Central Park

 We are going to take a long leisurely stroll through this lush lung smack dab in the center of NYC. Aside from being one of New York’s top tourist attractions, it’s also a lifeline where you can leave the hectic hustle and bustle of New York’s busy streets behind. Join me as we go off the beaten path and stroll around stunning Central Park on today’s episode of FYI! 

Transcript

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we are going to take a long leisurely stroll through this lush lung smack dab in the center of new york city aside from being one of new york's top tourist attractions it's also a lifeline where you can leave the hectic hustle and bustle of new york's busy streets behind join me as we go off the beaten path and stroll around stunning central park on today's f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Applause][Music] hello hello hello my amigos and welcome one welcome all it's time for another exciting edition of fyi for your english and i can't believe it guys but this is the 50th episode that's right the 50th episode of fyi and the only reason we're at 50 episodes is thanks to you guys so thank you thank you thank you so much for your constant support and for your recommendations and as i always say for learning and laughing with me i hope you're enjoying the episodes and remember if you have any ideas for future episodes just let me know i'd love to hear from you i'd love to get your feedback as well and speaking of feedback if you enjoy the show don't forget to rate it wherever you listen to podcasts well because that helps us be seen by more people it gives us more visibility so that's another way to say thank you that and don't forget word of mouth you know telling your friends and your colleagues that there's a fun exciting way to learn english and you'll learn other things aside from english and today we're going to learn about a place that is near and dear to my heart a place that i've spent so many hours in and it was so hard to decide what to talk about because some places like niagara falls well i had to do a lot of research because i hadn't been there but central park i basically lived there especially in the summer months so you're going to get some first-hand experience and even though some of you or most of you or some i don't want to say most of you but some of you have never been to central park i beg to differ because you've been there you've been there so many times in movies and it's just a part of our culture now and when i say our culture i don't mean new york's culture i don't mean the us culture i mean the global culture who's not familiar with central park and if you recall last week we looked at friends which of course was supposed to take place in central park but it didn't so i figured today we could revisit this amazing park right smack dab in the center of new york city and smack dab in the center is in todo el i started off by saying we're going to take a long leisurely stroll let's pronounce that word leisurely and if we look at the root it's leisure which is ophio the british pronounce it leisure leisure get rimac on pleasure and we say leisure leisure in the united states so obviously that's the correct way no i'm just kidding british friends but leisurely means pausado sin it means you know that you're not in a hurry you're not in a rush novasco mucha prisa so a long leisurely stroll and a stroll is another way to say a walk now if actually makes sense if you think about uncarrito de bebe is called a stroller because well you take the baby for a stroll then i said we'll go through this lush lung and i love the word lush i try and use this word a lot in spanish too i guess it's a good way to describe the north of spain it is lush frondoso lush very very green but it's funny because this word has a secondary meaning as well a lush is also an alcoholic but i mean green in this way so we will stroll through this lush lung and that's a word you guys know as well pulmon because you say the same thing about retiro in madrid for example so this lush lung smack dab in the center of new york city then i said aside apart aside from being one of new york's top tourist attractions muchote it's also a lifeline and we've looked at the word lifeline but we looked at it in another way uh sustinto we looked at it as livelihood which would be kind of you know the money but lifeline is also cuerva salvabidas so it literally gives life to the city and then i said you can leave the hectic hectic is a great word of the hectic hustle and bustle and the hustle of new york's busy streets behind and careful with that word because i don't know why but a lot of my students say basi and it's not bossy it's busy busy all right so i said the hustle and bustle of new york's busy streets behind and to leave behind is i went on to say join me as we go off the beaten path and i love this expression we may have looked at it on a past episode but it's apartado el camino menos transitado because beaten is disgusted so join me as we go off the beaten path and stroll around pasead stunning central park and stunning is impresionante it is stunning and it's stunning uh if you just think about the sheer size of it which we will look at later in the episode we'll look at some dimensions but just to give you an idea of how popular this park is it receives around 42 million visitors per year and you know what the greatest part is it's free okay the zoo isn't free el though zoo that part isn't free but in general it's free you can walk around the park and see the sights and in the bonus part of today's show i'm going to give you my personal recommendations tell you some of my favorite hidden spots or as we just learned some spots that are off the beaten path so that's going to be in the bonus part of today's show and just a reminder guys there's a bonus part of this show every week which is exclusively for patrons and if you're interested in finding out more about joining my curious community on patreon you can go over to patreon.com alberto alonso and find out about getting bonus audio getting