Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Hidden Gems

Flatiron Building


"What never ceases to amaze me about New York is how much there is to see if you take the time to look. Every street has a hidden gem or two: remnants of a bygone era, beautiful architectural flourishes, an interesting oddity or quirk. And yet, I find that most of it goes unnoticed by the hundreds, if not thousands, of daily passersby in too much of a hurry to pay attention."
Nick Carr, New York Post

Monday, July 30, 2018

Sunday, July 29, 2018

White African City



"Below me lay New York, looking like a white African city with skyscrapers, no trees, only concrete and steel, not an organically grown city over centuries, but determined and rapid, and impatiently built by people who weren't impeded by tradition and whose watchword wasn't security but function."
Erich Maria Remarque, The Promised Land

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Comradeship

Little Italy


"L.A. is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets godawful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of whacky comradeship somewhere in some streets."
Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Friday, July 27, 2018

Aging Well



"This was New York, and though I'd once called the city home, it was a different place now—taller, prettier, more angular. It was aging well."
David Goodwillie, American Subversive 

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Succession of Days



"Too often, life in New York is merely a squalid succession of days, whereas in fact it can be a great, living, thrilling adventure."
Fiorello La Guardia, quoted in Old Bread, New Wine

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Healthy and Unhealthy Living

East River Waterfront

"Every day in New York is a marathon of healthy and unhealthy living. You spend your nights downing beers with friends and your mornings filled with yoga classes and exercise. You spend your evenings eating pizza and greasy fries and your afternoons drinking pomegranate juice and green tea. You pop a vitamin supplement. Then you guzzle coffee."
Mandy Stadtmiller, New York Post

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Indifference

JFK Airport

"I want to get away from the indifference of New York. I want to care and it sounds implausibly poignant be cared about. The city has seen thousands of us come and go. New York doesn't give a damn."
Caskie Stinnett, The Atlantic Monthly

Monday, July 23, 2018

Relentless Change

Vanderbilt Avenue


"More than other cities New York is a place of relentless change that never changes, where everything is unstable within an immobile and everlasting frame."
Francesco Garofalo, Laboratorio Internazionale Di Progettazione

Sunday, July 22, 2018

NYC in Summer

Riverside Park

"NYC during summer is one of the most disgusting places in the country. It's hot and humid, with millions of people cramped on a small island. Add to this the smell of garbage, and NYC in summer is nothing more than a hellhole."
"Leveraged Sellout," Damn, it Feels Good to Be a Banker

Saturday, July 21, 2018

On the Move

Third Avenue

"Among the other dwellers in this city whom I happen to know, I can think now of only two families or three who are living this spring where they lived four springs ago. And none of us mounts a dubious ladder to hang a picture in October without a gray foreboding that it will have to come down again in May. For, as like as not, we shall be on the move again in May, perhaps because the rent has leaped beyond our reach, perhaps because the house itself is to make room for a new steel thrust at the amused stars."
Alexander Woollcott, Going to Pieces

Friday, July 20, 2018

Garden of Wonders

West 42nd


"When I had looked at the lights of Broadway by night, I made to my American friends an innocent remark that seemed for some reason to amuse them. I had looked, not without joy, at that long kaleidoscope of coloured lights arranged in large letters and sprawling trade-marks, advertising everything, from pork to pianos, through the agency of the two most vivid and most mystical of the gifts of God; colour and fire. I said to them, in my simplicity, 'What a glorious garden of wonders this would be, to any who was lucky enough to be unable to read.'"
G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America

Thursday, July 19, 2018

New York Drivers

West Street


"Scientists have found a 88,000 year old middle finger in Saudi Arabia and are suggesting it's the oldest human fossil ever found outside of Africa. They believe the skeleton is an ancient ancestor to every New York driver."
Seth Meyers, Late Night with Seth Meyers

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Business, Pleasure and Crime

St. Mark's Place (David Shankbone / Wikimedia Commons)

"The city of New-York is the commercial metropolis of this continent; its port is filled with shipping from every clime; its streets crowded with residents and sojourners, intent on business, pleasure and crime."
Justice Shankland, quoted in Licentious Gotham

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Collective Aspiration

Manhattan (Pixabay)


"Dusk was falling and the lights of the city were coming on one by one in ways that even Edison hadn't imagined. They came on across the great patchwork of office buildings and along the cables of the bridges; then it was the street lamps and the theater marquees, the headlights of the cars and the beacons perched atop the radio towers—each individual lumen testifying to some unhesitant intemperate collective aspiration."
Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

