Monday, June 30, 2014

Vision

Manhattan skyline (Pexels)

"I remember being stunned at the New York skyline as I drove over this big freeway, coming across the flats in Secaucus. All of a sudden it was looming up in front of me and I almost lost control of the car. I thought it was a vision."
Hunter S. Thompson, Songs of the Doomed

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Gay, Gay, Gay

Gay Pride March

"I love New York, but sometimes everything is too gay, gay, gay."
Paul Rudnick, I Shudder: And Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Beautiful and Wise

Fashion shoot at Flatiron Plaza

"The people in New York are very beautiful, I am sure! And how can they help being wise, in such a big and complicated city?"
Frederic Prokosch, The Asiatics

Friday, June 27, 2014

Bad Marriage

Dumbo


"I love New York. How could I not love a city that contains both Gray's Papaya and the Brooklyn Bridge? But maybe I too have been stuck in this bad marriage too long, hopelessly in love not with the city, the hard economic realities of it, the years of being part of the crowd, but with the skyline, that suggestion in lights that this place is both unreachable and a goal. That it is, in short, poetry. That is the city that pulls me, the city I carry around in my head."
Elizabeth Gold, Goodbye to All That

Thursday, June 26, 2014

New England Weather

East 25th

"The Manhattan landscape is like New England weather: If you don't like it, wait ten minutesit'll change."
Jay McInerney, New York Magazine

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Kaleidoscope


"The beauty of New York is sculptural and atmospheric. It's a city of shapes that bang together and rearrange themselves as if seen through a kaleidoscope. Move 20 yards and the view changes. Even if the foreground hardly shifts, the entire background may have vanished and been replaced."
Stephen Brook, New York Days, New York Nights

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Minding Their Own Business


"New Yorkers are capable of riding a subway train without noticing a man shaving, an old woman undressing, or someone speaking in tongues right across the aisle. They do not act surprised or get caught up in the happenings around them, preferring to mind their own business on their way to work. They will ignore you, your problems, and your oddities unless you ask them to get involved. Then they jump in."
Claudia Osborn, Over My Head

Monday, June 23, 2014

Tough Breed


"New Yorkers are a tough breed. They are easily identified in other places because the city is in their blood. They are fast on their feet and with their mouths."
Herbert London, The Broken Apple

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Mechanical

Hudson Yards (Pixabay)


"New York looks as ever: stiff, machine-made, and against nature. Still it is more stimulating than Europe. It is so mechanical, there is not the sense of death."
D.H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Sensuous Summer

Tompkins Square Park

"I love New York on summer afternoons when every one's away. There's something very sensuous about it  overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Friday, June 20, 2014

Aladdin's Cave


"The best thing about New York is that it's like being in Aladdin's cave. You walk four yards and you see an assemblage of oil paintings, then walk around the corner and see a dilapidated pizza parlor, then walk a little more and see magnificent jewels. It's a wonderful material compression of all the world's goodies."
Harold Evans, New York magazine

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Mystery and Magnificence

Bernard Baruch Way

"I also had a dim idea that if I walked the streets of New York by myself all night something of the city's mystery and magnificence might rub off on me at last.
But I gave it up."
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Neighbors' Business

Intercom in NoMad

"That was the thing about New York: you always knew more about your neighbors' business than you wanted to."
Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls

Monday, June 16, 2014

Sense and Sophistication


"There is more sophistication and less sense in New York than anywhere else on the globe."
Don Herold, The Modern Handbook of Humor

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Jewish Wedding


"New York City is like the appetizer table at a Jewish wedding, loaded with salt and spice and cholesterol and flavor, with a waiter holding out pleasure in his right hand and indigestion in his left."
Lenore Fleischer, The Fisher King

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Conformist

Manhattan (Pixabay)


"Seen flat on the ground from the point of length and width, New York is the most conformist city in the world.  From Washington Square north, there is not a single oblique or curving street, with the exception of old Broadway."
Jean-Paul Sartre, Literary and Philosophical Essays

Friday, June 13, 2014

Shiv in the Heart

East River waterfront esplanade

"New York is not the most unlikely place for a man to wind up with a shiv in his heart."
Nelson DeMille, The Talbot Odyssey

Thursday, June 12, 2014

David and Goliath

Broadway and 125th


"New York is not a Goliath that has become a David; it is a city that combines David and Goliath, and that doubleness is one of the things that draws us to New York. We come here not just or even primarily because we are drawn to power—King of the Hill. Top of the Heap, as they sing at Yankee Stadium—but also because we are intrigued by powerlessness. We come to the city of the overdog in order to have the thrill of feeling like an underdog."
Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Darwinian Place

American Museum of Natural History (Pixabay)


"New York is such a Darwinian place. In this fundamentally hostile environment, full of ruthless predators who'll stop at nothing to get to the top, people are constantly forming alliances for their own protection."
Toby Young, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Melodic Noise

FDNY Engine



"I think what makes somebody a New Yorker is somebody who appreciates the melodic noise of the city. The city doesn't sleep, the city doesn't shut up, the city is melodic and harmonic and also discordant. I think anybody who's a New Yorker appreciates all the complexity and all the noise."
Jose Antonio Vargas, New York Magazine

Monday, June 9, 2014

No Pride

East 25th

"Lesson One in New York is have no pride. Do anything for rent money."
Wilton Barnhardt, Emma Who Saved my Life

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Diversity

Puerto Rican Day Parade

"New York is the city with more Jews than Tel Aviv, more Irish than Dublin, more Italians than Naples, and more Puerto Ricans than San Juan."
George J. Lankevich, Postcards from Manhattan

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Raw Energy



"The city was supposed to be a disaster, but its flow of raw energy made me bounce again. I wanted it all: the smell of the oil fumes on the crosstown bus, the crowds piling out of the subways, the lofty buildings that were New York man's loftiest monument to himself."
Shirley MacLaine, You Can Get There From Here

Friday, June 6, 2014

Ant


"In New York I felt like an anonymous ant. If they stepped on me they would not even notice me."
Vartan Gregorian, quoted in On Second Thought: Essays Out of My Life

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Walking City

East 23rd

"Anything and everything in New York is within an arm's reach. There's something very equalizing about a walking city. All classes have to mingle. It's a mix of wealth and race, and you never end up in an ivory tower."
Hal Rubenstein, My City, My New York

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Evolving

Chanel store

"While other places tend to get stuck, New York continues to evolve."
Karl Lagerfeld, quoted in New York: The Big Apple Quote Book

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

In Bed

Museum of Sex


"This is New York City. Everyone's in bed with everyone else. It's what makes the city go 'round."
Jon F. Merz, The Syndicate

Monday, June 2, 2014

A Place in the World

World Trade Center


"I had never wanted to belong to anything more than to that shimmering landscape of office towers lit up against the dark New York sky. Each individual glittering box of light like like gems strung along a necklace seemed to me to be a tiny oblong window onto success, acceptance, respect, that is to say, a place in the world."
Helen Wan, The Partner Track

Sunday, June 1, 2014

For Sale

Williamsburg

"Everything in New York is for sale, including the honor of the City itself. To deny it would be considered dishonorable on the part of a New Yorker of the present day. Culture has been swallowed up by barter."
William Henry McMasters, Originality and other Essays