pdf documents that accompany all the different episodes to help you really get the vocabulary and assimilate it and of course put it into practice and if you're in the higher levels you can even get weekly and monthly classes with me so if you want to get more information you can go on over to patreon.com alberto alonso and while we're at it i want to just send a shout out to all my patrons thank you so much there's over a hundred of us now somos mas and i'll send a special shout out to my super duper students francisco tony roberto diego jose maria mila alex patricio edgar carmen loles and diana and if you'd noticed i just included my interstellar students in there as well so thank you to all my students all my patrons the word patroness methena this show would not be possible without you so those of you who enjoy this program you should thank them too and guys keep up the great work i've seen many of you making tremendous progress and i'm very proud of you and you should be proud of yourselves so if you guys want more information go over to patreon.com alberto alonso or contact me and i'll send you a free sample so let's get back to central park because i'm eager igris comuchas ghanas i'm itching i'm itching to go to new york and especially central park and aside from being a popular tourist destination it's a place where many new yorkers would love to live too i mean who doesn't want to live you know near a park parks are cool parks are places where you can relax and and unwind to unwind this this is and so of course people know that it's no secret and that's why times times square well that too but i'm talking about central park and the surrounding area some of the most expensive real estate in mobiliaria some of the most expensive real estate in the world i mean people are dying to live on central park west or central park east we know um i can tell you somebody who i know who lives on central park west and that is yoko ono she still lives over there and we're going to talk about john lennon and strawberry fields and all that fun stuff a little bit later on but if you can afford it cilo puedes costar that is the place to be in new york city and you've got everything just a stone's throw or a hop skip and a jump a tito de piedra you've got times square which there's an episode on times square you've got museum mile some of the greatest museums in the world concentrated in one area right next to central park and uh we didn't even mention the views i can't even imagine some of the views from those penthouses a penthouse is an article just be careful because that's a false friend the word attic in english is boardi i think where you where you save things or you put things away for the winter it's let me sum it up it's where you keep your christmas tree it's a place where you store things so whatever view you get of central park whether it's from a penthouse or whether you're smack dab in the center of the park it's always going to be special it's always going to be breathtaking but let's take a look at some of the history of central park now the park was initially opened in the year 1857 but one thing is opening and one thing is becoming the central park that it is today and as you can imagine it's a gradual process it's a gradual process so 1857 it was opened but it was later improved and expanded upon by two really famous dudes well after this they were really famous frederick law olmsted and calvert vol and they had a plan called the greensward plan the greensword plan and well when they put this plan into practice that was when they reopened the park in 1873 but it wasn't easy i just summed it up in one sentence you know 1857 to 1873 well it was very laborious it was tedious and these guys didn't just become the architects or the designers by chance for no no no no these guys had to enter a contest and they did and they won that contest it was a design contest that they held in 1858 and if you were paying attention that's a year after the park opened so 1858 is when they got the job when they were hired contratados but it didn't open until 1873 with their design so just do the math that's a long time and well they drew their their inspiration to draw inspiration we can say uh because what they did is they love these european gardens and you guys in europe you might not realize it but you've got some really awesome public parks gardens if you don't think so just walk around the streets of paris or or any european city madrid included and the public parks are really well taken care of they are landscaped and this is a really good word to know because this is one of the distinctions between this park and other parks and landscape is when you embellethe it says in spanish so this is when you literally take something and you make the bushes look good and everything there's a purpose there's a reason it's not just bushes and trees everywhere but landscaping it's making sure you're taking care of that lawn it of the flowers of the trees and that they're all designed in nice rows as i said like these european gardens so it was based on european ideas or at least the european idea of what a park should be and in europe they they had a really clear idea a park should be a place where city dwellers city dwellers to dwell is another way to say to live where they could get some culture you know some live music which we'll talk about that later on fresh air and of course a little bit of exercise or maybe you just want to unwind this threshold to blow off some steam to decompress no sultar vapor to blow off some steam a very clear image so yeah they won this design contest this was in 1858 frederick law olmsted and we talked about him in the niagara falls episode he also designed the niagara falls park and him and his partner calvert vow won this competition and their vision was to have a harmonious right con armonia so the word is harmony harmonious balance between natural and man-made elements their design plan or their blueprint a blueprint los planes it kind of makes sense because if i'm not mistaken before they were designed on computers