Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Official Beginning

Times Square subway station

"Of the thousands of New Year's Eve parties happening across America, there's one that nearly everyone is watching. It's also the one nearly everyone seems to be attending. It's New Year's Eve in New York's Times Square. As the year comes to a close, a million people there and a few billion more at home believe that what they are witnessing marks the official beginning of the new year.
You know, they're probably right."
Gary McKechnie, USA 101

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Monday, December 29, 2014

Identity

Alphabet City


"While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me."
Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Reckoning

Greenwich Street

"There is something unique about New York, some quality, some matchless, pertinent combination of promise and despair, wizardry and counterfeit, abundance and depletion, that stimulates and allows for a reckoning to occur—maybe even forces it. The city pulls back the curtain on who you are; it tests you and shows you what you are made of."
Rayhané Sanders, Goodbye to All That

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Self-Actualization

Coney Island


"The greatest thing about Manhattan is the worst thing about Manhattan: self-actualization. Here you will be free to stretch yourself to your limit, to find the beach that is yours alone. But sooner or later you will be sitting on that beach wondering what comes next."
Zadie Smith, The New York Review of Books

Friday, December 26, 2014

Romantic

Bow Bridge

"In certain ways, New York is one of the most romantic cities on earth. The romantic impulse, after all, is about possibility. And that word might be the single motto of the town."
Pete Hamill, New York Magazine

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Christmas Tree Star

Rockefeller Center

"New York is as bright as a Christmas tree star. Even the dark bars and empty alleys are bathed in ambient light."
Elizabeth Maxwell, Happily Ever After

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Hope of the Future

New York World's Fair New York State Pavilion

"New York represents the hope of the future because it's there for all of us. Whether we never go there, whether we never see New York, whatever small town or small city we're from, it's important that we know that New York is there to welcome us in case we want to be different."
Kenneth T Jackson, PBS



Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Own Fantasy

Brooklyn Bridge

"New York is its own fantasy—it's the great fantasy of anyone who came here from another country. It may or may not be more real, it may or may not be baked in the sun, but it's an amalgam of everyone's dreams."
Andrew Lipsitz, quoted in New York Magazine


Monday, December 22, 2014

Beginning of Winter

Christmas tree stand in Morningside Heights

"What Dakota most enjoyed about the beginning of winter was the crispness of the air (that practically demanded the wearing of knits) and the way that tough New Yorkers—on the street, in elevators, in subways—were suddenly willing to risk a smile. To make a connection with a stranger. To finally see one another after strenuously avoiding eye contact all year."
Kate Jacobs, Knit the Season

Sunday, December 21, 2014

God of New York

Williamsburg


"If there were a god of New York, it would be the Greek's Hermes, the Roman's Mercury. He embodies New York qualities: the quick exchange, the fastness of language and style, craftiness, the mixing of people and crossing of borders, imagination."
James Hillman, quoted in New York Insight City Guide

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Labels and Love

Fifth Avenue

"Year after year, twenty-something women come to New York in search of the two Ls: Labels and Love. "
Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Sex and the City: The Movie

Friday, December 19, 2014

Where Dreams Become Reality

Fox News truck on Sixth Avenue

"People don't dream all their lives of escaping the hellish countries they live in and pay their life savings to underworld types for the privilege of being locked up in a freezing, filthy, stinking container ship and hauled like cargo for weeks until they finally arrive in... Moscow... or Beijing... or Baghdad... or Kabul. People risk their lives to come here---to New York. The greatest city in the world, where dreams become reality."
Sean Hannity, Let Freedom Ring

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

For the Worse

Greenpoint

"It isn't what it was. Ask any New Yorker and they'll tell you it's a different city now, and all for the worse. Change in New York is always for the worse. Always for the worse, as the city slowly get better."
A.A. Gill, To America with Love

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Never-Completed Masterwork

Times Square

"That is what New York is, a never-completed masterwork, torn down even as it is resurrected, each minute populated by a different swarm of humanity streaming in and out."
Colin Harrison, Never Can Say Goodbye

Monday, December 15, 2014

Visiting New York


"Relax, Harry. I'm not letting anyone lick me, and I'm not looking anyone in the eyes. It's kind of like visiting New York."
Jim Butcher, Grave Peril

