Welcome to New York City, the greatest city in the world. Like a fine mosaic, its many fragments and colors combine into a masterpiece. Micro-neighborhoods offer endless tastes of other worlds. Looking for excellent fried dumplings? Take the subway to Canal Street and walk to Chinatown. The latest Latin beats serenade the streets of Spanish Harlem, and K-town is a 10 block tour of Korea. Each community offers its own unique features—followed by several Duane Reade’s on every corner. The great thing about these neighborhoods in a city of 9 million people is that you can be as much a part of the community or fade into the nameless, faceless oblivion of anonymity that sheer numbers offer.
New York City offers the finest entertainment, and not just as the world’s largest theater district. It offers its own drama, diversions, and amusement on its very streets. It is a people watcher’s paradise where at any hour or any locale you are not alone. For the sado-masochistic there is the homegrown domestic disputes happening (often late at night after the kids have been put to bed). For those seeking comedy, check out the bars towards closing when hopes and dreams are realized, crushed, or betrayed in exchange for stupidity. During the day there are eternal parades of cute dogs to pet, babies to coo at, and cute couples to spark nostalgia, jealousy, or a bittersweet concoction of both. For those with the taste for the extreme, skateboarders launch aerial assaults at Union Square, break dancers defy gravity, and street performers make you wonder if you should quit your day job.
Developers of New York must have suffered from attention deficit disorder because there are constant stimulants pulling in every direction. The trendy bar in the village pulls at the heartstrings, while the frat bar on the Upper West Side is adored by your wallet (and liver). Dinner dates can be made at Italian, Japanese, Mexican, or any other style food within blocks. You just have to make up your mind. As one of the epicenters of culture you have the potential to live here your entire life without visiting all of its museums.
The most expensive city reminds you that poverty and wealth are intertwined and that the American Dream can be recognized or broken. How many homeless people have you seen sitting in front of the Starbucks, sleeping on the benches of New York’s beautiful parks, or coming to on the stoops of extravagant churches? For each Horatio Algers the city quixotically epitomizes in the restaurants, Starbucks, Fifth Avenue, and skyscrapers there are the struggling masses, who remind us that the coin does not always land on heads. There is a constant dichotomy of prosperity and poverty, hope and despair, sophistication and vulgarity, culture and coarseness, all of which asserts that in New York City there is never a dull moment.
To some New York is a cesspool of corruption (thank you Eliot Spitzer), degradation, overabundance, and waste. Noises, slow tourists, speeding cars, and the reek of rotting garbage at times fill the streets. Like all cities it has its caveats, but those who have lived here have come to realize New York for what it is: a melting pot of culture, an everyday adventure, a place of opportunity. As a New Yorker for a year, I have found that even the sirens have began to serenade me, my lullaby lulling me to sleep. And as I drift to sleep, I end my day comforted by one notion: New York City is my home.
–Evan Piekara
2 Comments
October 2, 2008 at 11:36 pm
An Amazing picture was just polaroi’d in my mind. Beautiful. Thank you for this.
April 14, 2009 at 12:55 am
I am doing a report on New York because i was born there. One of m topics is why is New York City the best City in the world? This article helped me put it into words thank you.
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