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NEW YORK CITY (A)
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Photograph: Central Park

see "PLACES" for related links


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I never used to go to the beach because I come from
Brooklyn. We only had Coney Island, which was an
awful beach. There were rumors during the war that
enemy submarines — German subs — came into the
bathing area at Coney Island and were destroyed
by the pollution.
--Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg] (1935— )
American actor, screenwriter, and director.
_The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader_


Now he emerged from the hotel and walked up Eighth
Avenue. Two men were mugging an elderly lady. My
God, thought Weinstein, time was when one person
could handle that job. Some city. Chaos everywhere.
Kant was right: The mind imposes order. It also tells
you how much to tip. What a wonderful thing, to be
conscious! I wonder what people in New Jersey do.
--Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg] (1935— )
American actor, screenwriter, and director.
"No Kaddish for Weinstein"

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PART 2 (B)

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Photograph: View from the observation
deck of the Empire State Building.


The most irritating thing of all is that New Yorkers
really don't care what you say about their city.
--Russell Baker (1925— )
American journalist and columnist.
In Jon Winokur's _War Between the State_,"New York" [2004].

You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you
can never get Brooklyn out of the boy.
--W[illis] T[odhunter] Ballard (1903—1980)
{pseuds P. D. Ballard, Harrison Hunt, Neil MacNeil and John Shepherd}
American novelist.
_Say Yes to Murder_ [1942]

After 20 annual visits, I am still surprised each
time to return to see this giant asparagus bed
of alabaster and rose and green skyscrapers.
--Cecil Beaton (1904—1980)
English photographer and theatrical designer.
_It Gives Me Great Pleasure_ [1955]

New York, the hussy, was taken in sin again!
--Thomas Beer (1889—1940)
American writer.
_The Mauve Decade_ [1926]

New York makes one think of the collapse of civilization, about Sodom and
Gomorrah, the end of the world. The end wouldn't come as a surprise here.
Many people already bank on it.
--Saul Bellow (1915—2005)
Canadian novelist.
_Mr. Sammler's Planet_ [1970], pt. VI

Everybody ought to have a lower
East Side in their life.
--Irving Berlin (1888—1989)
American songwriter.
Quoted in "Vogue" magazine [1 November 1962].

-

It is a safe bet that few New Yorkers who work in Midtown or lower Manhattan realize that in July 1863 the streets they now walk every day were the scene of savage riots that left hundreds dead, countless buildings in smoldering ruin and the city in the grip of mobs demanding the overthrow of Abraham Lincoln. No set of events in New York's history was more terrifying or more aggressively forgotten.

The riots were sparked by the introduction of a military draft to fill the depleted ranks of the Union army. The poor were particularly angry at a provision that allowed any conscript to buy his way out of the draft for $300, a year's wages for many workingmen. Behind the riots lay a combustible mix of racism, poverty and class resentment that was fanned into violence by pro-Southern Democratic politicians and journalistic demagogues. Not all the rioters were Irish, but enough were to give the mobs a Hibernian cast, nearly erasing the reputation for patriotic sacrifice that Irish volunteers had earned on the battlefields of the Civil War.

[ . . . ]

Order was finally restored by the arrival of seasoned troops rushed north from the Gettysburg battlefield. In all, at least 500 men, women and children died that week, including about 175 African-Americans. Five thousand blacks — roughly 40% of the city's black population — may have been made homeless, many fleeing to Long Island and New Jersey.

--Fergus M. Bordewich,
reviewing Barnet Schecter's _The Devil's Own Work_
in _Wall Street Journal_ [18 January 2006].

-

New Yorkers are nice about giving you street
directions; in fact, they seem quite proud of
knowing where they are themselves.
--Katharine Brush (1902—1952)
American author.

As for New York City, it is a place apart. There is not
its match in any other country in the world.
--Pearl S. Buck (1892—1973)
American author noted for her novels of life in China;
winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature.



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PART 3 (C-G)

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Photograph: Coney Island


A rabbi walks into a bar with a frog on his shoulder. The bartender
says, "Good heavens, where did you get that?" The frog says, "In
Brooklyn. There's hundreds of them."

