citylikeyou — Upstate — New York by Jason Koxvold

New York / Place

When I first moved to New York, enamoured by its parks and museums and design firms and restaurants and bars, I never imagined that there could be much more to its geography than that. How wrong I was. My first drive across the George Washington Bridge was jaw-dropping - the cliffs of New Jersey are astonishingly tall, covered in a dense thicket of trees. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Drive up 87 to the Catskills or the Adirondacks and you’ll witness the Hudson River winding its way through spectacular scenery and unforgiving seasons. Now I can’t get enough; just two hours up the road, it’s like the city never existed. Perfect recuperation after a long week.

Address
Upstate, North of New York, New York, United States

Photographer Artist

Current city: New York

koxvold.com

Jason Koxvold is a creative director at StrawberryFrog, artist, and co-founder of Renegade Pencils, an organisation that helps give children access to a creative education. His work has been exhibited at MoMA, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, RESFEST, SXSW and the Los Angeles Film Festival. He has held creative workshops in Singapore; glued reflective balls to interns in San Francisco; spent hundreds of hours photographing landfills in Tokyo; driven an ambulance across Europe and Central Asia to raise money to build schools; raced motorcycles in the Scottish grand prix series; been interviewed by the Russian FSB in a holding cell in the Arctic Circle, and by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Kentucky.

More Places in New York 452

New York / Place

Try it out rooftop-cycling and find magical cactuses on the road!

New York / Restaurant

Lunch there before a visit at the MET with a walk in Central Park

New York / Restaurant

Get a piece of the south back with a chicken biscuit from Pies & Thighs.

New York / Park

I have old friends in San Francisco who grudgingly tell me that the High Line is everything that's wrong with New York. Well, too bad. To me, it embodies a culture that's constantly reinventing itself: a defunct elevated railway that was becoming a burden to the city ("we used to climb up there to throw garbage bags full of rotting Korean food at the Hasids!", noted a successful photographer's assistant) becoming a startling example of urban greening for the public good. The expert landscaping makes it feel like walking on a Montauk beach - but a stone's throw from some of New York's most progressive galleries and hotels.

New York / Place

Unlike a lot of neighborhoods the sidewalks in this area are often still paved in the original slate slabs. You can see “extra” pieces sometimes chained up outside like this…. Why pour concrete?