NYC Weekend, November 7-8: The Rockefeller Tree Arrives Saturday Morning, the Whitney Is Free Twice, and the Parks Rangers Walk All Five Boroughs
The holiday season starts with a crane. On Saturday morning the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree — a 76-foot Norway spruce from West Edmeston, New York — arrives in Midtown, and the weekend around it is a full one: a free museum twice over, ranger-led hikes in all five boroughs, and, on this cycle's weather read, a dry sky to do it all under.
Saturday's headline act is the tree. The 76-foot Norway spruce comes up 49th Street at 7 AM, with the crane lift at 9 AM, and Rockefeller Center's Meet the Tree Day runs from 10 AM to 1 PM — free and first-come, first-served. The tree that arrives Saturday is bare; the famous lighting is a month away, on Wednesday, December 2. Saturday morning is the working version of the ritual: a very large tree, a very large crane, and a crowd that gets there early.
The museums offer the weekend's best price. The Whitney's Free Friday Nights run tonight, Friday, from 5 to 10 PM — and because this Sunday is the month's second Sunday, the museum at 99 Gansevoort Street is free again on Sunday, November 8, from 10:30 AM to 6 PM. Both free windows ask for advance tickets and both are capacity-limited; visitors 25 and under, the Whitney notes, are free every day.
The Parks Department fills the rest of the map, all of it free. Saturday: the 15-mile Queens County Parks Super Hike from the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, 9 AM to 3 PM, registration required; fall-migration birding at Marine Park's Salt Marsh Nature Center at 10 AM; a North Shore super hike at Snug Harbor at 10 AM; and a waterfront-ecosystems hike on Randall's Island at 1 PM. Sunday: fall foliage in Soundview Park in the Bronx at 11 AM, a mushroom-identification hike at Prospect Park's Boathouse at 11 AM, and leaf peeping in Central Park from the West 100th Street entrance at 1 PM.
One save-the-date rides at the end: the Veterans Day Parade is Wednesday, November 11 — not this weekend — stepping off at 12:30 PM from Fifth Avenue at 26th Street after the 10:55 AM wreath-laying in Madison Square Park, per the United War Veterans Council, its official producer. This desk files the parade's own guide in the Tuesday cycles. For this weekend: a tree, two free museum days, and seven hikes — under a dry, cold sky at 59 degrees.
