Thursday, April 30, 2015

New York Way

Plaque on West 23rd

"It was the old New York way of taking life 'without effusion of blood': the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than 'scenes,' except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them."
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

New York City Map

Morningside Heights

"A map of the city, colored to designate nationalities, would show more stripes than on the skin of a zebra, and more colors than any rainbow."
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Promise to Mankind

Fuller Building

"Can one think of America without New York City? I can't. To me, New York is the essence, the ultimate distillation of America's promise to mankind."
Howard Fast, War and Peace

Monday, April 27, 2015

Human Fullness

Upper West Side

"O New York, New York, carousel and carnival of the too-rich, busy, full life, how can one ever do justice to your insane human fullness?"
Alfred Kazin, Alfred Kazin's Journals

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Science Fiction

Third Avenue

"The city looked like science fiction.  Like an incubator for stars, where suns are made."
Junot Diaz, Nueva York

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Mental Health

The New York Times Building

"A New Yorker is a person with an almost inordinate interest in mental health, which is only natural considering how much of that it takes to live here."
The New York Times

Friday, April 24, 2015

Epiphanies

East 23rd

"At its best, New York was a city of accidental epiphanies and I vowed that I would open myself to many such moments."
Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

Thursday, April 23, 2015

The Thing


"New York is the thing that seduced me
New York is the thing that formed me
New York is the thing that deformed me
New York is the thing that perverted me
New York is the thing that converted me
And New York's the thing I love, too."
Patti Smith, Dancing Barefoot

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

In a Hurry

Chelsea Market



"New Yorkers are always in a hurry, and you'll never convince a one of them he's anywhere but on his own turf."
Thomas Adcock, Drown All the Dogs

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

New York Priorities

Pizzeria on Third Avenue


"I consider myself a New Yorker, a city that attracts a talented and global citizenry, who share all the same values and priorities: good pizza and great museums!"
Melissa de la Cruz, Good Reads

Monday, April 20, 2015

Celebrating

East River State Park

"The noises of New York—honking horns and whistles for taxis and bright snippets of conversations as people passed by—surrounded her. She loved the way her city always sounded like it was celebrating. "
Sarah Pekkanen, These Girls

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Chance Encounters

50th Street Commons

"New York is for all intents and purposes a small town. It's the kind of place where the famous and the not-so- famous live in such close proximity that the former elicit little more than passing notice from the latter. It's the kind of place where chance encounters could happen and did happen every day."
Catherine Cantrell, Constance

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Photogenic

East River State Park


"Like many natural beauties, New York is effortlessly photogenic. It has fabulous bones and hardly any bad angles. It looks good in anything: rain, sunshine, blizzards. Its personality comes through in flashes: antic, sloppy, noble, rude. Its bad days are more exciting than good days anywhere else. And its good days are the best, period."
Holland Cotter, The New York Times

Friday, April 17, 2015

Wicked Bitch

Forty-Second Street

"She has become a wicked and wild bitch in her old age, has Manhattan, but there is still no sensation in the world quite like walking her sidewalks. Great surges of energy sweep all around you; the air fizzes like champagne while, always, there is a nervous edge of fear and whispered, distant promises of sudden violence."
Tom Davies, The Bulletin

Thursday, April 16, 2015

24/7 City

East 42nd

"Why the fuck would you want to live anywhere else in the world? Sure, income taxes are high, but we get a 24/7 city at our fingertips! Yes, eating out is expensive, but I don't want to eat at an Olive Garden in the 'burbs. There's energy here, shit happens here."
Jen Chung, Gothamist

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Profanity



"I can't keep my temper in New York. The cars and carriages always come along and get in the way just as I want to cross a street, and if there is any thing that can make a man soar into flights of sublimity in the  matter of profanity, it is that."
Mark Twain, The Quotable Mark Twain

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Reaching Toward the Sky

Fifth and Park Avenue buildings

"New York was magical to me, and it still is. Just walking down Fifth Avenue in the heat of the summer makes my heart race with excitement. It is empowering to look up at the skyscrapers, watching them defy gravity and reaching—like all the dreamers in this city—toward the sky."
Fredrick Eklund, The Sell

Monday, April 13, 2015

Meditation

Real estate listings on Broadway

"Meditation for most New Yorkers is thinking about their next apartment, the bigger one."
William L. Hamilton, The New York Times

Sunday, April 12, 2015

The New York Walk

Park Avenue


"Within a few days you will have adopted the New York walk. Rapidly, skillfully, you negotiate the jammed sidewalks at twice your home-town pace; triumphant as an athlete at the end of a well-played game, you conquer the congestion."
Michele Landsberg, This is New York, Honey!

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Exceeds Expectations


"It is one of the few places I've gone to where it exceeded expectations. Everyone's expectation of New York is so big, and then you go, 'Oh, it really is like no other place on Earth!'"
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, The New York Post


Friday, April 10, 2015

Elbow-to-Elbow


"In New York, everyone is so mixed together that there's less of a feeling of class here. Outside some fancy office building, you see a CEO getting his cigarette lit by a cleaning lady. Everybody is dealing with the same shit, everybody is on the subway elbow-to-elbow."
Louis C.K., The Hollywood Reporter

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Difficult City

West 110th


"New York was a difficult city, far too rich in the ugly, the absurd, the monstrous, the hideous, and the unbearable. Everything capable of being exaggerated or distorted, was."
Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Street Level

City Hall Park

"New York is a different environment: if you look up to the top of the buildings, it is brand new, but at the level of the street, it is a couple of hundred years old, rooted in the Paris and London of the Enlightenment."
Brian Berger, New York Calling


Tuesday, April 7, 2015

New York Ambience


"You come to New York to find the ambience that will evoke your best. You do not necessarily know precisely what that might be, but you come to New York to discover it."
James Hillman, quoted in The New York Times World of New York

Monday, April 6, 2015

Rockefeller

Rockefeller Center

"If you're a Rockefeller, New York is really your town."
Andy Warhol, quoted in The Manhattan Project

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Easter Parade

Easter Parade and Easter Bonnet Festival

"On the avenue, Fifth Avenue, the photographers will snap us
And you'll find that you're in the rotogravure
Oh, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet
And of the guy I'm taking to the Easter Parade"
Judy Garland (lyrics by Irving Berlin), Easter Parade 

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Everybody is Crazy



"Everybody's crazy in New York. All you've got to do is let go for two minutes and you'll find yourself dancing in the street and wetting your pants on the bus."
Ernest Thompson, The West Side Waltz

Friday, April 3, 2015

Evolution


"You want proof evolution is for real, don't waste your time with fossils; just check out the New York City rat. They started out as immigrants, stowaways in some ship's cargo hold. Only the survivors got to breed, and they've been improving with every new litter. Smarter, faster, stronger. Getting ready to rule. Manhattan wouldn't be the first island they took over."
Andrew Vachss, Another Life

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Magic Castle


"What is more dramatic, even romantic, than the tumbled towers of lower Manhattan, rising suddenly to the clouds like a magic castle girdled by water? Its very touch of jumbled jaggedness, its towering- sided canyons, are its magnificence."
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Greenwich Village



"Growing up, I only wanted New York. To be precise: I wanted Greenwich Village. I wanted the subway. I wanted struggle. I wanted culture. I wanted action."
Alyssa Shelasky, Apron Anxiety