Monday, October 31, 2016

Treat

Village Halloween Parade Participant (Wikicommons)

"Halloween in New York is such a treat. It feels like everything is permitted and that everyone has the right to be who they want to be… whatever it is!"
Gregoire Alessandrini, quoted in Atlas Obscura

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Chimera

Financial District


"It is the daytime that is a chimera, that pretends New York is anyplace, maybe with bigger buildings, but just as workaday, with a population that goes about its business and then goes to sleep, a great machine humming away for the benefit of the world. Night reveals this to be a pantomime. In the streets at night, everything kept hidden comes forth, everyone is subject to the rules of chance, everyone is potentially both murderer and victim, everyone is afraid, just as anyone who sets his or her mind to it can inspire fear in others. At night, everyone is naked."
Luc Sante, Low Life

Saturday, October 29, 2016

The Thing About New York

Coney Island - Stillwell Avenue subway station


"That was the thing about New York—if you loved it, if it worked for you, it ruined you for anyplace else in the world."
Lawrence Block, Small Town

Friday, October 28, 2016

New York Secret



"The secret of New York is raw power, mass and volume, money and power."
Alfred Kazin, New York Jew

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Human Flesh

Kent Avenue


"A few American cities, Manhattan chief among them, have some mad magnetic energy which sucks all others into 'provincialism'; and Brooklyn of all great cities is nearest the magnet, and is indeed 'provincial': it is provincial as a land of rich earth and of this earth is an enormous farm, whose crop is far less 'industrial' or 'financial' or 'notable' or in any way 'distinguished' or 'definable' than it is of human flesh and being."
James Agee, Brooklyn Is

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Worst and Best


"I stand here on my old ship's nose
To try to see old New York's glows
I think New York is the very worst
And best old town in the universe."
Woody Guthrie, quoted in My Name is New York: Ramblin' Around Woody Guthrie's Town

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Senses

Rockefeller Center


"From Manhattan, you can't see Manhattan; there are no views, no vistas, it's not like Chicago. You can't depend on vision, and from vision we get control; so you've lost control, and you have to resort to other senses: you hear New York, you touch New York, you smell NewYork, your face is up against it so much that you taste New York."
Vito Acconci, Dialogues in Public Art

Monday, October 24, 2016

New York Asleep



"The city does sleep, the windows darken and the streets vacate. New York dreams us. Wild, somnambulistic creatures, we move unhurried toward our own disappearance at dawn."
Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

Sunday, October 23, 2016

New York Apartment

Third Avenue


"Something happened to Lily and Marshall that day, something that happens to all New Yorkers who return home from anywhere other than New York: their big lovely apartment shrank."
Ted Mosby (Bob Saget), How I Met Your Mother

Saturday, October 22, 2016

The Time of Your Life

Port Authority

"I close my eyes and nod off, imagining what it'll be like in New York when I arrive. In my mind, Kristin Chenoweth will be waiting for us on a staircase at this Port Authority place, probably singing the theme to 'New York, New York.' And then someone'll hand out handguns and cans of Mace and tell us, 'Good luck, and have the time of your life if you can keep it.'"
Tim Federle, Better Nate Than Never

Friday, October 21, 2016

Primitive Beauty

Pixabay

"New York is a new city, a city dedicated primarily to commerce and adapted to handle commerce on a new and undreamed scale. It has the beauty of an engine perfectly built to perform its appointed task, and it has further, by its colossal height and bulk, the primitive beauty of the mountain crags and gorges."
Walter Prichard Eaton, New York

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Gotham and Metropolis

Barnes & Noble


"New York is a real place, but it is also Batman's Gotham and Superman's Metropolis. It is, to many Americans, simply, 'The City,' quintessentially American and foreign simultaneously."
Richard Schechner, Performed Imaginaries

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

New York Myths

Union Square


"I consider almost everything that is often said about New York to be false. To begin with, the city is not that big or that worldly. An astonishing number of people who live there rarely leave their borough, let alone the country."
Eula Biss, Notes from No Man's Land

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Narnia

Williamsburg


"New York is a city that plays against type. The taxi driver is a Joyce scholar. The academic-looking man will hit you with a tire iron and run off with your wallet. It is also a city of second and third chances, glorious reinvention and magical holes in the wall that one could never predict. Some version of Narnia's wardrobe hides behind every doorway or flight of stairs."
J.F. Englert, A Dog Among Diplomats

Monday, October 17, 2016

Dantean Inferno

Megabus on West 34th

"If New York City is truly a Dantean Inferno — and I'm inclined to think it is — what makes any of us believe that we can ever truly leave? The entire point of Hell is its inescapability, and New York is no different. You can leave it in body, sure; I've left several times. But you'll come back. Or at least your mind will remain here."
Jonathon Sturgeon, Flavorwire

