Architectural gem: The newly renovated Frick Collection, based in Henry Clay Frick’s 1914 mansion, is a beauty. I’m sad that Flora Yukhnovich’s “Four Seasons” is gone, but sit beneath the glass-domed roof in the Garden Court and find Whistler’s gossamer portrait of Frances Leyland.
Best time to visit, weather-wise: Cue Billie Holiday’s “Autumn in New York,” but don’t miss the park smothered in pink confetti from the cherry blossoms bursting in Spring.
Must-skip/don’t bother: If there’s a line for frozen yogurt…
Workout: Looping endlessly around the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. My best friend and I call them “despair walks.”
Cheap date: The concerts at SummerStage, and the French film festival Films on the Green—both free and outdoors in Central Park. And, always, Shakespeare in the Park, if you wait in line for tickets!
Worth-it splurge: Dining beneath Joan Mitchell’s “King of Spades” at Marcel, the new restaurant inside the brutalist Breuer building that now houses Sotheby’s. I’m a bit biased because I got married at La Mercerie in Soho (where we lived for 2 years), so I’m in awe of anything that Robin and Stephen Alesch design—and their latest is elegantly enchanting.
Best place for people-watching: The bar at Polo Bar, sorry. (Hi, Nelly!) A favorite sighting was [Aryna] Sabalenka right after she won the 2025 US Open.
Secret spot only locals know: Albertine, named after a Proust character, is a charming French bookshop tucked inside a Beaux Arts mansion. The hand-painted celestial ceiling, wreathed with gilded zodiac signs, is transporting, as is its selection of French poetry.
Spa or salon: I rarely have time (endless deadlines!), but recently, before a photo shoot, a friend sent me to Georgia Louise, who depuffed me in ways I didn’t know were possible.
Favorite film about New York: There are many to choose from, but the 1964 film The World of Henry Orient blissfully captures another era–and gets a mention in the book. (I first watched it with my mom.) There’s a classic scene in Central Park when the teenage girls spy on Peter Sellars at the Alice in Wonderland statue, but I often think of the heart-twisting shot when Val traverses a snowy, funereal field all alone.
Something you should know about my city: While it’s gained new attention, the Upper East Side has had an unfair rap. Particularly when I was a single, struggling playwright living in rent-controlled garrets, I was always dazzled by the rich tradition of female writers who once lived and wrote here: Sylvia Plath, Shirley Hazzard, Dorothy Parker, Wendy Wasserstein. And of course, Joan Didion, who described living in a “monastic” place uptown in her infamous essay. I love this line: “I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while.”
How this city influences my writing: New York is inexorably in motion, it’s febrile, feral, and kinetic. I love disappearing into the carnival of strangers, while remaining attuned to the wild, unexpected moments in the everyday. I wrote most of The Plunge while alone in the city during the pandemic, inspired by how tenaciously it pressed on during its darkest hour. For a writer, the tensions of New York—grit and glitter; chaos and solitude—provide a charged space in which stories can take hold.
#Lila #Raiceks #Guide #Uptown #York
