neiman depicts new york's posh precincts at yuletide--an urbane gala aglow with holiday esprit
Manhattan, it has been cynically set forth, is a metropolis without a heart, a town without compassion, an isle filled with millions of sullen-faced, isolated introverts whose sole concern is the care and feeding of Number One. If such is the case, then a transformation of miraculous proportions must occur as the yule draws near. For New York teems with smile-wreathed, happy faces, the owners of which are engaged in competitive camaraderie to see who comes closest to embodying the spirit of Christmas. It's that time of the year when, as Christopher Morley put it. "We grant ourselves the complete and selfish pleasure of loving others better than ourselves." And nowhere in New York is the ebullient esprit more apparent than in the environs of the Plaza fountain--that fashionable focal point fringed by the ageless Plaza Hotel; the slightly bucolic southeast corner of Central Park; the regal bastion of feminine finery, Bergdorf Goodman's; a small but ultrasmart stretch of Fifth Avenue; and, just a champagne-cork's pop away, the New York Playboy Club. As Playboy's artist on the go, LeRoy Neiman, assays it: "Pre-Christmas days around the Plaza fountain have a purposeful, gemütlich bustle about them. The fountain, incidentally, erected as a Pulitzer memorial in 1916, is about to mark its 50th anniversary. At Christmastime, it is decorated with hundreds of lights. But they throw off a glow no stronger than that emanating from the patrons who, arms laden with largess--a Balenciaga from Bergdorf's, a ten-carat trifle from Tiffany's, toys of every proportion and price tag from F. A. O. Schwarz--emerge from Fifth Avenue's chic shops juggling their Christmas cache while they try to attract the eye of a cruising taxi driver. The scene has a contemporary Currier & Ives aura about it. For those to whom New York is a winter festival, there are the horsedrawn hansoms, lined up on the north side of the fountain, ready to take patrons on a leisurely trot through the park. Such an outdoor jaunt will give one's appetite the edge to properly appreciate the convivial and caloric ritual of tea and cakes in the Plaza's Palm Court, where one, like as not, will be rubbing shoulders with some showbiz or society panjandrum. Two other luxe hostelries holding sway over that immediate area of the Avenue--the Sherry-Netherland and the Pierre--are favorite bases of operation for presents and pleasure-seeking out-of-towners who want to be at the hub of 'the good life' which Manhattan possesses in uniquely superabundant quantities at all times of the year, but especially during the holidays."
