First-time visitors to New York usually come with wide eyes and high expectations. The city does not generally disappoint, even if it frustrates. Few places in the US are as entertaining as New York. No matter what it is you are after, you will find it: great theater, marvelous museums, luxurious hotels, fascinating history, exciting nightlife, sumptuous dining. The only thing that might be difficult to find here is peace and quiet. But you can find some of that too, if you stay in a high-rise hotel far above the teeming streets, venture into the upper reaches of Central Park, or walk out onto the terrace overlooking the Hudson River at the Cloisters.
Pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge
Richard Nowitz/Apa Publications
At first it can all be a little overwhelming: about 13,000 taxis, more than 6,000 city buses, some 6,400 miles (10,300km) of streets, nearly 600 miles (960km) of bike lanes, 578 miles (930km) of waterfront, 18,000 restaurants, and 90,000 hotel rooms. However, once you get over the crowded streets and the wailing sirens, you can start to see that there is more to New York than its tourist attractions and museums. It is a place where people live. Sit in one of New York’s 1,700 parks and watch them go by, or take a stroll through the maze of picturesque Greenwich Village streets.
The city’
New Yorkers refer to Manhattan as ‘the city’, even as they identify the other boroughs by name. For addresses, ‘New York, New York’ means Manhattan.
A city transformed
If anything characterizes New York today, it is how much the city has raised itself up from the darker days of the 1970s and 1980s. Crime has maintained levels New Yorkers had not seen since the 1960s, and the city is generally cleaner and more efficient than it has been for quite a while. As a result, both tourists and business people are flocking here in numbers not seen for years (though there was a perceptible – if only temporary – downturn in room reservations after the appalling events of September 11, 2001). Alongside the flourishing hotel trade, good new (and sometimes not very expensive) restaurants are also opening up right and left, which is great news for visitors and residents alike.
The 9/11 effect
Every American over a certain age can tell you the story of where they were and what they were doing when President John Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Now, every New Yorker can tell you where they were and what they were doing the morning of September 11, 2001 when two terrorist-hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center. The average New Yorker has emerged from the tragedy of September 11 feeling no less rushed and impatient about day-to-day life, but certainly less invincible and far more vulnerable.
If you want to see an example of how the city can reinvent itself, just look at Times Square. Until the early 1990s, the ‘square’ was filled with pornographic theaters, adult bookstores, and abandoned buildings. The Port Authority bus terminal was filled with hustlers and touts, and 42nd Street was really not a place one wanted to be after dark. Today Times Square is still choked, but with new, high-profile office buildings and hotels, refurbished Broadway theaters, shiny entertainment complexes, and tens of thousands of tourists. The adult theaters and bookstores have been banished for the most part, and media giants like MTV and Condé Nast have reclaimed the space along with stores such as Toys ‘R’ Us and well-attended attractions including Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Some New Yorkers lament that Times Square is now just one big theme park, but the truth is that the area has never been more vibrant.
Not that the story is uniformly positive. The New York area has some of the highest unemployment and poverty rates in the country. The disparity between the rich (who are quite rich indeed) and the poor is greater than ever. Most of the new housing being built in the city will be affordable only to those with the highest incomes. Nevertheless, almost every New York neighborhood, from the South Bronx to Washington Heights, from the upscale Upper East Side to Jackson Heights in Queens, has a good story to tell.
Times Square
iStockphoto
A heady mix
It is difficult for mere mortals to live in such a complicated, crowded, and expensive city, so people can easily lose their tempers. But, for a place as large and diverse as New York City undoubtedly is, everyone gets along pretty well. The five boroughs – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island – have a total population of around 8.2 million. Brooklyn is the most populous, and Brooklyn and Queens each have more residents than Manhattan. There are more Italians than in Venice, more Irish than in Dublin, and more Jews than in Jerusalem. David Dinkins, a former mayor, was fond of calling New York a ‘gorgeous mosaic.’
As a hub for immigration since colonial days, New York has always welcomed the world to sit at its table. Today they still arrive in large numbers, searching for wealth, or happiness, or freedom, or just a job; they come with an entrepreneurial spirit and perhaps nothing else. But they make the mixture richer, by bringing their language and traditions, their likes and dislikes. New York may not be a melting pot, but it is definitely a heady mix.
New Yorker relaxing
Britta Jaschinski/Apa Publications
By the end of their first trip to New York, most visitors are hooked. Nothing is quite as exhilarating as walking the crowded streets of Midtown for the first time, or encountering works of art you’ve only read about in books, or seeing the Statue of Liberty looming over you from the ferry dock. Or even just strolling through Central Park on a blustery winter afternoon. Whatever you do, don’t be intimidated. Walk purposefully, and you’ll fit in just fine. Beneath their protective mantle, New Yorkers can sometimes feel just as overwhelmed as tourists. But you’d never know it by looking at them.