Monday, July 31, 2017

Place of Unrest

Midtown Manhattan


"New York considered in itself is primarily a place of unrest, and those who sincerely love it, as many do, love it for the romance of its restlessness. A man almost looks at a building as he passes to wonder whether it will be there when he comes back from his walk."
G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Asshole



"In New York, you're only allowed to be an asshole if you're interesting. You have to earn the privilege of behaving like a dick."
Ryan O'Connell, Thought Catalog

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Cacophony

David H. Koch Theater

"Outside the convent's doors was New York City, with its dirty streets and omnipresent cacophony that sounded like an orchestra endlessly tuning its instruments. It crackled with the aggressive energy of people rushing everywhere and nowhere, and the humid air reeked of garbage, urine, and meat frying on food carts."
Misty Copeland, Life in Motion

Friday, July 28, 2017

Facelift

North Williamsburg

"New York is safer and richer but less like itself, an old lover who has gone for a face-lift and come out looking like no one in particular. The wrinkles are gone, but so is the face."
Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker


Thursday, July 27, 2017

Sisters



"Comparing the Brooklyn that I know with Manhattan is like comparing a comfortable and complacent duenna to her more brilliant and neurotic sister."
Carson McCullers, The Mortgaged Heart

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Who Is a New Yorker

Broadway and 125th

"A New Yorker is a person who steals a seat on the bus and a place on the movie line, crosses on the red and, if male, believes he can win at three-card monte. (The female New Yorker knows better.)"
The New York Times

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Black Outfits



"Maybe New Yorkers are all so busy rushing from place to place, talking at light speed, that they don't have time to coordinate outfits in the morning and rely on black because it's easy."
Lila Dare, Tressed to Kill

Monday, July 24, 2017

Money and Ideas

14th Street Subway Station

"That's why New York is the center of the universe. Because we use money to fashion reality out of ideas." 
William Martin, City of Dreams

Sunday, July 23, 2017

I Dig New York

Times Square (Pixabay)


"London is a fun town
Paris has its charms
But there is only one town
That takes me in its arms…
The lights of Broadway flicker
And suddenly my heart beats quicker
What can I say?
I dig New York."
Barry Manilow, I Dig New York

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Manhattan Lights

Empire State Building and Madison Square Park

"Manhattan at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a place of possible lights, at all times competing with other lights for brightness, sometimes winning for a second or even a minute—but then just as easily extinguished or outshone by other competing light. Manhattan is never a place without light. The only matter of interest is: whose light tonight? And for how long?"
Russell Bittner, Trompe-l'oeil

Friday, July 21, 2017

Chauvinistic

Store in Midtown

"It may be chauvinistic to say New York is the world's capital city, but New Yorkers are chauvinistic."
Jeremiah Moss, Vanishing New York

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Miserable Summer

Long Island City


"You wait all winter for summer in New York, and then it comes and that's miserable too."
Rebecca Serle, The Edge of Falling

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Mistake



"People who move to New York always make the same mistake. They can't see the place. This is true of Manhattan, but even the outer boroughs, too, be it Flushing Meadows in Queens or Red Hook in Brooklyn. They come looking for magic, whether evil or good, and nothing will convince them it isn't here."
Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Not Raw



"New York was raw and now it's just… not. It just seems like some of the reasons people came to New York are now a crime. Such chaotic beautiful energy is penalized with a ticket."
Michael Alan, Crudo

Monday, July 17, 2017

Shedding Skins

Fifth Avenue


"That was one thing about New York. It always changed, like a snake shedding skins. If your favorite area vanished or turned into something you didn't like, there was always another one that'd suit you."
Jeffery Deaver, Manhattan Is My Beat

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Sold on NYC

Central Park

"NYC
I go years without you
Then I can't get enough
Enough of cab drivers answering back
In language far from pure
Enough of frankfurters answering back.
Brother, you know you're in NYC
Too busy, too crazy
Too hot, too cold, too late
I'm sold again on NYC

NYC, Annie 

Saturday, July 15, 2017

New York 24-7

Empire State Building (Pixabay)

"I really wouldn't like being in the city 24-7. New York, New York can run a man crazy."
Damon Murphy, Sons Like Me