Monday, July 16, 2018

Clown Car

Number 2 subway


"Rush hour in the New York City subway can be grueling. Everyone is in a huge hurry to get to work or transition into their evening, and so they pile by the hundreds of thousands into a maze of subway cars, often squished into a space that is way too small, surrounded by the other residents of this veritable clown car."
Jasmin Singer, Always Too Much and Never Enough

Sunday, July 15, 2018

Up to Speed

 Häagen-Dazs store on Broadway


"New York isn't New York anymore. It's the city that just recently got up to speed with the rest of the nation. New York is the Banana Republic town. A Häagen-Dazs town. Starbucks fucking runs this joint! There are three within four blocks of each other on Second Ave. But dude, I'm not knocking Starbucks, I was just there."
Mike Doughty, New York Rock

Saturday, July 14, 2018

Upper East Side

Versace Store (Wikimedia Commons)




"Born and raised on the Upper East Side, corner of Vicious and Versace."
Abby Sampson (Rachael Taylor), Charlie's Angels

Friday, July 13, 2018

Wide Awake

Bryant Park


"New York is the wide-awake place, the all-night city, the city of noise."
Henry Miller, Letters to Emil

Thursday, July 12, 2018

Serene and Somber


"Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York, especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better."
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Sidewalk Stories

East 13th Street

"Manhattan is divided into neighborhoods, and in the older and the less financially prosperous of those, the sidewalks steam with the stories of the people who gather around subway grates, sit on stoops, or play checkers in the park. In many cases, besides the boredom that regularly drives people out of their homes, the apartments these residents occupy are just too small to spend the day in."
Michelle Berry, Shippy First Drafts

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Jewish City

The Brotherhood Synagogue 

"New York is first and foremost a Jewish city, albeit with Chinese food, and anyone who lives here for any amount of time becomes willy-nilly a Jew. Thus, yet another category of Jews: Orthodox, conservative, meshuga, and willy-nilly."
Patrick O'Connor, New York Magazine

Monday, July 9, 2018

Appalling Place

Gravesend Bay (Wikimedia Commons)

"I find it an appalling place, rich for making money, poor for living. I despise its graft, its crime, its dirt, its accents, its utilitarian ugliness, its opportunistic cheapness, its parvenu swank, its swelling army of epicenes—even its philosophy of toleration, which is less a virtue than a confession of weakness, a lack of a way of life."
Earl Sparling, quoted in Supreme City

Sunday, July 8, 2018

Broadway Stair



"Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies,
As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise,
And we shall be lifted, rejoicing by night,
Till we join with the planets who choir their delight,
The signs in the streets and the signs in the skies
Shall make a new Zodiac, guiding the wise,
And Broadway make one with that marvelous stair
That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer."
Vachel Lindsay, The Congo and Other Poems

Saturday, July 7, 2018

New York Romance

Flatiron Plaza

"Paris may be the city of love, but I swear there's nothing more magical than getting to know someone new under the glittering lights of New York City. The West Village was meant for long, winding walks hand in hand, lingering in front of lingerie stores, kissing along the waterfront. His rooftop in Chelsea was made for savoring wine under the stars. Central Park was crafted for lolling about in bathing suits in the grass on sun-drenched Saturdays, and the whole borough of Manhattan was designed expressly for popping into bagel shops to order everything-and-a-schmear piping hot out of the oven."
Hannah Orenstein, Playing with Matches

Friday, July 6, 2018

Living Museum

Third Avenue

"In a way New York is a living museum. Every street offers some historical revelation that you can only hope will survive the city's never-ending makeovers."
Stephanie Lehmann, Astor Place Vintage

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Ambition

Midtown Manhattan


"If, as often seems the case, ambition is the one mother tongue shared by every New Yorker, then the various national tongues are the means immigrant New York uses to express its self-worth."
Rebecca Solnit, Nonstop Metropolis

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

American Spirit

Penn Station


"No place epitomizes the American experience and the American spirit more than New York City."
Michael Bloomberg, quoted in The Little Red Book of New York Wisdom

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Main Street

Main Street


"New York sometimes became Main Street USA. You never knew who watched."
Randy Susan Meyers, The Widow of Wall Street

Monday, July 2, 2018

Sin City

House on East 18th


"New York is Sin City and here I am free to slut myself to the hilt. I get up in the morning, scratch my head and wonder who I'm going to fuck next."
Freddie Mercury, Uncut 

Sunday, July 1, 2018

Hell

NYC manhole (Luca Nebuloni / Wikimedia Commons)

"Hell is New York City with all the escape hatches sealed."
James R. Frakes, The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said