"We are coming to NYC next weekend. What should we do?"
When I first moved to New York City, back in 2011, I used to get a lot of anxiety when visiting friends asked me what to do when they came to visit me in town.
As a newbie myself, I panicked at the enormity of the request: How could it come to this, where they get to ask me such a simple, unassuming question (what to do in NYC for a weekend) and leave me with the lion's share of the curation work?
Should I share places to eat, places to shop, or can't-miss tourist attractions? Were they asking me because they wanted the inside local scoop on Broadway shows with all the buzz and neighborhoods with the trendiest night life? Or would they be disappointed if they came all this way and never once got a glimpse of midtown? Would it be irresponsible to exclude Times Square from the list? Or even more reckless to omit The High Line?
The first time someone asked me for a list, I spent all weekend meticulously curating a Google Doc that served as a mini Time Out New York guidebook, with all of the hot spots listed out. To give myself a bit more boundaries, I decided to constrain my search to places south of midtown, the spots that I presumed my friends (just like me) would never have known to visit barring a local's guidance. I called it my "Below the Belt Tour to Manhattan."
I felt pretty good about this list.
And so did my friends. I received overwhelmingly positive reception to my initial drops of that Google Doc. After all, how could they not appreciate it? I planned everything for them. For awhile, I was the reigning hero of my visiting friend group. I was the one who knew New York City best, and I had the hand-curated guidebook to prove it.
But then, life in New York got a little bit busier for me. I got a new job and a new boyfriend and a new apartment. I started traveling more for work. I stopped frequenting some of my old hot spots and started exploring more niche, new territories. Restaurants started shutting their doors, Broadway shows started closing. And eventually, I lost the time and interest in keeping up my list.
But of course, the requests kept coming in, from friends old and new. While new visitors still wanted the basic overview, second or third-time visitors wanted the supplemental, updated version. Of course, I hadn't made an updated guide. I barely had time to keep up the first.
I stopped claiming that I knew Manhattan "below the belt" better than anyone. Instead I started asking for 1-2 more details with each inbound request:
Are you looking for places to eat, or neighborhoods to explore?
If you want restaurant recommendations, are we talking 4-star omakase sushi like Sushi Nakazawa or are you really just looking for the best bagel shop on the Upper West Side (which, by the way, may once have been H&H Bagels but is now most decidedly Broad Nosh)?
If you want Broadway show recommendations, are we talking more mainstream shows like Wicked or Book of Mormon or are you game for a more theatre insidery production like Hand to God or Venus in Fur?
This more granular fine-tuning helped prompt me to offer a more curated and specific recommendations. Over the years, as the number of questions I parried back to my friends increased, the number of recommendations I'd offer in return decreased.
What I noticed was, when I developed a lot more conviction around a single option, it increased the likelihood that my friends would prioritize that thing. It closed the feedback loop a lot better in what they actually decided to do. And I got better at choosing more curated selections through my process of narrowing in on what things they really wanted to do to spend their time in the city.
In a world of abundance, sometimes less is more. And while I know there are a lot more threads to pull on from this single idea, I'll leave you here for now.
All you really need to know is that the leaves are finally turning yellow, which means that Central Park is the single best place to spend your time in New York City this weekend. Enjoy.
