Mainlining Christmas

This years' Window Displays start with the creepy mannequins of Saks Fifth Avenue. There's some ridiculous almost-a-story being told in rhymed couplets on the surface of the windows. Something about the magic bubble factory under Saks, where bored ladies in expensive dresses run Dr. Seuss-style machines. The machines are actually quite interesting looking, and they move, and the dresses are pretty. The juxtaposition, though, is just weird. Also the creepy little girl mannequin in the Santa hat is constantly skulking in the background: The displays are also sprinkled with little fake animals in the corners, with no explanation. Inside Saks they've decorated the ceiling, mostly. The next interesting store I spotted I guess is called H. Stern? It looks like a jewelry place. They had a live jazz band on a Thursday afternoon. I didn't even think about going in. Their windows were interesti

I was taking a walk up Sixth Avenue for a change, and realized that there is quite an amusing string of holiday displays along this route. I love these giant Christmas lights: If it's unclear, each bulb is more than three feet long.  Another block down you get these giant ornaments: Across the street from some of this is the brightly shining front of Radio City Music Hall: Over in front of Radio City, I was highly amused by this special holiday bus-will-not-stop sign: The last giant prop that I saw was this big toy train, also filling a fountain. It's very large, not as large as a real train, but probably as tall as me.

This year the Lord and Taylor windows were based on a collection of solicited children's drawings... or something. So the first window is a girl drawing, and then there's just a selection of somewhat generic holiday scenes.  All the displays are surrounded by drawings done by little kids. It's a cute collection of slightly animatronic dolls, but nothing too exciting. Enjoy.

Even though the stated policy wasn't "no photos", but rather "No Flash Photography", and plenty of people even ignored that, I only took a small handful of pictures at The Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Just enough to give you a taste. In the lobby, when we came in, we were greeted by this: It has to be at least 15 feet tall, it spins, and all of the little crystals are snowflakes.  Here's the stage from our seats in the mezzanine: And here I'm looking sideways across the mezzanine itself: I took a few shots of one of the numbers I loved most: Christmas in NYC The Rockettes rode the bus in choreographed fashion and eventually changed their costumes for the finale of the sequence. The Multiple Santa number was cute, but very odd: and the Living Nativity was damn impressive. I mean, look: Cool, right? Lots of people and bright costumes coordinated together, and there are live camels. I mean, not as cool a