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Utterly Anonymous

Bernard Baruch Way

"The thing about New York is mat you can be utterly anonymous, utterly unnoticed. It takes a lot more than a river of mascara running down a person's cheeks to capture attention on a crowded sidewalk."
Wendy Corsi Staub, Lullaby And Goodnight

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Delirium

Times Square (Credit: Frankie242 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)


"Heartless, Godless, Hell's delight;
Rude by day and lewd by night;
Bedwarfed the man, o'ergrown the brute,
Ruled by boss and prostitute;
Purple-robed and pauper-clad,
Raving, rotting, money-mad;
A squirming herd in mammon's mesh,
A wilderness of human flesh;
Crazed with avarice, lust and rum,
New York, thy name's 'Delirium.'"
Byron Rufus Newton, "Owed to New York," in I Speak of the City

Friday, December 12, 2014

Sleight of Hand

Manhattan skyline

"That’s Manhattan today—all the money goes up top, while the infrastructure wastes away from neglect. The famous skyline is a cheap trick now, a sleight-of-hand to draw your eye from the truth, as illusory as a bodybuilder with osteoporosis."
Andrew Vachss, Mask Market

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Dirt

A street sweeper truck on Broadway

"One thing everyone in New York, no matter the class, gender, or heritage, had in common. Dirt. It was the great equalizer."
Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Born Again

Holy water font at Grace Church

"What, indeed, is a New Yorker? Is he Jew or Irish? Is he English or German? Is he Russian or Polish? He may be something of all these, and yet he is wholly none of them. Something has been added to him which he had not had before. He is endowed with a briskness and an invention often alien to his blood. He is quicker in his movement, less trammeled in his judgement. Though he may lose wisdom in sharpening his wit, the change he undergoes is unmistakable, New York, indeed, resembles a magic cauldron. Those who are cast into it are born again."
Charles Whibley, American Sketches

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Who is a New Yorker

Midtown Manhattan (Pixabay)


"A New Yorker is someone who knows how to walk from Fifth Avenue and 50th Street to Sixth Avenue and 47th Street in a heavy rainstorm without getting wet."
Ralph Caplan, Cracking the Whip: Essays on Design and Its Side Effects

Monday, December 8, 2014

Astonishing

World Trade Center


"New York, with all its wonders and marvels, isn't to my mind a civilized city. It was never built for the comfort and happiness of its citizens, but to astonish the world."
Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Mine of Marvels



"New York is in fact a very mine of marvels, so ripe and teeming, that if it was only fairly explored, its rare gems and precious metals would  furnish capital sufficient for a goodly catalogue of comedies, tragedies, tales, romances, and extravaganzas, of all kinds, without the aid of foreign ornament."
John M. Moore, The Adventures of Tom Stapleton

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Lavish

West 34th and Empire State Building

"New York is lavish of light, it is lavish of everything, it is full of the sense of spending from an inexhaustible supply."
H.G. Wells, The Future in America

Friday, December 5, 2014

Magritte

East 24th

"Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day."
Joseph O'Neill, Netherland

Thursday, December 4, 2014

One Story Among Millions

Financial District


"New York always lives up to its reputation. The buildings really are that tall. The lights really are that bright. There's truly a story on every corner. But it still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions. To not feel the bright lights even as they fill the air. To see the tall buildings and only feel a deep longing for the stars."
Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Two Kinds of New Yorkers

Williamsburg Bridge

"There are two kinds of New Yorkers, the ones who could never leave and the other ones."
Julie Klam, Never Can Say Goodbye

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Champagne and Trash Water

Third Avenue


"New York City can be difficult place to live, no question. There are high rents and sketchy landlords and expensive groceries and bedbugs and invasions of bros to deal with. The rapid current of the place is hard to contend with and adapt to, and it is not for everyone. It can be ruthless, particularly if you don’t happen to have a couple million dollars lying around. But it is also a city full of insane wonders. For every two parts trash water, there is equal part free champagne."
Margaret Eby, Brooklyn Magazine


Monday, December 1, 2014

Synonymous

Park Avenue


"New York is synonymous with freedom, hard work, and success to people the world over who have never been to America."
Lew Bryson and Don Cazentre, New York Breweries