Bobby Berk’s New York

NEW YORK — It was two days after the New York City Pride March in June, where Bobby Berk had performed a marriage ceremony for three gay couples on a float, so it seemed like the most obvious choice to visit the LGBT memorial at the Hudson River Park (between West 12th Street and Bethune Street) for the first stop on his tour of compelling design spots in Manhattan.

As in, yes, let’s hit eight places in five hours. Yes, let’s walk instead of take a car service. Yes, I can traipse around the city and still catch my plane back to Los Angeles later that evening. Yes, I can hop the temporary barricade around the LGBT memorial to get a closer look.

Among his many triumphs on “Queer Eye” — where, in each episode, five tasteful gay men make over a messy subject — Berk transformed an empty church hall into a bustling community center and turned the disarrayed home of a Burning Man devotee into a polished bachelor pad. Now filming a third season in Kansas City, Missouri, the Fab Five (as the cast members are known) still radiate empathy, and Berk still enjoys posing for a selfie. The beard is new, but it can’t hide his smile.

He approached the array of boulders that make up the memorial, each split and rejoined with a seam of glass. Designed by Anthony Goicolea, they looked like your average rocks until the light caught them and colors beamed across the lawn.

“Sort of like the LGBT community,” Berk said. “They’re not like everybody else. It’s that rainbow, that shimmer of light that makes us different.”

Berk, 37, grew up in rural Missouri. Design was an outlet from what he described as an oppressive upbringing in the Assemblies of God Church, and he redid homes for friends as he got older. Eventually he moved to New York City and became the creative director of Portico, the luxury design company that began in SoHo.

After Portico folded, he started Bobby Berk Home, which he expanded nationally. Now on his show he renovates spaces for all kinds of people, including devout Christians who remind him of the life he left behind. Climbing the High Line stairs at Gansevoort Street, Berk was amazed to see the lush plantings and the new luxury buildings that hovered over the park. None of this was here in 2003, when he lived around the corner with a view of abandoned tracks.

He paused at the 16th Street entrance to examine “prop,” Phyllida Barlow’s temporary sculpture (it’s on view until March) made of two giant concrete panels on iron stilts. Barlow used recycled material to represent the area’s industrial past and current sleek iteration.

“When you think about what this was 100 years ago, industrial, polluted, chaotic …,” Berk said, looking past the sculpture, toward the Hudson River that sparkled between buildings. “And now it’s this oasis.”

“What’s the most relaxing scent you have?” he asked at Enfleurage (237 W. 13th Street), a tiny West Village shop filled with about 125 oils distilled from plants from around the world.

Frankincense, citrus, chamomile and high-elevation lavender (the altitude brings out the natural relaxant) were the most chill, Christine Hagin, the manager, said. She demonstrated a portable diffuser that charged like a phone.

In the midst of his smelling fest, a young woman banged on the window and mouthed, “I love you” to Berk. He mouthed, “I love you” right back.

Whisk (933 Broadway), a kitchen shop near the Flatiron Building, felt like an old general store with its creaky wood floors and crevices packed with gadgets like onion savers and reusable straws (Berk always carries a straw with him).

Compared to Flatiron district giants like Bed Bath & Beyond and Restoration Hardware, where Berk worked long ago, the place reminded him of old-time boutiques and their employees who “knew everything about every little gadget. It’s just one of those experiences you don’t often find in Manhattan anymore.”

As he fawned over a collection of white Kyocera ceramic knives (he has used them for a decade and they have never gotten dull, he insisted), a woman approached him in tears. She said she was a social worker and was having an awful day. “So I thought I’d come in here and just look around,” she sniffled. “And now I see you, and I feel so much better.” Berk gave her a long hug.

At Kinder Modern (1133 Broadway), a children’s furniture gallery west of Madison Square, with a large collection of vintage and contemporary chairs, he noticed a green vinyl chair with a picture of Davy Crockett. Also a collapsible 20-inch-high lawn chair from the 1970s. “I had these little ones and my parents had the big ones,” he recalled.

Most of all, he was drawn to Kinder Modern x Mexa, a collection of mini outdoor furniture with plastic cords and steel frames. One orange-and-pistachio chaise longue, he said was sure to thrill any youngster who climbed on — or through — it. Berk sat on a mini bright blue rocker and squealed, “Whoo-hoo-hoo!”

Freehand New York (23 Lexington Avenue) first opened in 1928 as the George Washington Hotel; it was a home to W.H. Auden and Keith Haring, and was even said to be a brothel.

Renovated by Roman and Williams, a trendy New York design studio that is working with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to refurbish the British galleries, the hotel had a friendly museum-like quality. Murals were tucked into hallways — one a massive circus scene with acrobats, jesters and women entwined with snakes. A monumental jade-colored staircase led to a public space where at least 20 visitors typed furiously on laptops among Turkish-rug-covered couches, eggplant ombré Italian Renaissance columns and what felt like a jungle of plants.

In this building, too, was the Afro-Caribbean-inspired Broken Shaker, a rooftop bar with batik-patterned cloth wallpaper, tiki mugs, miniature 1950s dance party scenes and nautical needlepoint. A hallway off the bar was covered in floor-to-ceiling graffiti and had dangling straw lanterns.

“The thing I love about The Freehand,” Berk said, “is nothing goes together but everything goes together.”

His next stop was La Mercerie (53 Howard St.), a cafe inside a 7,000-square-foot luxury furniture store called Roman and Williams Guild in SoHo. (Yes, its owners are the same designers from the Freehand.) The cafe had high ceilings and long blue velvet-covered booths sectioned down the center. Past it was the furniture store, with exposed pipes, dark walls and a mix of glossy and raw-edged furniture.

Everything was for sale. You could order a $28,000 walnut credenza hand carved with a palm leaf while you sip a champagne-infused drink from the artisan bar. Or you could simply buy the floral arrangement off your table.

Taste and smell deluged the space, but the luxury fabrics and furniture, washed with light streaming through the tall windows, were also a bounty of sight and touch. “It’s a full experience,” Berk said. “It has an effect on all five of your senses.”

We dropped by a streetwear mecca where we felt very — how shall I say? — unattended to. Berk didn’t want to recommend a store where his fans might be ignored. So we left.

Instead we made a beeline to 65 Bleecker Street in NoHo, The Bayard-Condict Building, which is Berk’s favorite in Manhattan.

“Look at the top. It’s so ornate,” he said, pointing at the decorative arches crowned by angels with their wings spread. Lacy white terra cotta covered the cornices. Completed in 1899, this was the only building Louis Sullivan, an adopted son of Chicago, designed in New York City. “I walked by this almost on a daily basis,” Berk said. “And I never knew the history of it.”

We left, and the sun shone down on Bobby Berk’s face. By his side, one is bound to see the brightest aspects of design. Even as he sprinted off to catch his flight, I could sense his gleams illuminating the city.