Monday, December 31, 2018

Occam's Razor

Times Square subway station


"What makes New Year's so unpleasant is an Occam's Razor of a reason: It’s at midnight. Midnight is a terribly inconvenient time to have a holiday in New York. Part of the magnetism of the city is the ease with which one can get from Point A to Point B and the freedom to be completely drunk when doing so. It would be so much better for everyone if we could just move New Year's to 8 p.m. or 2 a.m. — some logical hour where the threat of being in transit at the precise moment that the next 12 months of your life are christened does not loom so large."
Sloane Crosley, The New York Times

Friday, December 28, 2018

Tenacity and Energy



"There's a tenacity and energy here. There's a hardiness you need as well to live in New York, simply because of the conditions alone. You gotta have your wits about you."
Emily Blunt, Evening Standard

Thursday, December 27, 2018

Overrated



"New York is a very much overrated burg. It merely keeps its rep by its press agents' continually harping on the wonder of it. There isn't a town west of the Mississippi of any size that can't show you a better time."
Harry Truman, Dear Bess

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Southern Exposure



"New York is a large town on the west coast of the Atlantic ocean, and is connected to America by the Brooklyn Bridge and the 14th street ferry so that as many people as possible from  New Jersey and Des Moines Iowa can get here at the same time. Southern exposure and pleasant hours."
William Faulkner, quoted in William Faulkner: Self-Presentation and Performance

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Most Wonderful Time

Rockefeller Center (Michael Vadon / Wikimedia Commons)

"While there's no place like home, there's also no place like Christmastime in New York City. There's something so magical about being in The City That Never Sleeps during the most wonderful time of the year."
Rachel Chapman, Elite Daily

Monday, December 24, 2018

Niceville



"Normally New Yorkers had a different two-word greeting for one another, but today it was nothing but 'Merry Christmas!' from Yankee Stadium to the Statue of Liberty. Even the urgent blat of the car horns was more subdued than usual. It was, Caroline noticed, like some other place entirely: Niceville. Politetown. Haveanicedayton."
Kyle Smith, Caroline in the City

Friday, December 21, 2018

Dirty Word



"New York is a dirty word. Word. There's something that goes down in New York called Opposite Side of the Street Parking. What it basically means is that fools have to move their cars like every other day in order to make way for the street sweepers. You know, the big single person-manned monsters with the big furry wheel up front; the blasted thing spins and scoops up bottle caps and condoms and adds scraps from loose-leaf notebooks, the remnants of what's left of the chaos that comes with living in the epicenter of all galaxies."
Sacha Jenkins, Bombshell

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Harlem



"Overcrowded and exploited politically and economically, Harlem is the scene and symbol of the Negro's perpetual alienation in the land of his birth."
Ralph Ellison, The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

New York Sunrise



"New York is a bit frightening, you know, a bit too big and tall and loud, but the sunrise made it better. It kind of put New York in its place."
Wendela Lumley, Vermilion Skies

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Party All Night Long



"You're new in New York
So look at the view
Stop standing around
While the city flies past you
New York never sleeps
Party all night long
Get up on your feet
Dance from night til dawn."
Anna Adams, A French Girl in New York

Monday, December 17, 2018

Women of New York

East 18th


"The characteristic aspect of the women of New York is that they are in motion, perpetually active, and that one would have to photograph them at a speed used for ballet dancers or athletes."
Anaïs NinThe Diary of Anaïs Nin

Friday, December 14, 2018

Big Monster

East 18th


"New York is like one big monster, and every day, on the back end of this monster, lots of broken dreams and empty pockets are blowing out that way."
Morten Angelo, Jauntful

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Magical Cocktail


"I can walk the New York City streets for ever. The stores blink with Christmas lights, and gigantic white snowflakes dangle high above the street. It is a magical cocktail of festivity and consumption that only New York ever pulls off."
Polly Williams, A Good Girl Comes Undone

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Central Park



"Along Central Park West, the taller apartment buildings jutted over the trees in solitary fashion like commuters on a railroad platform in the hours before the morning rush. The sky was Tiepolo blue.  After a week of sudden cold, the leaves had turned, creating a bright orange canopy that stretched all the way to Harlem. It was almost as if the park was a jewel box and the sky was the lid. You had to give Olmsted credit: He was perfectly right to have bulldozed the poor to make way for it."
Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Romance and Depravity



"New York is a place where romance and depravity co-exist — as do cold steel and soft beauty, danger and desire, and some of the best art the world has produced."
Kay Larson, New York Magazine

Monday, December 10, 2018

December in New York

Radio City Music Hall (Wikimedia Commons)


"It is December that is New York's month for people of all ages. The lights are a big part of it. Because night comes in midafternoon at this season, long before quitting time, the office towers blaze with light. A million windows lit in the city's gigantic file-cabinet towers work something like a miracle. By daylight these overbearing office boxes are often monstrous. In a December midafternoon, however, even the nightmarish architecture of Sixth Avenue becomes beautiful."
Russell Baker, The New York Times

Friday, December 7, 2018

Falling in Love

Dumbo

"Falling in love with New York or in New York is risky. Only the brave need apply.” 
Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Thursday, December 6, 2018

Creative People

Fifth Avenue


"New York is like a dysfunctional relationship. I’ve been wanting to move for at least 5 of the 12 years I’ve lived here. I crave to be somewhere with lot’s of sky, and less people, but I can’t seem to leave. The concentration of creative people is what’s kept me here."
Roeg Cohen, Beautiful Bizarre

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Training Ground

Central Park

"The problems of New York, and what makes it so explosive and so powerful a myth, is that it is a training ground where the rest of the West can read its future."
Jerome Charyn, Conversations with Jerome Charyn

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Way In

Gantry Plaza


"New York is all about finding a way in; once you’re there, they’ll have to carry you out."
Jonathan Galassi, Words Without Borders

Monday, December 3, 2018

Weird

Broadway


"I figured: It's New York; people are allowed to be weird."
Maggie (Najat Arkadan Washington), Law & Order: SVU