Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Present Moment

Long Island City

"New York is, first and foremost, the present moment. It is the present moment without any more relationship to the future than to the past. It is the present moment -- whole, pure, total, isolated, disconnected. Upon arrival here, one has the feeling of having left not other countries behind, but other ages."

Julio Camba, La ciudad automática

Monday, December 30, 2019

Discovering New York

Central Park

"New York is a great place. Except that so many people don't know it. Either they're afraid, so they don't come into the city. Or they're not afraid, and they come into the city, but all they do is go from one Gap to another. And maybe stroll through Central Park. But that is not discovering the city."
Ann M. Martin, The Baby-Sitters Club Super Special #6

Friday, December 27, 2019

Confident Wildlife



"I am not a fan of rats or pigeons. In New York City, they have become very confident. When I was a child, you went on the subways and the rats would stay down on the tracks, but now they hang out on the platform."
Julia Stiles, The Guardian

Thursday, December 26, 2019

Market



"New York will never be anything to me but a market, and who wants to live in the market? I've enjoyed myself this winter, I've met some delightful people... But New York is New York, and I don't belong in it."
Lyle Saxon, The Life and Selected Letters of Lyle Saxon

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

December Lights

New York City (Pixabay)

"The beauty of that light may be deepened by the New Yorker’s subconscious sense of living in an oceanic city at the edge of the cold, gray, scary Atlantic, destroyer of Titanic. Against its dark oceanic background, December lights make the city seem – strange word for New York – cozy."
Russell Baker, The New York Times 

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Darling City

Rockefeller Center (Pixabay)

"How beautiful you are at all times. I adore you with all my heart, my darling city, all the months of the year. But your magic is revealed at its best near Christmas."
Husam Fakhr, Story of Music in Grand Central

Monday, December 23, 2019

Money and Power



"Everything in New York City is about connections. It’s who you know and how much money you have. It’s really sad. And I am not saying I’m like that. But that’s what New York is: money and power."
PC Peterson, New York Magazine

Friday, December 20, 2019

Series of Small Towns

Main Street

"To newcomers, Manhattan seems like an
 endless succession of strangers. But to those who have lived there long enough, the island becomes a series of small towns stitched together into a city of eight million."

Richard Castle, Heat Storm

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Unremarkable New York



"As New York City enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. It is approaching a state where it will no longer be a significant cultural entity but the world's largest gated community, with a few cupcake shops here and there. For the first time in its history, New York is--well, boring."
Kevin Baker, The Fall of a Great American City

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Inside a Giant's Room



"New York seems like it's built for people fifty feet tall; it makes you feel so small, like you're inside a giant's room."
Norman Spinrad, No Direction Home

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

The Many Sides of New York



"Nothing's the matter with New York except that it's got so many sides it can be whatever one chooses to make it, so that a weak character like me gets too many chances to increase his weaknesses here."
Booth Tarkington, Delphi Collected Works of Booth Tarkington 

Monday, December 16, 2019

Hard Apprenticeship

Brooklyn Bridge (Pixabay)

"Loving New York takes work; it is a hard apprenticeship."
Philippe Roger, The American Enemy

Friday, December 13, 2019

Roaring Street



"Beyond my roofs and chimney piles
Sunset crumbles, ragged, dire;
The roaring street is hung for miles
With fierce electric fire.
Shrill and high, newsboys cry
The gross of the planet's destiny
Through one more sullen gyre."
William Vaughn Moody, In New York

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Champagne



"New York is very exciting, also very tiring, and the more I see of New York, outside of the temporary exhilaration it gives you — very much like champagne, great while you drink it but not so hot the day after — I prefer California."
Jesse L. Lasky, Hollywood Royalty

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Dirty and Fascinating



"Just two days in Manhattan and you find yourself looking for a place to wash your handkerchief after you wipe your forehead and it comes away black. Is there a dirtier or more fascinating city anywhere in the land? The answer to both parts of the question has to be positively negative."
Herb Caen, SF Gate

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Zoo York



"I like to go downtown, to the West Village — it’s kind of a zoo. And I like to go to the zoo."
Jerry Seinfeld, New York Magazine

Monday, December 9, 2019

New York Has No Home

Union Square

"New York has no home. It sits in restaurants and barrooms day and night. It is a city of noisome tenements and narrow flats so small that people file themselves away therein like papers in a pigeonhole."
Alfred Lewis, The Boss and How We Came to Rule New York

