hello kate welcome to the show how are you today hello i'm doing very well thank you so much for
having me i'm so happy to be here yeah i'm excited you're on all ears english guys on today's episo
guys on today's episode you are going to be excited to hear who our guest is we have kate
st germain she is the founder of city talk an entirely online esl tutoring program
that focuses on the needs of adult english learners especially taiwanese learners so in
your company kate real quick just tell me what you guys talk about what you teach in city talk
yeah so we are an entirely online uh remote learning platform and we teach specifically adult
taiwanese learners we focus on the unique needs of adult taiwanese learners and we teach conversation
podcasts writing business english beginner lessons and more we're constantly uh launching
new and interesting courses awesome i love it i love it and how long have you been teaching esl
i have been teaching itself for 10 years now i can't believe it a long time that's amazing and
i heard that you also lived abroad before you started teaching in new york city is that right
where did you live yeah i did i lived for 10 years abroad in asia four of those were spent in taiwan
and yeah i loved it i absolutely loved teaching there i so i imagine you could really relate well
to your your students and your your audience because you have lived in asia and you under
maybe did you try learning uh chinese when you were there yes yeah i do think a little bit
of mandarin so i understand the challenges of going back and forth between the two languages
i'm also really in depth with the culture and i've been teaching taiwanese students for so long now
that i think i really have a handle on the unique needs of taiwanese
i love it so good so good so first before we get into today's episode we're going to talk a little
bit about new york city because that's where you are based tell our listeners where they can go
initially to find you online just to get a taste of what you do before we get into today's episode
great yeah so anyone can find me at citytalknyc.com you can sign up for our
newsletter or a consultation there and learn more about our program i love it i love it so
good let's get into this today first i want to let our listeners know that kate is both our guest and
our sponsor for today so kate i want to thank you for sponsoring and supporting all ears english now
let's get into it kate so what are we getting into today we are talking about famous new yorkers and
how to spot them while you're there kate again how long have you been living in new york so i'm from
right outside of the city in westchester county so i've been in proximity to the city my whole life
i've been back in new york for four years but i was here for about eight years in my 20s before
moving to asia i love it i love it so when you live in new york city for so long you know that
there are famous movie stars walking the streets you know they're there and usually you get to know
where they are exactly so our listeners are going to love this guys in today's episode kate is gonna
show you four famous new yorkers which you guys know because you've seen them on the big screen
and she's gonna tell you where they live in the city and we're gonna learn a little bit
about their neighborhood maybe why they chose that neighborhood are you ready for this kate
yes i'm totally ready i'm excited all right let's get into it so who is our first famous movie star
our first famous actor is denzel washington everybody knows him he's an oscar-winning
actor critically came acclaimed from training day man on fire the book of eli and yeah he was
actually born in new york and he lives on the upper west side i love it upper west side now
so where is that in proximity to central park i would like our listeners to get to envision
the island of manhattan that crazy place and exactly where denzel is situated on that island
the upper west side is in upper manhattan um it's just below harlem which is upper upper
manhattan and the upper west side and the upper east side have central park in between
them so central park is kind of the middle ground of those two areas why do you think
denzel washington decided to live in on the upper west side what is it about the upper
west side that makes it different i feel like it's kind of cool compared to the east side
what do you think yeah it's definitely cool because it's a cultural hub of new york it has
lincoln center it has a bunch of museums there uh again it has central park there which is gorgeous
and a lot of celebrities actually live there because of the historic buildings there and
just it's a really affluent neighborhood i love it i love it and what are some things that we might
what else could we maybe do you know do people spend time in the park on sunday afternoon i
know when i lived in new york city i spent a lot of time just reading the newspaper in uh
in central park yeah tell us a little bit more in the warmer months we'll spend a lot of time there
i mean you can see the alice allison wonderland sculpture there you can have a picnic in sheep's
meadow which is really beautiful um there's also the central park zoo there if you have kids and
you want to you know see some animals with them there's a lot to do i love it i love it i have
you personally i'm gonna ask you about this this about each and every one of these celebrities
have you seen denzel have you spotted him on the upper west side or anywhere in new york before
i have never spotted denzel i've had my eyes out for him but never spotted him not yet
yeah yeah i love it i love it that that's the thing you know we had a few weeks ago we had nick
leighton from were you raised by wolves podcast on the show where he talks about etiquette he's from
new york and he told us that one of the aspects of new york city etiquette is when you do see him
a famous person you should not flock to them right it's not cool right what are your thoughts on that
yes absolutely yeah in new york i think that a lot of celebrities really come here because it's not
la they're not paparazzi everywhere it's pretty low-key you can have some anonymity here you can
really be incognito and it's a really great place to just lay low have a nice life with your family
and not worry about a lot of people a lot of onlookers asking for your autograph constantly
