INTRODUCTION TO NEW YORK
New York isn’t the capital of the United States, or even of New York State, but it just may be the capital of the world?— New Yorkers will certainly claim as much. Not a shy bunch, they’ll reel off the numbers: eight million people speaking 130-plus languages; 321 square miles (831 square kilometers) of everything you’d ever want, at any hour of the day or night.
Point out what an impossible place the city is, how all that concrete “would make a stone sick,” as Nikita Khrushchev noted, and New Yorkers won’t disagree. In fact, they’ll regale you with stories of how bad it can be: the dirt, the heat, the humidity, the crowds! But there is pride in these stories, and not a little wonder. Because the subtext is always that people prevail, and what’s more, they get to do it in one of the most compelling places on earth.
New York is larger than life, a city of myth and legend. Still, much of what you’ve heard is true: The buildings are taller, the cab drivers feistier, the hipsters hipper, and the pace is either exhausting or exhilarating, depending on your appetite for adrenaline. It’s the country’s center of commerce?— more than two billion shares are traded daily at the frenetic New York Stock Exchange?— and its cultural heart. It draws people whose talent, ambition, and eccentricity are too big for any other place.
Much of what makes New York New York happens at street level, so the best way to see the city is on foot. You can walk from the Empire State Building to Times Square and then to Central Park without breaking a sweat, and the street-corner spectacles you’ll witness along the way will rival and maybe surpass the better-known sights. And it’s on the street that you’ll be swept up in New York’s controlled chaos; it’s a city of jaywalkers who surge en masse across broad avenues, each alone in a crowd.
The city itself, with its renowned architecture and unique physical spaces, can be astounding. The experiences, however, are what go home with you, whether you’re taking in a Broadway show or swirling a cocktail from a penthouse bar on top of a building bigger than any in your hometown. As for New Yorkers themselves, collectively they are a phalanx of humanity; but take the time to talk to the cab driver from Pakistan, the Japanese student with orange hair, or the street vendor from Brazil, and you’ll discover individuals who have had experiences you’ve previously only imagined.
Whether it’s your first visit or your fifteenth, any vacation in New York will quickly come to resemble the city itself: densely packed, a little dizzying, and guaranteed to leave you wanting more. So go ahead?— soak up some of the city’s moxie and walk the New York walk. If your feet get tired, flag down one of the 13,000 legal (and thousands more gypsy) cabs, or enter into the 660-mile subway system, which is surprisingly clean, cheap, and efficient. Bundle up in the winter, peel down in the summer, and enjoy the mild swing months of May, June, September, and October. But get out on the street. Revel in the Naked City, and star in a few New York stories of your own.
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