, contemporary, and especially American work are a perennial must. MoMA midtown has my favourite collection of 20th century photography and painting. The Picturing America gallery’s Wyeth, Sheeler and Hopper portraits, and Walker Evans’ searing photos commissioned by the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s, are standouts in the permanent collection, while the Automania exhibition (showing until January) offers a fascinating take on 20th century ‘car culture’.

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