they actually used these blue pieces of paper we've all seen them in movies and and well this is what they use blueprints and they had in the initial blueprints terraces bridges sunken roadways and sunkenness undido we looked at that in the titanic episode but these were sunken roadways and they allowed the carriages okay carriages or the things that are pulled by horses and you can still get a horse and carriage in central park although there are some people who are against this because of cruelty to animals but the cool thing about this and i think one of the coolest ideas of central park is the original design is the design that's still there okay there might be some more trees but the roadways the way that they made the roads go under the park um this way it wouldn't interrupt you know the people who were sitting there having a nice time or getting tan bronte and didn't have to worry about horses walking by and pooping and so these roadways were designed to go under the park so it wouldn't disrupt these people and of course when the automobile came on to the scene well the park was designed so well that they didn't have to redesign that part okay they might have had to widen pocomas but the original design was perfect it let cars and vehicles get around the park without going through the park so what's the solution go under and new yorkers are famous for that in general their ingenuity and uh i'll tell you something you can see the dutch influence you can feel the dutch influence they're good engineers as well and they're known for their ingenuity and you can still see that in central park and as i said another thing that made central park such a famous park was it was the first major landscaped public park so there were many public parks where they said okay this green area is a park okay it's a we'll put a bench there and that's good and everybody's fine but this was the first time they said okay we're going to put some bushes um i think we need some flowers maybe purple flowers this is landscaping putting flowers and plants and your yard putting everything in a place for a reason for a purpose if you will and it was a huge success i don't have to tell you that it worked so well that they were asked to work on more public projects they also designed brooklyn's prospect park which it's not as popular as central park obviously but it is amazing nonetheless uh olmsted also as i said niagara falls the grounds at the u.s capitol also the world's colombian exposition in chicago which was a monumental world's fair and to this day he is known as the founder of american landscape architecture as they call it but it was not easy this was not an easy road for them to travel to get this park built and now we'll talk a little bit about the construction well as i said before it was a tough task a tough undertaking right to undertake something is imprendo so it was a tough undertaking but it kind of i guess everybody could say it paid off quedio frutos it was worth it because today it is still one of the most popular parks but it wasn't all roses and rainbows and i i said that on purpose it was once filled with mud modest burrow swamps which is muddy water and it's not stable ground and of course rocks and the soil the soil es el suero la tierra was horrible you couldn't grow anything there so what did they do they imported tons of topsoil from new jersey from the neighboring state of new jersey and they filled it in so that's an interesting thing um central park in new york city is technically kind of half new jersey if you count the ground they use tons and tons of topsoil that they imported they had dump trucks and it's a very logical word because to dump is better than a dump truck well obviously is this kind of truck and there were rocks everywhere it was a very rocky area and they had to blow up this area they use tnt that's right they had to use gunpowd powder gunpowder is polvora and they were blowing up the park i would have loved to have seen this visto esto it seemed like it was crazy 20 000 workers or laborers laborers 20 000 workers were putting gunpowder tnt into central park to get rid of these rocks and i read a figure and i don't know i can't believe everything you read but supposedly there was more gunpowder used to rid uh riddis desaferde to rid central park of rocks than was used while fighting the battle of gettysburg which is one of the most famous battles in the civil war do you buy it lo chris i don't know but i think it's a an interesting story nonetheless and why do you ask why is it such a rocky area why is it what does it have so many dramatic rocks and boulders in fact the word boulder is a very big rock well what if i told you that this was because there were glaciers glaciates which melted 12 000 years ago and you can still see that i remember now i didn't know because i don't know very much about geology but there's a clear area and many areas where you can see the rock and where it cracked and obviously when rock cracks it's because there was water in there so you can actually see the evidence of these glaciers that were there 12 000 years ago i recommend you go over to umpire rock which is on the west side right we say david in the west side and the east side como dijantes at 63rd street and this is near the ball fields there are many ball fields as well campos de baseball or softball i remember i played softball in central park with my company i worked very very close to central park and i used to go there during my breaks and we had company softball games there and i think it was one of the greatest memories of my life i just remember being there with all my co-workers and playing softball having fun drinking some beers seeing the skyscrapers because unless you're really deep in the park there's always a reminder that hey this is a nice green area right you love this rock that was formed you know millions of years ago well guess what um that's another thing that makes new york so popular it's skyscrapers and the fact that you can see these skyscrapers and the only reason they can have these skyscrapers around