vip in the city

Winter’s Eve at Lincoln Square

On Monday, the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District hosted the 7th Annual Winter’s Eve at Lincoln Square. The evening kicked-off with the official tree lighting ceremony at Lincoln Center. This year’s tree, a 50-foot Colorado Blue Spruce — which was delivered to Lincoln Center on November 15 — was decorated by Wedgwood with specially-designed performing arts-themed ornaments. Thankfully, this night was not the insane media circus that the Rockefeller Center tree-lighting event has become. At precisely 5:56 pm, the tree was formally lit, casting its bright blue glow over the Plaza.

And then the festival! According to the website, Winter’s Eve is the city’s largest holiday festival: a giant neighborhood celebration during which the sidewalks along Broadway from Columbus Circle through the West 60’s come alive with performers, street musicians, children’s activities, demonstrations, and food vendors offering free or nominally priced tastings. The streets were teeming with revelers who were out on this balmy night to welcome in the holiday season.

As soon as I emerged from the subway at 66th Street, I was greeted by the sounds of the Gramercy Brass Orchestra playing holiday tunes in Tucker Square for the crowds gathered around the restaurant stalls.

So much music in the air!

Tempting to linger, but we had other tasks on the agenda. At Dante Park, we collected our entry form for the main event: a Lincoln Square area scavenger hunt, organized by Watson Adventures. The company hosts both private and public scavenger hunts; their NYC-themed events include a Grand Central hunt, a Midtown Holiday Movie Locations hunt, and other hunts named Met Madness, MoMA Mania and Art Attack. Our entry this night had a list of 14 questions, to which we were to hunt down answers, with clues to be discovered along the festival streets.

We were off — with occasional brief stops for photo opportunities. Questions about the Kiehl’s store, the Gracious Home window display, the Commerce Bank… even the Lincoln Square Veterinary Hospital. Go, go, go!

Here, ice sculpting demonstrations in front the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Question #9: At the American Folk Art Museum, find a comforter that is meant to comfort and honor. How many people made it? Answer: 500!

Keep going…!

More performers in front of the The Museum of Biblical Art.

Off to the YMCA (according to Question #8, the largest of its kind in the world) and for Question #5, to count the check-out registers at Bed Bath & Beyond. (28! A kind employee gave us that one.) Time was running out, so we split up to hit all the clues inside the Time Warner Center.

Question #12: Which Borders’ staff member likes a fruity book? Nikki recommends A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass.

Question #11: At Aveda, how much does Happiness Happiness Happiness cost this holiday season? The Triple Happiness gift set costs $29. (One can assume that this would be superior to mere double happiness.)

Some confusing questions about Inside CNN and the Esprit store…. Just keep going…

Inside Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall: Name five jazz artists honored at the Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame. I probably could have done this without trekking up to the fifth floor by just naming any five jazz artists.

More music — jazz, of course:

The deadline was upon us, so we made educated guesses on the rest — no time to hit the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle on 60th — and raced back to Dante Park to turn in our entry.

And then the answers…

Let’s see: we needed 10 correct answers to win one of the “amazing prizes provided by the retailers and restaurants of Lincoln Square”… and it looked like after racing around like maniacs, we had… 9. 9!!! Gah!

For this travesty, I blame the in-retrospect-not-so-kind BB&B employee, who totally lied about the store’s 18, not 28, check-out registers.

We wallowed in our defeat over tea and swanky Chinese food at Shun Lee Cafe. Later still, CS lifted our spirits further over glasses of wine and rainbow-hued cocktails at Cafe Ronda.

Ah well, you can’t win ’em all.

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