Friday, December 6, 2019

Magical Town

Sixth Avenue (Pixabay)



"The astonishing light that is Thomas Edison's gift to New York and the exciting busyness of crowded streets make the city feel as if a great festival is in progress. Indeed, one is. The city is celebrating the triumph of commerce. At times the place suggests an absurdly oversized village, and please let us not argue the point. I am too delighted with this ravishing December New York to engage in sour disputation. Yes, I have seen the beggars with their cardboard cups upheld. It is a tough town, too, a terribly tough town, but also this December -- I'll say it anyhow -- magical."
Russell Baker, The New York Times

Thursday, December 5, 2019

Ebbing Away



"The Manhattan harbor no longer meant much, either. The channel was not deep enough for the world's largest ships, and the skyline couldn't compare with Shanghai or Singapore. The new World Trade Center was respectable enough, yet was just another symbol, really, for it was a historical certainty that the money would ebb away from New York as it had drained from Paris and Brussels the century before. That is, if another massive hurricane didn't doom it first."
Colin Harrison, You Belong to Me

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Joy, Happiness and Excitement



"The minute I got off the plane, I felt this huge release of joy, happiness and excitement. It was like I had been waiting for 22 years to come home. It was quite thrilling. I loved the energy and endless opportunities. Anything can happen here. That kind of energy either drives people crazy and defeats them or feeds them. I happen to be one of those people who feels energized in New York. I'm home. "
Mary Beth Peil, ShowTickets

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Make Your Own Luck



"New York is a bitch goddess. She gives success to some, keeps it from others. What I say is, make your own luck. Reach out and take what you want."
A.X. Ahmad, The Last Taxi Ride

Monday, December 2, 2019

New York Standards

Queens

"It's a funny thing about Manhattan. I love to look at the city, especially in the early morning, but I rarely go there. Queens is my beat and has been for many years, which makes me an official hick by New York standards. It could only be worse if I lived on Staten Island. Even the ravaged Bronx is cooler than Queens."
Stephen Solomita, Mercy Killing

Friday, November 29, 2019

Freer



"The reason I came to New York and the reason most people used to come to New York, and maybe some still do, is because it is freer than wherever we came from."
Fran Lebowitz, Five Books

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Holidays in New York



"I love holidays in New York. I love 'em. I want to celebrate something all the time and New York has holidays for every day of the week, practically."
Elaine Stritch, Omaha World-Herald

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Spiritual Place



"I'm most at home when I can see the lights and hear the cabs going by in the middle of the night. New York is a spiritual place for me."
Cush Jumbo, Broadway.com

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Vanishing New York

East 14th

"A large part of my life is walking up and down Broadway and Columbus Avenue and trying to remember what store used to be where. Look at that place over there. That's a Madison Avenue boutique. What is it doing over here? I'll be interested to see how long that lasts. The people over here, they have the money, but they’re not going to spend it. They’re too cheap."
Jerry Seinfeld, The New York Times

Monday, November 25, 2019

Pocket Edition of Babel

Manhattan

"New York is the metropolis of America, the mouth of the republic, the tongue of the nation, the eye of the continent, a pocket edition of Babel, a digest of the United States, with fewer Americans and more Americanism than any spot between Calais, Me., and the Kingdom of Heaven."
Life Magazine

Friday, November 22, 2019

Incessant Need

Morningside Heights

"In New York, just standing still on the sidewalk is a weird feeling. You have this incessant need to do things."
Esai Morales, People Magazine

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Oasis of Opportunity

Central Park

"To Esperanza, New York City had always been Nueva York—an oasis of opportunity."
Angie Cruz, Let It Rain Coffee

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

F Train



"I'm on the Brooklyn bound F train. lt's empty this time of day. Just a few schizophrenic-looking individuals. Not that, as far as I know, schizophrenics have visible markings, just that I once heard a statistic that, of the  small percentage of Caucasian cab drivers in New York City, ninety percent are schizophrenic. I believe a similar statistic could be applied to daytime F train riders."
Maggie Estep, Hex

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Artistic Element



"The artistic element of Manhattan has kind of moved to Brooklyn. Has it changed it? Yeah. Has it ruined ruined it? I would say no. It is what it is. I say better that than an urban war zone."
Julian Casablancas, The Wall Street Journal

Monday, November 18, 2019

Loveless in New York



"People don't come to New York to meet someone. They come for the culture, the experience, the money—the list is long, but meeting the man you’re going to marry isn't on it.”
Sarah Morgan, Sleepless in Manhattan

