The Pod 39 Hotel

A boutique luxury hotel, run by the Spanish company, Eurostars, Dylan brings a European flair to midtown hospitality. The connected Benjamin's Steakhouse, one of the finest in the city, offers breakfast and room service for hotel guests. The building that the hotel occupies was once the Chemists' Club, which played host to a group of chemists meeting for reasons professional and social but ultimately moved further north. The building still bears the Chemists' Club name outside, which adds an air of alchemy to the facade.

Due to its close proximity to Grand Central, spending even a few minutes in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt allows anyone to experience the hustle and bustle of tourism in this fast-paced city. Families and business people from around the country and the world are coming and going, checking in and checking out over and over again. There is a fine bar and restaurant area a few steps up in the lobby that overlooks 42nd Street. In what was once the Commodore Hotel, opened in 1919, but totally refurbished in 1980, this is a fascinating place to sit down and relax with a cold drink for a few minutes.

The private club, since 1921, for Williams College alumni was acquired and renovated in 2010 to create an extended-stay hotel. (The Williams Club now shares space with the Princeton Club on West 43rd Street) The downstairs, which has retained its classic design and charm, houses the British-themed restaurant, The Shakespeare. On the main floor, with stained hardwoods forming the backbones of the spaces, there are several rooms to either dine or have a relaxing drink in front of the fireplace with book-lined walls, cushy armchairs, and lushly colorful wallpaper. Upstairs was more heavily renovated, and as such was remade into more modern areas: sleek white geometric rooms are graced with bright decor and plentifully mirrored surfaces. The vividly blue hued spacious rooms allow guests to feel more like they are residing in an apartment rather than a hotel room for their minimum length stay of thirty days. In our conversation with the staff, we learned that the clientele is a mix of people who are in Manhattan for a long period of work, those fortunate enough to have four weeks of vacation, New Yorkers in between homes, or in the middle of renovations. To quote one of the managers, the extended stays mean that people "come as clients and leave as friends. "

As someone who once owned a bookstore, I was delighted by each of the little surprises and details hidden throughout the Renwick. I walked into the lobby to find a multimedia mural on the wall, designed by Gregory Siff, decorated with items that were found when the original hotel was renovated. There were yellowing letters attached to the wall along with depictions of New York landmarks and pieces of the lives of John Steinbeck and Thomas Mann, both of whom lived here when it was filled with artist studios and lofts. I was eager for Tom and Olivia to arrive, as I knew that they, too, would appreciate the hotel's celebration of writers and artists, which begins with the name: James Renwick is the man who, with no formal training, was the main architect behind St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the nineteenth century. The artistic flourishes continued along the walls of the lobby. A bookcase had a clever column of Steinbeck’s books lined up with a painting of the author on their spines. On the stairs down from the door, which looped around to become a bench, there were succulents in glass cubes perched on top of additional piles of books. David Israel, the Asset Manager, explained that the hotel brought in seventeen local artists to work on the overall design. He pointed out the outline of people at the park made out of string and nails just to the left of the door. David informed us that the piece took the artist five nights to create on the wall and that it represented a snapshot in the story of her family. “There is art everywhere, ” David said simply. To prove his point, he took us outside where Gregory Siff had tagged all four sides of the hotel’s temporary water heater with graffiti. From the art to the amenities, everything is made in New York. David told me this while pointing out that the wood paneling behind the concierge came from the building’s original water tower. The bed linen, the bath products, and the room fixtures all come from within the city. Even the hotel restaurant, Bedford and Company will serve New York distilled spirits when it opens at the end of 2015. Stepping into the almost completed space, I could already sense the warm atmosphere that the midcentury design would produce. It felt like a club where the artists of New York’s Golden Age would sit around and swap ideas. Each of the rooms upstairs had details that were artsy and playful. David explained that the Renwick is trying to “bring a more edgy, Soho feel to Midtown. ” He went on to say that the hotel has tried to create a room both for the creator and for lawyers and businessmen, making it perfect for weekday and weekend travelers. David was proud to announce that there are no double beds in the hotel: the smallest size is a queen. He opened the door onto a room that was decorated in honor of Thomas Mann, with his face painted on the white wall and his quotes scattered around the room. I found it fascinating that the Time Magazines on display throughout the hotel were found during the renovation, and that the New York City skyline painted on the blinds is common to all rooms, but that each one is unique. “There is no framed art in this building – everything is functional, ” David said. My creativity was sparked everywhere I looked: the cup holder was made from paper mache pages of the great Gatsby, the robes mimicked artist smocks with an embroidered dash of paint on the back, and the Do Not Disturb signs took the form of paintbrushes. Even the notepad, a staple of most hotel rooms, doubled as origami paper. We thought that the Mann room was creative, however we were blown away by the next room, which David told me was specifically crafted for the artist in all of us. Easels were scattered throughout the room with different size canvases. The cup holder, which in the other room held pens, was filled with paintbrushes of every size and shape. On the notepad, there was a little drawing. David said that many of the housekeeping staff, whom he refers to as “creators, ” are artistic themselves, and are encouraged to leave their work for guests. Though we did not see it, David informed us that there is also a writer’s suite, complete with a typewriter. Even though the Renwick had only been open a month when we visited, he said that he had already had repeat guests requesting specific rooms. After showing us the Hemingway Suite, which has a little rooftop balcony, David led us back down to the lobby, pointing out the original mail chutes and elevators. On our way out, I could not help noticing that there really was art everywhere: on the walls of the fitness room, in the bathrooms, in the stairwell. I was reminded of the quote from Andy Warhol that I had seen on the wall of one of the guest rooms: “Art is anything you can get away with. ”