the park is because that bedrock that soil is so strong we could do an episode just on the subsoil and the new york underground so yeah those buildings are there reminding you yeah you're in the park enjoy it but you're in new york city this is a major metropolis now developing the park cost an estimated 1 million dollars this was in developing it excuse me developing costs over a million dollars but the final bill la factura final the damage como de timos what's the damage daniels 7.39 million so i guess it was very over budget because their developing costs were a million a little over a million and then that that's almost seven times 7.39 million but there are many people who say yeah it may have been an expensive project alaska that same year or around that same time i don't know if it was the same year but around that same time was the alaska purchase when we bought alaska from russia and you know how much that cost 7.2 million so this is a fun fact if i've ever heard one it cost more to build central park than to buy alaska wow what a deal what a bargain by a choyo now just recently there's been some history that came out about central park this was in 2011 and seneca village or seneca village i believe seneca village and it was all but forgotten it was a place a village that existed in the center of central park or what is now central park and it wasn't until 2011 that they started to explore this and they were granted permission to excavate and see what they could find about this village that was once in central park so seneca village basically about 1 600 people lived on this land many of them were residents of this village and it was a a community that was founded in 1825 by free african americans so african americans who were not slaves there were three churches on the grounds two schools and three cemeteries there was also a large irish population among that 1 600 people and also some german residents so another interesting story the the park had a life before it became a park and there are a lot of people who criticize the way these people were removed from that area this was in 1855 seneca village was totally destroyed in order to complete the park and anybody who stayed behind was deemed deemed as considerado a squatter uno cupa and it kind of makes sense the word squatter because to squat is studying so if you're squatting you're kind of temporarily there you're not sitting or standing and there's always that debate of well some say they were paid to leave the land but others say they were forcibly evicted and there's something called eminent domain we can do an episode on that look that up who's got the eminent domain i think it basically says summing up that if the government wants to they can take your property and i don't know the whole story but i imagine that uh you know they took advantage of these people quite a bit but the story is unfolding as we speak again just in 2011 when they sent some excavators and some diggers they found 250 bags full of material that they're going to go through and research and see what they can piece together what they can put together about these people the people who lived in seneca village i'm sure it's fascinating and maybe we'll do an episode on that in the future i also promised you guys i was going to give you some dimensions just to give you an idea of the size of central park so central park is from fifth avenue to eighth avenue we we love uh defining our addresses by avenues when i lived in new york i lived on 28th between seventh and eighth that's how we do it so it's uh fifth avenue and eighth avenue and it runs from 59th street to 110th street it is i i looked it up in hectares because i i know acres but we use in the united states acres but it's 341 hectares it is 4 kilometers long and 0.8 kilometers wide now if you do the math that is larger than the country of monaco there are also 92.8 kilometers of footpaths or pedestrian paths a 7.2 kilometers of bridal trail bridal is the brida for horses so people can ride horses around the park as well i mean those are some impressive numbers and i also remember the loop there are two loops there's a smaller loop and a larger loop that you can ride your bike you can run i used to rollerblade if i'm patinetes and i remember rollerblading all around the park it was great and the loop now that i look at it it was pretty pretty big 9.8 kilometers so you can go in a loop 9.8 kilometers and not see the same scenery twice and don't forget we've also got all kinds of sports i said already softball and baseball but maybe you're into bird watching or you're into yoga whatever you're into you can find somebody doing it in central park and it's cool because it's a place of expression too there are tons of performances one of the most famous performances in central park was simon and garfunkel i remember seeing sting in central park for free and i'm talking about the big performances every day you can find an orchestra or mimes around the park it is just full of culture and there are plenty of bodies of water too there are seven man-made lakes and ponds over 9 000 benches to sit down and relax on and speaking of benches i'm gonna sit down and relax for a minute before we get to the bonus part of today's show but i hope you'll join us in the bonus part when we take a stroll through central park we're going to look at the decline of central park that's right there were two times when central park was in disrepair it was falling apart so we'll talk about that and how it came back also we'll look at movies that take place there or that were filmed there we'll also look at the fauna and some other animals and trees that we can find and as i promised you i'm going to tell you about my favorite spots some hidden gems and some very well-known spots where you got to get that picture and we'll end this first part of the episode just by telling you guys english can be fun it can be a walk in the park and a walk in the park is something easy you just have to make sure you enjoy the process so guys join me in the bonus part of today's[Music][Applause] fyi