28 April 2024

New York

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Sets and the city

Sarah Turner slips on her Jimmy Choos and goes in search of Carrie and the girls's favourite haunts.

New York - Carrie’s apartment on Perry Street

1 Carrie’s apartment on Perry Street 2 Central Park 3 Magnolia Bakery

THE SEX AND THE CITY FILM was an exciting prospect. To a woman of a certain age, it is as if the Spice Girls and Take That have got together to appear on a Doctor Who special – but with better footwear.

The original TV series followed the dating fortunes and pitfalls of Carrie and her friends Miranda (the cynical one), Samantha (the rapacious one) and Charlotte (the dull one).

They navigated the New York dating scene with wit and tenacity. Things got messy. Nice men got dumped. Unplanned babies arrived. Samantha got cancer.

They argued but remained friends. Like New York itself, Sex And The City was simultaneously cynical, hopeful and optimistic. And the outfits were just fabulous.

Virtually every scene was filmed in the city. We fans know such facts, especially my friend Kate. She prepared for our trip by watching all 94 episodes on DVD.

There’s a reason I’m here with Kate rather than, say, Matthew. He said he would rather tear his entire collection of Star Wars figurines limb from limb than accompany me. Matthew says that watching Sex And The City is like being locked in a women’s lavatory for months on end. I don’t know what he’s complaining about – it’s four years since Carrie and the others last tottered through Manhattan in impractical heels and it’s clearly time for another fix.

Quintessentially New York

And Manhattan is eager to welcome back SATC (as we fans refer to it). Our hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, hadn’t opened when the series ended but is showing commendable enthusiasm by putting together a package for people such as us. ‘Special people?’ I say in a hopeful way. ‘Possibly really shallow people,’ replies Kate.

We will be whisked around Manhattan to see the locations, meet a personal shopper, be given gift certificates to spend and drink an admirable number of cocktails.

And, most exciting of all, we’ll be provided with the new Sex And The City Trivial Pursuit game.

We know the one-liners, we know the shoes and, above all, we know the locations. They didn’t always go for the obvious but found smaller, quintessentially New York locations.

In true SATC style, Kate and I start with a cocktail. At the bar on the 35th floor of our hotel, overlooking Central Park, we try Cosmopolitans, Manhattans and Flirtinis.

Next morning, we check out the locations. We pass the Plaza Hotel where Miranda’s decorator got married (these things are important). Downtown, we’re shown So Ho House, stop off at The Pleasure Chest sex shop and get cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery in the West Village, the beating heart of Sex And The City.

Around the corner is Perry Street where we gaze at a brownstone building where Carrie lived (supposedly). A bus disgorges about 40 women and three patient-looking men so they can have photographs taken on the steps. In summer there are up to five buses a day.

Tour the locations

The difference is that they get back on their bus while we get into our limo to be whisked off to the Meatpacking District, an extraordinarily desirable shopping area and where Samantha fell into a cellar (Series six, Episode 85). Oh, and the fact that their tour costs $40 whereas ours is $2,000 a night.

Our guide Natasha, a resting actress, drip-feeds us nuggets of information about the film. They filmed a wedding scene in Bryant Park. It turns out that another tour guide appeared as an extra. We nod, impressed.

Over the six years that the series ran, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte ate and partied their way through some of New York’s best restaurants and clubs, and I have drunk deep on their knowledge.

I know where to go for brunch (Pastis), who sells the best shoes (Jimmy Choo) and the best time for a single woman to head to New York (Fleet Week, when the US Navy turns up in force).

Carrie’s mere mention of a restaurant would ensure a stampede for reservations.

I head to Collins Bar on 8th Avenue, where Miranda met Steve, the barman with whom she’d eventually move to Brooklyn (after breaking up, getting back together, his testicular cancer and an unplanned baby) to find it’s being replaced by smart apartments.

Trying to get up to date, we check out some of the locations of the film. We sneak into Buddakan, a cathedral-sized restaurant in the Meatpacking District. A weary-looking manager is resigned to the fact that hordes of SATC fans will soon be beating down his doors.

Fahsion royalty

It occurs to me it might be sad tracking down locations. Do we think we’ll find any of the stars there? Even so, we head off for burgers at 21 Club, just like Carrie did (Episode 85 again) where we discover, to our fury, that Chris Noth, the actor who plays Carrie’s on-off boyfriend Big, had been there the night before celebrating the birth of his son.

Shopping is central to the Sex And The City experience. The brown-and-white-striped Henri Bendel bag is a near-permanent accessory on the show and we’ve been provided with a $200 gift voucher for the store and a session with Michael Palladino. He’s the head of personal shopping and a friend of SATC costume designer Patricia Field, which makes him fashion royalty.

In a prime location on 5th Avenue, Bendel’s is a department store where all the dull male sections have been stripped away, leaving us women such essentials as makeup, jewellery and fashion.

Michael throws out handy fashion hints as we race around the store. ‘Daytime long, night-time short! Yellow is in!’ He says he loves my coat. I don’t tell him it’s from John Lewis. As I dither over a pair of earrings, Kate looks lovingly at a $175 silver clutch bag. ‘It’s very Carrie,’ she says. This is the very highest form of praise.

Ours is not the only Sex And The City tour on offer in New York. We could have chosen one that costs $24,000 each, where you get a cocktail party in Jimmy Choo’s.

But that would be an indulgence too far, we decide, as we order another round of Flirtinis and prepare to play Trivial Pursuit.

‘Now,’ I ask Kate, reading the first question, ‘who believes that muffins can solve all problems?’

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