Fun Places: Central Park, particularly the roller disco.

Sheep Meadow

Roller disco folks having fun in terry towelling.

Lovely stuff.

Central Park is a great place to go, pretty much any time of year, unless it's raining or you really, really need to go to loo. SO short on loos there. The leaves in Autumn are gorgeous, it's fun the see the snow and you're a bit sheltered from the wind due to trees in Winter. Summer and Spring are self-explanatory.


At any given time, there will be a lot of people there, and more than a few will be hurling flying objects around. It doesn't matter what anyone else is doing, though, because it's so enormous in Central Park that you'll have personal space, and everyone gives off an air of benevolent goodwill. Who could be unhappy in a giant, beautiful park?


A hot tip is that the guys rolling wheeled carts around and selling: 'Water, water, ice cold water!' are most usually also selling beer. Sometimes jello shots too. This is on the down low, because there are undercover cops booking people for public drinking. And they are undercover! The one I saw ticketing a man looked almost exactly like the guy I'd just bought a beer from. Great cover. Or deep cover? I know the lingo. What could be better than a round of tipsy Frisbee? Central Park is ace. 


My favourite day to go to Central Park is Sunday, because that's roller disco day. Anyone with the urge and roller dancing ability can join in, and the music is funky and fun (and available from a crazy looking guy for $4 a CD, or the bargain price of 5 for $20, um). 


These are some serious characters on skates, my favourite is Terry Towelling Mountain Man, an enormous, ripped dude in home-made pants, whose size belies his grace on wheels. Sometimes he'll even pop a water bottle or three on his head to show off. There's also an older woman who was clearly some kind of professional in an earlier life, she is beautiful to watch.


There's lots of active stuff you can do personally: bird watching, tours, punting. I haven't done any of this stuff, because the grass is soft and green, and you can lie straight on it with no picnic rug and take your shoes off too. I'd prefer to do that, because it's inadvisable to lie around shoeless in many places in NYC. It's really special to have places like this in a big city, soothes the soul and all that.