Friday, November 15, 2019

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Quaint

Upper West Side

"New York is still the most glamorous city I’ve ever been to but it's starting to feel older. The sirens still wail, the paths in Central Park still pulsate with joggers. The Manhattan schist still trembles beneath your feet. But weirdly it's starting to feel, dare I say it, a bit quaint."
Tom Hollander, The Spectator

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Expense Account or Welfare



"Manhattan: The ultimate celebration of civilization's final finest hours, a place where you live on an expense account or on welfare; if you're somewhere in between, you move to Queens or Nassau."
Herb Caen, SF Gate

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

The Secret to a Long and Happy Life



"I didn't miss New York 'cause I never left, which is the secret to my long and happy life."
Henry Reagan (Len Cariou), Blue Bloods

Monday, November 11, 2019

Second-Rate Civilization

Greenpoint

"For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible … for me that was like a foreign country."
William Klein, The Guardian

Friday, November 8, 2019

Carnality

Coney Island

"Even after two years in New York, the raw carnality of the city stuns him, the erotic energy of so many bodies packed tightly together. He thinks of the boys and girls he's seen, kissing in the back of his cab, more turned on, it seems, with being in New York than with each other."
By A. X. Ahmad, The Last Taxi Ride

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Work of Art

Flatiron Plaza

"New York is a gigantic, unbelievable, constantly changing work of art, which proves yet again that life itself is a form of art which is much stronger and more active than art-fact made by the hands of an artist."
Anatol Ur, А-Я

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Purest Combustion

Seventh Avenue

"New York is the innumerable at the bottom of the indescribable; the indescribable at the bottom of the innumerable. The purest combustion of a multiple and terrible image."
Hernán Lavín CerdaMemorias Casi Póstumas Del Cadáver Valdivia

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Infinite Brooklyn

Greenpoint

"Brooklyn is walled with world-traveled wetness on west and south and on north and east is the young beaver-board frontier of Queens; Brooklyn comes to an end: but actually, that is, in the conviction of the body, there seems almost no conceivable end to Brooklyn; it seems, on land as flat and huge as Kansas, horizon beyond horizon forever unfolded, an immeasurable proliferation of house on house and street by street; or seems as China does, infinite in time, in patience, and in population as in space."
James Agee, Brooklyn Is

Monday, November 4, 2019

New York City's Character

Downtown Manhattan (Pexels)

"The traffic sounds continue to dominate, as they dominate all of Manhattan, as much a part of the city's character as the trash on the sidewalks."
Stephen Solomita, Angel Face

Friday, November 1, 2019

Minority Group



"In New York everyone belongs to a minority group. This gives you pride in your roots and encourages you to feel everybody else is picking on you, which is one of the basic pleasures of the New York experience."
Russell Baker, So This Is Depravity

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Halloween in New York City

Store on Fifth Avenue

"There's nothing like Halloween in New York City. After all, New York is home to some of the most artistic and creative people on the planet, most of whom will jump at any opportunity to put on a show. Consider the city's eight hundred thousand drag queens, who, just to take a trip to the deli, will put on seven-inch platforms, a sequined butterfly jacket, and a two-foot wig. Now try to imagine such people at Halloween."
Lee Harrington, Rex and the City

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Every Race on Earth

Brooklyn Bridge Park

"Every race on earth claims New York; some pre-empt it; some own it; some imagine they own it; all cultivate it; a chosen few harvest it; and all agree that it makes Paris and paradise look like a circus lemonade."
Life Magazine

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Big Hug



"Coming to New York is like a big hug, everyone is so welcoming. There’s something about here, everyone makes you feel so at home."
Archie Panjabi, Los Angeles Times

Monday, October 28, 2019

City of Immigrants



"New York is a city of immigrants. You become a New Yorker through being in New York, not through having been born in New York."
Hermione Hoby, Five Books

Friday, October 25, 2019

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Attractive New York



"I very much like New York. If France's situation didn't obsess my memory, my stay in New York would be pleasant and interesting. The skyscrapers are like cliffs and crags; I like the chaotic quality of the beauty: it is a new way of thinking about beauty. Whether the streets are beautiful or ugly, I always find them attractive."
Mary Gordon, The Liar´s Wife

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Grand and Gritty



"New York is a grand, hard, gritty place where no one underestimates their own importance or overestimates anyone else's."
Brian Urquhart, A Worldly Affair