It’s not every day you’re greeted at the gym by a man wearing teeny tiny swim trunks and plastic lei. And it’s not a regular gym where the boss arrives for a meeting resplendent in chicken hat. Which stays on for the duration, despite the rising temperatures. But then, Mark Fisher Fitness is not any old gym. In fact, it doesn’t even call itself a gym; it’s an “enchanted ninja clubhouse of glory and dreams”. It’s a place where clients are called ninjas and trainers are called unicorns and where mirrored balls, graffiti and disco lights take the place of the usual utilitarian gym furniture. “We like to keep things colorful, ” said Mark in understatement. “So there are lights. There’s a closet with costumes, so if the trainer feels like dressing up in Victorian era garb or an S& M unicorn, there’s a leash they can wear – whatever feels good. “But one thing that’s also important to us is just taking people where they’re at, so a lot of the ninjas who come here AREN’T insane, ” Mark added. “We say if someone wants to come to a dance party and someone wants to take off their pants and someone wants to cry quietly in a corner because they’re having a really bad day, everything’s perfect, you’re OK wherever you are. ”Mark describes himself as once that “classic skinny, awkward, Martian man, afraid-of-girls guy” who only properly found his place in this world when he started to work out in high school. “I was also a professional actor – which is partly how we’ve become such a fixture in the Broadway community – and throughout my twenties I fell more and more in love with the training. It was like the mistress I slowly left my wife for. ”A few years ago he quit acting completely and committed himself to training fellow New York misfits. “My own experience in the gym, starting as someone who didn’t feel very good about his body and didn’t feel like an athlete, it was very difficult for me, ” Mark said. “We like to say, in the most affectionate way, that the ninjas are like an isle of misfit toys – all manner of humanity, all ages and colors and backgrounds that are generally united in that we all have a feeling of being an outsider at times. I just wanted to celebrate that, and also to provide really good fitness information. I’m a huge fitness nerd, so it’s very important we provide a really good service with results. ”So if you want clear, no-nonsense weight loss and are willing to put in the hours, the intensive six-week Snatched program might be your bag. Alternatively, there are group classes, and semi-private training packages, Mark’s cheaper but just as effective version of a personal training program, where you train with two other ninjas and a dedicated unicorn. Unsurprisingly, many of the gym goers are from the Broadway community. Mark has worked with plenty of performers to get them ready for a specific role (such as a ninja playing a boxer in Kinky Boots) as well as backstage workers. “We train a lot of composers and directors and casting directors – and from their friends it’s trickled out to other professions; people who maybe work in white collar jobs but are a little bit weird, ” Mark shared. “The nature of their life means they perhaps don’t get to be as creative as they’d like so they can come in here and do whatever they want to do. ”The trainers, too, are a colorful bunch, counting among them one of the city’s best known drag queens, a gay porn star, a tattooed graphic artist who was a skate punk in a former life, and a professional clown who, at the last minute in med school, decided he wanted to be a clown not a doctor. “We need people to be really great coaches, but we also need them to be really authentic and comfortable with who they are. And a holistic approach means this crazy fitness family doesn’t just take care of your physical fitness; it offers life coaching workshops, classes on book keeping for financial fitness, advice on time management …“We hope to be a place where people come for general betterment, ” Mark explained. “Fitness is so transforming because you’re able to be more creative and stable and braver with your life. You’re feeling better about yourself, you’re eating well, you’re sleeping – we know your brain is going to work better. Additionally, it’s interesting to see how much of your life you can control. New York can be an isolating town – particularly for performers, who spend a lot of time getting rejected. So there’s a certain power one discovers when you know you can control what you eat and how you look. ”This story was adapted from the W42ST article, "Mark Fisher Fitness — The Gym Where New York’s Misfits Go to Work Out. "