Friday, July 14, 2017

Smiling in New York

Cheese Store in Gramercy

"She smiled at everyone in the street, which in New York signifies 'tourist' or 'bonkers.'"
Erica Abeel, Wild Girls

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Immigrants

"Good Fences Make Good Neighbors" by Ai Weiwei


"'No one in New York has parents,' William replied. 'Or families for that matter. We're all pretty much immigrants taking shelter here.'"
Christopher Bollen, Lightning People

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Invisibility



"I was free to observe the city, uninhibited because no one was observing me. I'd been slow to appreciate the invisibility New York grants. No one cares what you do, and that's a good thing."
Anna Pitoniak, The Futures

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

World's Money

Bank of China

"Being in New York means you're competing with the world's money: Every Eurotrash dickhead, every Russian oligarch, every Chinese industrialist. They're all there to drop PILES of cash. You don't stand a chance."
Drew Magary, Deadspin

Monday, July 10, 2017

New York Charms

Tiffany & Co. (Wikimedia Commons)


"New York dangles its spangly charms like a tennis bracelet in a Tiffany window but then snatches its magic back like a homeless guy peeing underneath a Tiffany window."
Amy Dickinson, Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things


Sunday, July 9, 2017

The Charge

Times Square (Pixabay)


"New York is like the charge. New York is like the crucible and the energy."
Eileen Myles, Lambda Literary

Saturday, July 8, 2017

Nightmare

Midtown (Pixabay)

"Over and over I said to myself: this is New York, where I thought life would be large and free. This is New York, and I'm a stranger in a nightmare."
Carl van Doren, New York: The Big Apple Quote Book

Friday, July 7, 2017

What New York Stands For

Financial District


"People move to New York from all over the world, drawn to what it stands for: work, success, freedom, acceptance, glamour: give me your tired, your poor, your ambitious, your determined."
Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Big Mouths

East Village

"People in New York can't keep their big mouths shut. If they're not sexually harassing you or ordering you to smile, they're evaluating the use of your umbrella. Then, there's running. Try running really quickly through the streets of New York one day, and see if some guy doesn't yell 'Run! Run!' within five seconds. I'll bet my right kidney on it. "
Caren Lissner, Carrie Pilby

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Sheer World

Manhattan (Bill Abbott / Wikimedia Commons)


"The way I saw it, the West Side was one long rectangle of apartment houses filled with artists and intellectuals; this richness, mirrored on the East Side by money and social standing, made the city glamorous, and painfully exciting. I could taste in my mouth world, sheer world. All I had to do was get old enough and New York would be mine."
Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Beginning of the World



"One hears eternally that New York is not America ; it obviously is not Europe; the Atlantic lies between. Or is it the outer fringe of America — or the end of Europe? Perhaps, the one here overlapping the other, it is really the beginning of the world."
Ford Madox Ford, New York Essays

Monday, July 3, 2017

The Effect of Living in NYC

Times Square subway station


"I've lived in New York City way too long. I realized this 'cause I was on the subway the other day and I heard a meow moewwww and I’m like, Oh great, here comes some frickin’ guy pretending he's a cat. And I turned around and it was a cat. In a bag. That’s what New York City's done to me. I’m like, Cat noise? Can't be the animal that makes that noise. It's gotta be some weird cat guy. Like I was gonna turn around and there was going to be some guy with like cat ears and a unitard and felt whiskers."
Dan St. Germain, Time Out New York


Sunday, July 2, 2017

The Other New York

Photo: Pixabay

"After the tour buses disgorge their tourists into the sleek hotels of midtown Manhattan, and after the day-dwellers lock themselves in against an accumulated fear of the night, the city slowly slouches into its own skin, revealing a vulnerability and an occasional mean streak to those who brave its darker side. This is the 'other' New York, the city as bleary-eyed insomniac that replaces the manicured tourism of daylight."
Russell Leigh Sharman and Cheryl Harris Sharman, Nightshift

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Saturday Nights



"Saturday nights begin very quietly in New York City in the summertime. Even Broadway cannot hurry the darkness those big lights need, and Broadway must have the big lights to transform her from ramshackle and dusty into what she really is: an island of unimaginable pleasures, where the forbidden fruit is within reach at last."
Maeve Brennan, The Long-Winded Lady