The Back of the Bus

East 59th

"I've always favored New York 'cause this is one city where you don't have to ride in the back of the bus. Not that they're so liberal -- it's just that in New York, nobody moves to the back of the bus!"
Dick Gregory, From The Back of the Bus

Substitute for Paris

Bowling Green Park

"The very idea of being in New York was dreamlike, for like many young Negroes at the time, I thought of it as the freest of American cities and considered Harlem as the site and symbol of Afro-American progress and  hope. I was both young and bookish enough to think of Manhattan as my substitute for Paris and of Harlem as a place for Left Bank excitement."
Ralph Ellison, Going to the Territory

Multicultural

McSorley's Old Ale House

"The U.S. is ahead of the curve in terms of dealing with multi-cultural issues and New York is at the front of the United States' curve... New York is where you have the Irish bar with the Indian guy tending bar."
Edward Norton, in Univercity Magazine