At Home with John and Debbie

Did you know that Leamington Spa is twinned with New York City? No, you didn’t, because it is not. However, maybe they should be, because Leamington and New York share a number of striking geographical similarities.

The Five Boroughs

New York’s five boroughs are Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx.

Leamington’s are the Town Centre, Cubbington, Lillington, Whitnash and Sydenham.

That’s the last we’ll hear of the outlying boroughs: we’ll concentrate on the parallels between Leamington town centre and Manhattan.

Orientation

Manhattan is split into East and West sides by 5th Avenue, running from North to South.

Leamington is similarly defined by The Parade.

Hence, The New Binswood Tavern is on Leamington’s Upper West Side, the Hope and Anchor is on the Upper East Side, the Willoughby is on West Midtown, The Newbold Tavern is on East Midtown, The Avenue is on the Lower West Side, and The Townhouse is on the Lower East Side.

Likewise, just as Manhattan can be split into uptown, midtown and downtown, anywhere North of Clarendon Avenue in Leamington is uptown, South of Dormer Place is downtown, and between the two is midtown.

Parks

Both towns are rightly famous for their municipal parks. New York’s most famous park is of course Central Park, which is at the North end of 5th Avenue. Leamington too has a park at the North end of The Parade, at Beauchamp Square, although this is not Leamington’s grandest park.

SoHo, Dumbo and Tribeca

New York’s SoHo district is named after it’s location SOuth of HOuston St. According to Lonely Planet New York City, the area is “hip and trendy”, but has moved on from cheap rents and numerous galleries to become more of a mainstream shopping mecca.

Tribeca is the TRIangle BElow CAnal St., another fashionable Downtown area.

New York’s Dumbo district “Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass” became fashionable more recently, and is still a place for galleries and trendy bars.

Leamington has all of these too:

Leamington’s SoHo district, SOuth of HOlly Walk is a mainly residential area with convenient access to Jephson Gardens.

The TRIangle BElow the CAnal comprising Gas St. and Frances Havergal Close, bounded by the canal, Tachbrook Road and Ranelagh Terrace, is a trendy haven of bohemian loft-living nestled in fashionable old-town.

Leamington’s Dumbo is actually in Warwick, although few Leamington residents would realise this. Formally known as Olympus Court, Dumbo is a cluster of small office buildings located Down Under Millward Brown’s Office, in Tachbrook Park.

Government

Many people are surprised to discover that New York City, while being the largest and most presigious city in the state, is not the State Capitol of New York State. That honour falls to Albany.

Similarly, Leamington is not in fact the county town of Leamingtonshire. Sleepy but historic Warwick gets to be the county town.

Other similarities

What similarities between Leamington Spa and New York City have you noticed? The seething pit of musical creativity that gave us Public Enemy and Nizlopi? The graffiti culture? Comment below!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2006 at 19:43 and is filed under Nonsense. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.