Gross and Strange

"He did what any real New Yorker would: ignore the gross and strange, because in a city like this, it was the only thing there was."
Molly Prentiss, Tuesday Nights in 1980

No Pity

North Williamsburg

"New York, a place for the deranged and wrecked and bold, a place where pity couldn't exist if it wanted to because there would have to be too much of it."

Molly Prentiss, Tuesday Nights in 1980

Being New York

North Williamsburg

"New York was being New York. The hot asphalt was steaming, the little dogs were being toted or followed by their eccentrically dressed masters, the clothes were bright and skimpy, the smell was sewer and candied nuts, the newspapers were cracking open at the café tables, the sunglasses were enormous, the scrawls on the walls seemed to vibrate."
Molly Prentiss, Tuesday Nights in 1980

Vital Appendage

"From above, Manhattan is just a lonely arm, squirting and bending from the big body of Brooklyn. It is not until you are inside it that you see it is the vital appendage, the hand that squeezes at the rest of the world, the muscle where everything that's anything is made."
Molly Prentiss, Tuesday Nights in 1980

The Beginning

"This is how New York began. A willingness, and then a pause. An attitude, a confidence, and then this: cracked walls and huge bugs, your first cigarette, the taste of your own fear. Fear not for what might be in store but for what might not be, that your bravery, which looked so big in your hometown, would not amount to anything, that New York City would not deliver on its promise, for something grand and glamorous, unknown and unknowable."
Molly Prentiss, Tuesday Nights in 1980