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Inspiring

520 West 28th

"New York is constantly inspiring me—the people, the architecture, the spirit. It is one of the most vibrant and exciting cities in the world, and I never tire of it."
Diane von Furstenberg, Gotham Magazine



Saturday, October 15, 2016

Children of All Colors

Madison Square Park


"New York is a city where children of all colors can dance."
G.N. Miller, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About New York



Friday, October 14, 2016

Cup of Coffee

Think Coffee


"In New York, you always feel like you're halfway through drinking that cup of coffee you didn't need."
Ryan O'Connell, Thought Catalog

Thursday, October 13, 2016

New York Lunatics



"Aboveground lunatics tended to blend into the messy New York landscape. No one wanted to look at them for fear they might ask them for money or do something embarrassing. But subway lunatics had a captive audience, so they tended to be performers of one kind or another. They sang, they danced, they wore outrageous outfits."
Ellen Potter, Olivia Kidney and the Secret Beneath the City

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Thinking Person

Washington Mews


"She probably held that it was all well and good for Parisians to live in Paris and Londoners to live in London, but she could not comprehend how any thinking person from the United States could choose to live anywhere other than New York."
Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Golden Fall



"There is a time of year in New York, in the fall, which comes suddenly, and doesn't last long, but is enough to make you love it for the rest of the year. If you go away then, you will always think of New York in golden hues, but if you stay you see the filth, the soot, the slush, and, later, live in the stench and torrid heat of a New York summer."
Danielle Steel, Going Home

Monday, October 10, 2016

Wild Beast

Chrysler Building


"The beauty of the New York sky comes from its being raised so far above our heads by the skyscrapers. Pure and lonely as a wild beast, it mounts guard and stands watch over the city."
Jean-Paul Sartre, We Have Only This Life to Live

Sunday, October 9, 2016

New York Churches

Antioch Baptist Church


"While there are some really wonderful churches in New York City, I get the impression that the total number of the people who faithfully attend church is a small fraction of the population. It's not completely Sodom and Gomorrah, but the traffic at 3 a.m. Sunday is more intense than at 11 a.m. That ought to tell you something."
Mike Huckabee, God, Guns, Grits and Gravy

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Too Busy



"New York is much too busy, much too feverishly active, to waste time on useless sentimentality."
Knut Hamsun, Knut Hamsum Remembers America

Friday, October 7, 2016

Winston Churchill

East 25th


"To paraphrase Winston Churchill's famous observation about democracy: New York City is the worst place in the world to live, except for all the others."
Adam Sternbergh, Never Can Say Goodbye

Thursday, October 6, 2016

New York Mets



"Living in NY you kind of know this: Yankees fans are uptown, Cadillac, fancy, metro museum, winner. Met fandom is hot dog on the corner, out on the street. It's not a happy thing. You could learn grit and how to tolerate losing."
Hank Azaria, USA Today

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Overwhelming



"I doubt if I have strong enough nerves to live in New York. I find it so overwhelming. The United States is an extraordinary country; a nation that creates such a city as New York, or the rest of the country—which has nothing to do with the  system or the government—could do anything."
Gabriel García Márquez, Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

New York Decisions

Coney Island boardwalk


"In New York, you are constantly faced with this very urgent, quick decision that you have to make about every 20 minutes. And it doesn't matter where you are—indoors, outdoors, fuckin' in a park, in a museum, in a restaurant…. About every 20 minutes, immediately, you have to go [gasp], Oh my god. Do I look at the most beautiful woman in the world or the craziest guy in the world? Look at her; she’s fucking beautiful! But look at him, he’s wearing orange footie pajamas and he’s got tinfoil on his head and he’s playing a Casio!"
David Cross, Time Out 

Monday, October 3, 2016

Kings County

Coney Island - Stillwell Avenue subway station

"This is the county of kings
You can tell by the size of the medallions and gold rings
Royalty dwells in sections we swing
Where the bush is flat, where the ville is brown
Where the heights is crowned, where the fort is greene
Where the stuy's in bed
Where New York is east and Coney is an island connected
Sometimes the bush is wicked and parks are sloped
The bay is ridged and Benson is a Hurst."
Ming + FS, Kings County

Sunday, October 2, 2016

No Bad Neighborhoods



"I have an apartment there and I love it there, but believe me, there's no Avenue D. There's no bad neighborhoods anymore in New York. Which is sad for young people."
John Waters, Dreamland News

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Everything



"The darkness covered the city and then the city ate through that darkness with a radiation visible from outer space. That was the vision of New York Joseph stored in his head like a postcard. What happened here? The answer was everything."
Christopher Bollen, Lightning People