Jonathan Boyarsky, fourth generation owner, has found himself a terrific niche on 39th by being one of the only menswear shops to remain on the ground floor. Over the years, he watched as companies moved upstairs into offices in the garment district, or even overseas, but he chose to remain where people could easily spot him. Although he feels that he has remained "under the radar, " at times, when people come in they are "ecstatic" with what he has to offer. His family began their men's clothing business on the Lower East side back in 1919. Over the years, members of the family spread out and opened related businesses offering either custom made shirts, suits or fabrics. At No. 257, Jonathan has combined it all. He describes it as "double dipping. " They used to sell only the fabric and then send people elsewhere to have their clothing made. Today, within the three floors of space at Fabric Czar, customers can select from some of the finest cloths, and then meet first class tailor, Steven Tabak, of Beckenstein Bespoke, where their clothing is designed... and, everything is constructed on the premises. "We are one stop shopping, whatever a customer needs, we can make it for them. " And for Jonathan, it is only about quality craftsmanship.

There are intriguing spaces sprinkled throughout the city that invite corporations to utilize their facilities, but stepping inside Offsite is a unique experience designed specifically for the business meeting clientele. The brainchild of Patrick Everett and Shawn Kessler, they have created a stunning turnkey facility where all day conferences can be held. Companies are invited to bring their employees together for a productive 9am-5pm meeting in the three levels of fully equipped space, which can then be flipped effortlessly into an appropriate venue for an evening event. The rooms are configured so that some forty people are able to sit around one gigantic table or be rearranged into smaller units. Attendees never have to feel confined to one space, as they can move around freely on each floor, dividing up into smaller breakout sessions, when necessary. The rooms are versatile and technology oriented, fully outfitted with AV equipment - as Patrick referred to it, "plug and play. " Endless pens and pads, drinks and snacks, including large jars of enticing candy, are provided throughout the day. The partners have paid attention to every detail, taking into consideration exactly what they believe their clients will require, including a small executive office that allows for a private phone conversation and a myriad of white walls that are actually whiteboards. Offsite works with some of the terrific catering facilities in the area to provide top lunches and dinners for groups, and everything is served on their attractive dishes. While being given a tour, Patrick told me that he had been an event planner. When he discovered that there was something important missing in the corporate world, he found his niche. As he began to imagine the possibilities, he worked diligently on his concept with Shawn. Basically all one has to do is book the space, and the rock star team at Offsite will handle the rest.