STORES Convention Daily Preview Issue - 12

2018 BIG SHOW PREVIEW

Getting Around the City

ew York isn't a city, it's five cit- going to assume walking is not an option.
ies jammed together: Manhattan, You need some other way of getting from
Brooklyn,
Point A to Point B.
Queens, the Bronx
One way, obManhattan is a
and Staten Island.
viously, is by car,
walker's paradise, and
The Jacob Javits
which for most visiConvention Center
tors means taking
it is in its own way the
is in Manhattan, and
a taxi, using a carbest show on earth.
you probably are
sharing service or
too, so with all due
riding a bus. (Durrespect to the other four boroughs, Man- ing show hours, the NRF runs a shuttle
hattan is what we're going to talk about. bus system between the show and the
major hotels.) The main drawback to this
Vital statistics
is time: In a car, you're captive to the pace
It's an island, about 26 square miles of traffic, which can be very, very slow.
total area; population roughly 1.5 million, During busy periods in midtown, averagplus another 3 million or so who come in ing seven miles or so an hour counts as
every day to work, so it's crowded. New express service.
York Penn Station, which is three blocks
east of the Javits, is the busiest transit Going underground
point in the Northeast, probably in the
You might consider alternatives to
United States: 600,000 people a day come surface transportation. A year ago, we
through there, the majority of them during unhesitatingly touted the subway system.
rush hour.
It is, we said, the fastest way to get around
If you've got time and mobility, the Manhattan short of having a magic carbest way to get around is on foot. Manhat- pet. That's still true, mostly . . . but. The
tan is a walker's paradise, and it is in its system is old, and (for a lot of reasons we
own way the best show on earth. Most of don't have room to talk about here) it has
us, however, have schedules and appoint- been poorly maintained.
ments to keep, plus it's January. For purThe city's working on that now, but
poses of our discussion, therefore, we're piecemeal, and there are delays. The trains

The 34th Street/Hudson Yards subway station is located about a block across 11th
Avenue from the Javits Center. (Photo: Julienne Schaer)

are also crowded, especially at rush hour.
If you take the subway between 7 and 9
a.m. or 4 and 6 p.m., you're in for a largely
charm-free experience.
Still, it works. If you're staying
at, say, the New York Hilton, you can
catch an N train at 54th and Seventh
Avenue, change to the 7 at 42nd St., and
be at Hudson Yards - a block from the
Javits - in about 20 minutes. Surface
transportation is almost always going to
take longer.
And cost more. A seven-day unlimited MetroCard (good for all trains

and buses) will run you $32. There are
vending machines in every subway station. The system looks complicated, and
it is, a little - like the city itself, it's
evolved from complicated origins - but
there are, in most stations, attendants in
booths who will give you a free map. If
you have an iPhone, there's an iOS app,
Underway NYC, that will not only show
you the correct route but update you on
delays. If you find yourself on a platform
and aren't sure what you're supposed to
do, ask somebody. New Yorkers, you will
find, are very helpful people.

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15/12/17 05:57

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of STORES Convention Daily Preview Issue