Fall in NYC comes as a relief. The city in summer has its virtues—emptier streets, more easily-acquired reservations at most of the best restaurants—but the heat and the reek of garbage baking in it more than wear out that season’s welcome well before September slouches, sweating, into frame. Flattering it is not that autumn follows on its heels, not only turning off the oven but also invigorating New Yorkers who can now don the jackets they are so proud of and walk at their usual bracing clips without perspiring quite so readily.
This is my fourth fall in NYC, and I can now say with ease that it is autumn—late September but especially October and November—that takes the crown as the best season in which to spend time in New York. Residents weather all seasons, of course, but if you’re merely paying us a visit it would be wise to do so during these months. The bearability of the temperature and mildness of the weather generally ensures that you can spend as much time walking around as you’d like between meals and museum visits. Walking around, if you are able, is the best way to see New York. (If you’re not, the open-air double decker tour buses are actually wonderful and make for a grand afternoon.) As icing, this time exists at the nexus of hot coffee-appropriate temperatures where you don’t necessarily need to be extending a gloved hand to the world (although the fabulous black leather pair worn by Meg Ryan in the to-be-referenced film below would not be out of place). The math is simple.
Walking is also conducive to talking, and it follows that doing so as one should in fall breeds intimacy with one’s companions. Just think of When Harry Met Sally, when the titular characters as played by Billy Crystal and Ryan stroll Central Park over a bed of fallen leaves, with vivid reds still blazing overhead. Fall blazes through much of that film, in fact—in that scene, they’re talking about the recurring dreams that have long haunted their respective sleeps en route to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Once inside, the same scarlet foliage reappears, this time framed by the floor-to-ceiling windows that let the light in on the former Sackler Wing’s Temple of Dendur. It’s a fiery breach of an otherwise uniformly, serenely gray and brown space—an explosion of feeling, if you will, such reds and oranges being colors of passion, lava, and hot metal.
Although this sequence alone does more than enough for fall, the filmmakers went further to set it almost entirely within that season in New York (with the exception of the final scenes that move through wintry Christmas and New Year’s; never mind that such snow and ice do not come to the Big Apple until February or March these days). Sally’s not just slowly falling in love with her friend Harry in the thick of that NYC fall, she’s also dining al fresco with her friends Marie and Alice at the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park. All three women wear wonderful jackets. Harry sweatsuits up for a jog through that same park with a pal of his own, notably through Bethesda Terrace and past its fountain. The city basks in these last few bursts of exterior life before the plummeting temperatures send everyone too deep inside their overcoats and into their apartments for anyone to do much looking around at each other. If you need a bit more guidance beyond just getting outside though, read on for some of our favorite ways to spend fall in NYC.