yeah i love that how refreshing how refreshing yeah definitely yeah i mean la's nice you know
the sunshine is great but i'm much more a new york person all right i think our listeners yeah have
you lived in l.a before kate by the way have you have you been out there lived out there i have
visited there i have a lot of friends who live there my brother lived there for a period of time
um but no i have never lived there and honestly i wouldn't want to the traffic is crazy i'm such a
new yorker at this point i'm not going anywhere yeah i think most people in new york would
never live in la it's true it's such a different lifestyle it's so different absolutely absolutely
all right kate let's get into our number two here for our listeners our listeners are going to love
this one you know this is one of the big ones one of the big shows that i think a lot of them listen
to tell us who our next famous person is yes our next famous person is sarah jessica parker of
course from sex and the city fame and i think that she really inspired a host of young girls to want
to move to new york to have that dream because obviously sex in the city was so iconic for so
many people in my generation probably in your generation yesterday yes yeah obsessed with it
oh for sure you know i moved to new york in 2006 and i can't say that sex in the city didn't play
a role in my choice to move it wasn't everything but i definitely envisioned a little bit of that
life for myself as well um and i think a lot of women did young women for sure so where
does sarah jessica parker live just give us the gossip here yeah so she lives in the west village
and she actually lives not too far from where the exteriors of her uh sex and the city townhouse
was and she bought a west village townhouse for 3 million in 2000 and actually was reported that she
sold it for 15 million dollars in 2021. that is a fun fact okay so that tells you what kind of real
estate growth new york has had in the last now do you think that new york will have that same
kind of real estate growth in the next 20 years cater do you think you know are you seeing like
your friends are they moving out of the city and looking more to the suburbs what are you seeing
that's a great question um i'm definitely in the age where a lot of my friends are having kids and
moving out of the city for more space um i think it ebbs and flows really like you know of course
during the pandemic the prices were really cheap and a lot of people were getting great deals on
apartments and real estate now it's definitely increasing like everywhere inflation is crazy
and everything is super expensive and people are looking outside of the city for real estate
um but you know i think it will go back down it will go back up that's new york it's
it's constantly fluctuating and there's only so much space in new york city right that's the
key thing there's only so many apartments it's an island and so you you really have a limited
amount of real estate and the prices really can't go down that much okay so i'm imagining sarah
jessica parker as our listeners know you know guys there's a movie sex in the city and there's also a
tv show and that's what really became so famous there's also a continuation series that they've
done have you caught that one okay yeah what did you think what were your thoughts on well you know
it's uh it's a little wild not gonna i'm not gonna lie it was a little while
but yeah i definitely watched all of it and really enjoyed it and i will watch that show until i die
as much as they want to give me that's so funny well tell us about the west village i mean why
did they put sarah jessica parker's character carrie in the west village and why do you think
she's chosen to live there who knows we don't know her personally but why would someone want
to live there what's it all about right yeah well it's definitely an idyllic place to live
it has you know tree-lined streets and brownstones it's gorgeous there it's
absolutely gorgeous but it also has a lot of restaurants shopping and nightlife it's
really big for nightlife it's a very young feel so it kind of has the best of both worlds
i love it and nyu is down there right we have uh is it tompkins square park no not tompkins
square park i'm thinking of what's the park there right around nyu what's the name of that park
there's uh washington square park yes washington but yeah yeah that's pretty
close to the west village that's more in the east village but they're very close to each
other and a lot of people hang out there the new school is also there the new school nyu
um sva which is the school of visual arts is pretty close to there there's a bunch
of different schools downtown i love it yeah so my co-host here in euler's english michelle
actually went to the new school and so this was her stomping ground for so many years
and her listeners have heard little stories that michelle has about new york city there's also
a real jazz scene or there used to be a lot of i mean i'm sure there probably still is right kate a
lot of little jazz bars there ton of jazz bars in the west village in the east village um just a ton
of nightlife you can find anything you want there all right so we recommend i know a lot of our
listeners are actually probably living in new york right they're living in new york city or they are
planning to visit sometime soon guys go check out the west village try to find her house you know
just go around and be star struck right that's the key this is the fun part about visiting new
york city i love it okay yeah definitely all right let's move on to number three our next one here uh
kate now this person i didn't know as well tell us who we're featuring in this next piece
yeah so zoe kravitz who was a big little lies the show on hbo did you check that out i didn't catch
that show no but i did see batman so she was in batman right yes she was a batman and yeah she's
very up and coming has a lot of movie roles coming and she's actually the daughter of lenny kravitz
awesome love it all right where does she live she lives in williamsburg which is a super
super trendy neighborhood it's really come up in the past 10 15 years i actually lived
there when i was in my early 20s and it's a lot different than when i was living there
um it's you know the home of i would say the hipster which is the quintessential image of a
