Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Loud

Broadway

"The reason I live in New York City is it's the loudest city on the planet Earth. It's so loud I never have to listen to any of the shit that's going on in my head. It's really loud, they literally have guys come with jackhammers and they drill the streets and just leave cones in front of your apartment and you don't even know why. Garbage men come; they don't even pick up the garbage, they just bang the cans together. And if your block's too quiet, they actually hire a guy who wanders around going, 'Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!'"
Lewis Black, The White Album

Monday, April 29, 2013

Almost Like a Small Town

Sylvan Terrace

"New York is just like any small town, though I suppose without the better features."
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Sidewalks of New York

West 41st

"There's nothing quite like the beautiful, surging chaos of the sidewalks of New York. It's a sea of humanity out there, in the summer a literal melting pot, where thousands of people with thousands of wants and dreams and flu-bags and bedbugs converge to add up to something greater than any one of them."
Avery Monsen and Jory John, I Feel Relatively Neutral About New York

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Safari

Tour buses on 8th Avenue

"Tourism in New York is a multi-billion dollar industry partly predicated on a kind of safari model. They're going to be disappointed if they don't get close to the lions and tigers, but really disappointed if one of them eats them. It's a fine line."
Garrett Moore (Gregory Jbara), Blue Bloods

Friday, April 26, 2013

Revolving Door

Broadway

"Living in Manhattan is such a whirlwind. Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in a high-speed revolving door."
David B. Feinberg, Eighty-Sixed

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Impermanent City

First Avenue

"New York has always been notorious for its impermanence: it is envied and scorned for simultaneously being in both disintegration and renewal."
George J. Lankevich, New York City: A Short History

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Extravagant Spaces

Allen St. 

"In New York, a painted-in square for your car, a kitchen that can fit a cocktail table and stools, a closet strictly to hang your winter coats -- these spaces denote extravagance."
Jacqueline deMontravel, Escape from Bridezilla

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Monday, April 22, 2013

Green Apple

Traffic light in TriBeCa

"New York is the greenest community in the United States. The most devastating damage that humans have done to the environment has arisen from the burning of fossil fuels, a category in which New Yorkers are practically prehistoric by comparison with other Americans."
David Owen, Green Metropolis

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Newscasters

TV news vans on First Avenue

"It seems like half the people in this city are newscasters, while the other half somehow manages to have no idea what's going on in the world."
David Rosenfelt, Airtight

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Ass on Fire

5 Pointz

"In Manhattan, if your ass was on fire, they wouldn't piss on it to put it out."
Joe Flaherty, Tin Wife

Friday, April 19, 2013

Going to Heaven

Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Going to New York's a lot the way I imagine going to Heaven would be."
Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Stamina

Hudson River Park

"You can never get lost in New York, as long as you keep on moving, but you can get stuck sometimes. It depends on your stamina more than your sense of direction."
Edward Conlon, Blue Blood

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Hooked on New York

Chrysler Building

"I got hooked on New York before I even knew it was a drug."
Jane Borden, I Totally Meant to Do That

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Tough

Morningside Park

"New York is a hard town. It fawns on those who succeed and kicks those who fall."
Charlotte Hays, The Fortune Hunters

Monday, April 15, 2013

The Devil's Home

Harlem

"Leave Harlem? I am Harlem. This is where I belong. This is where hell is. I'm going to stay here and meet the devil."
A.R. Skuggs (Clarence Williams III), Sugar Hill

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Sign of Life

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-penn-station-people-waiting-their-trains-pennsylvania-new-york-city-image37914594#res4467664
Penn Station

"Washington is marble-white, all-American, clean-cut. Thank God, nobody ever accused New York of that. Even the acrid, uriney smells of Penn Station seem a welcome sign of life."
K.C. Cole, Between the Lines

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Unsafe

Midtown

"Life isn't safe, especially not in New York. Cranes collapse, air conditioners fall out of the sky. In the end, there's just a few short years. The most you can do is make the most of it before something knocks you down."
Martha Rodgers (Susan Sullivan), Castle

Friday, April 12, 2013

Like Family

Bowery and Canal

"New York, like family, will always take you back."
Cynthia Ceilan quoted in 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About New York

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Obsessed with Food

Food trucks in Midtown

"I'm lucky to live in a place where I am surrounded by people who are obsessed with food. That place is Manhattan, which I think of as me multiplied by 1.6 million."
Eileen Daspin, The Manhattan Diet

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Greasy Pole

Richard Nixon at Madame Tussauds

"New York is a greasy pole."
Richard Nixon, quoted in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx in Burning

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Around the Clock

Astor Place

"New Yorkers are supposed to be so rude, but I never found that to be true. They were the best I ever saw in this country—people working around the clock, struggling against all odds to survive, and still the pulse for the whole world."
Cher St. John, The Only Things You Ever Really Keep Are the Things You Gave Away

Monday, April 8, 2013

Insane People

110th street station

"The subway is great, man, but I'll tell you, if you were wondering where all the insane people in New York are, they're riding the C train."
Matt Dillon, Gotham Magazine

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Precipice

Top of the Rock

"New York has always needed to be saved. It thrives on the precipice, teeters on a knife-edge of chaos and ambition."
Joe Klein, New York Magazine

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Met Museum

Metropolitan Museum of Art

"I can never pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth."
Lewis H. Lapham, Funniest Thing You Never Said 2

Friday, April 5, 2013

Everything is Big

West Side

"The cacophony of New York is as overwhelming, at times, as its size. Nothing is small in this city. Everything is large, big and noisy – including its problems. Yet the city does not merely survive – it thrives."
Sonia Sotomayor, NYU commencement speech

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Things I Can't Afford

Bergdorf Goodman

"The trouble with New York is that it's so convenient to everything I can't afford."
Jack Barry, quoted in The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Eminent Standards

Downtown Manhattan

"The city always stimulated some long-dormant gland of self-improvement when I crossed her rivers. I would never feel good enough for New York, but I would always feel better if I was at least taking steps to measure up to her eminent standards."
Pat Conroy, Prince of Tides

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Serenity Not Now

West 14th

"Nobody ever accuses New York of approximating serenity."
Bob Brody, quoted in 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About New York

Monday, April 1, 2013

Promised Land

World Financial Center Plaza

"Felix's own father had talked of New York as a promised land, where everyone had good jobs and plenty to eat."
Alan Gratz, The Brooklyn Nine