young new yorker who kind of dresses ironically wears like the huge grandma glasses sometimes a
beanie just like huge clothes that they would find in their grandma's house i think someday
maybe kate will have to have you back on to try to define the hipster it's so hard and i think irony
is the way to define the hipster right irony right a young person wearing grandma glasses right or
dining in an old rest a restaurant that looks old but it's new all these things so so that is the
center of hipster culture is it still true kate i mean i know it was when i lived there is it is it
still the center of hipster culture or has it become a little bit more glossed over a little
more glamorous great question yeah so i would say it's still true for the most part but it's
definitely changing i go there less and less now because it is a really difficult area to get to
actually you can get there off the l train which is accessible through manhattan and williamsburg
but it's not convenient for where a lot of people live but yeah it's definitely um transitioning
more to you know finance people are purchasing their families are purchasing there so like
every area in new york it changes and then it goes you know back down and back up so this is really
changing in new york this is how things go with real estate right i mean this was the story of
soho in the 90s right they used to be artists uh you know garages and warehouses and then at some
point the wealthy people came in and now no one can afford it and now we've got to go further out
and i remember when i lived there the only way to get from brooklyn from lower brooklyn like park
slope and the rest of brooklyn to williamsburg was the g train and that train was not very
it didn't work very well in other words right the g train is famously unreliable i would say
it has gotten a little bit better i would say the one thing the pandemic did well for new york
is it improved the train systems so the trains are running a little bit better than they were
they're a little bit cleaner i love it i love it this is so good i feel like in this episode
i'm excited for number four but i feel like we're getting a real insider's look and this feels like
a conversation any of our listeners might have with a real new yorker just about you know the ups
and downs of different neighborhoods right oh the g train doesn't work as well or all these things
that maybe our listeners don't know if they live in cities like madrid or tokyo but they know now
after listening to this episode so good so kate i'm ready for number four who is our next and last
famous person and where do they live number four is michelle williams who you would probably know
if you were looking at her you might not know the name but she's an oscar-nominated actress as well
she was in brokeback mountain and my my week with marilyn which she was nominated for an
oscar for and she lives in ditmas park which is a neighborhood in brooklyn it's not very well
known i actually live in this neighborhood which is why i chose this neighborhood
i love it is it close to prospect parked at miss park or is it another in another part of brooklyn
yeah it's close it's on the south side of prospect park and prospect park is i would
say probably brooklyn's most famous park would you say that absolutely absolutely in some ways
i think new yorkers like prospect park more than they like central park yes i would definitely say
that because it's less populated it's yeah just a cozier feel to it i would say it has it is
huge it has zoo tennis courts and it actually has brooklyn's only lake so you can go there and see
like turtles and some ducks and yeah it's very adorable on a sunday morning to take a stroll
i love it and what about the history of this neighborhood does it have some real kind of icons
that take us back into history yeah absolutely so we have the kings theater here which is on
the national register of historic places actually it was kind of beaten up and not a lot of people
were performing there but it underwent a 95 million dollar renovation and reopened in 2015
and now it's hosted a lot of artists ringo starr snoop dogg the bc boys a lot of different artists
and bands have performed there i love it so good so good it makes sense the king's theater because
our listeners should know that brooklyn used to be called kings right so we have the borough of
queens and it used to be called kings i don't know how it got the name brooklyn i don't know how that
happened do you have any idea kate just real quick as a side point i don't know and i wish i didn't
i'm going to look that up right after this yeah really interesting good stuff well again like
i said before kate i feel like our listeners have gotten this real insider perspective and not just
that guys but this is the kind of conversation you could have with a friend a native speaking friend
in new york city so open up conversations like this you know to practice your english and to feel
like a local i love it and these are probably some of the things that you guys talk about
at city talk is that right absolutely yeah i mean at city talk i'm encouraging just keep talking
talk talk talk and you're going to improve don't worry about making mistakes just keep talking and
at city talks we definitely encourage in-depth cultural conversations like this i love it so
i want to encourage you guys to go over to kate's website kate give us the url one more time please
yes so it's citytalknyc.com so good and what can they do on that page what should they do when they
land there yeah you can sign up for our newsletter or if you want to learn more about our program
i welcome you to sign up for a free 15-minute consultation with me and learn more about our
classes i love it so i want to encourage you guys to go over there check out what kate has to offer
kate thank you for supporting all airs english and thanks for coming on the show today this has
been again a real insider's look into this amazing city and these amazing movie stars that are just
they're just among us right they're on the subway they're around as we pass them on
the street so guys visit new york have these conversations and enjoy that city i love it so
good thank kate thank you kate for coming on the show today and we hope to have you on again soon
thank you so much i really appreciate you having me alright take care bye