-

I am just coming out of five years of night, and this orgy of violent
lights gives me for the first time the impression of a new continent.
An enormous, 50-foot high Camel billboard; a GI with his mouth
wide open blows enormous puffs of real smoke. So much bad
taste hardly seems imaginable.
--Albert Camus (1913—1960)
French novelist, dramatist, and essayist who won
the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature.
[In 1946.]

-

Despite the fact that computer speeds are measured
in nanoseconds and picoseconds — one billionth and
one trillionth of a second, respectively — the smallest
interval of time known to man is that which occurs in
Manhattan between the traffic signal turning green
and the taxi driver behind you blowing his horn.
--Johnny Carson (1925—2005)
American comedian and host of The Tonight Show [1962—1992].


New York is an exciting town where something is
happening all the time, most of it unsolved.
--Johnny Carson (1925—2005)
American comedian and host of The Tonight Show [1962—1992].
(On NBC's The Tonight Show [25 September 1986].)

-

Give my regards to Broadway,
Remember me to Herald Square.
Tell all the gang at Forty-second Street,
That I will soon be there.
Whisper of how I'm yearning,
To mingle with that old time throng;
Give my regards to old Broadway,
And say that I'll be there e'er long.
--George M. Cohan (1878—1942)
American songwriter, dramatist, and producer.
"Give My Regards to Broadway" [1904 song]

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If Paris is the setting for a romance, New York
is the perfect city in which to get over one, to
get over anything. Here the lost _douceur de
vivre_ is forgotten and the intoxication of living
takes its place.
--Cyril Connolly (1903—1974)
English writer.
_Ideas and Places_ [1953].


That sinister Stonehenge of economic man,
Rockefeller Center.
--Cyril Connolly (1903—1974)
English writer.

-

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New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world.
--Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (1908—2004)
British-born American broadcater and journalist.


But America can still fire dull imaginations with
the prospect of a continent to explore. In my
experience, the only people immune to this
vision are those urban types to whom — as the
late Fred Allen used to say— 'everywhere outside
New York City is Bridgeport, Connecticut.' This
parochialism is common in all the big cities of
the East, but in New York City it amounts to a
kind of insensate village pride.
--Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (1908—2004)
British-born American broadcater and journalist.
_America_ [1973]

-

Fifty years hence automobile traffic will have entirely disappeared
from the surface thoroughfares of New York City, and people will
be shot through tubes like merchandise.
--Harvey W. Corbett
The American Institute of Architects [1925]

It is often said that New York is a city for only the
very rich and the very poor. It is less often said
that New York is also, at least for those of us who
came there from somewhere else, a city only for
the very young.
--Joan Didion (1934— )
American journalist and novelist.

New York is a different country. Maybe it ought
to have a separate government. Everybody
thinks differently, acts differently. They just
don't know what the hell the rest of the
United States is.
--Henry Ford (1863—1947)
American car manufacturer.
Quoted in "Reader's Digest" [October 1973].

I like New York in June,
How about you?
I like a Gershwin tune,
How about you?
I love a fireside when a storm is due.
How about you?
I like potato chips, moonlight and motor trips,
How about you?
--Ralph Freed (1907—1973)
Canadian-born lyricist.
"How About You?" {music by Burton Lane}
[In the 1941 film _Babes on Broadway_.]

To step from a train platform into Grand Central's extraordinary
concourse . . . is to feel in every fiber that you have arrived
someplace important, to know that you have come into a great
city and that great city has greeted you properly.
--Paul Goldberger
American journalist and architecture critic.

Prostitution is the only business that isn't
leaving the city.
--Roy Goodman (1930— )
American politician.
Speaking to the New York Press Club [24 October 1976].

Personally, 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 (1932— )
American comedian and social activist.
_From the Back of the Bus_ [1962]



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PART 4 (H-L)

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Photograph: The Flatiron Building


The city of right angles and tough, damaged people.
--Pete Hamill (1935— )
American journalist and author.
In the New York _Daily News_ [15 November 1978].

-

New York was the only city in the United States
that did not need a booster organization. . . .
In New York we simply assumed that we were
the best — in baseball as well as intellect, in
brashness and in subtlety, in everything — and
it would have been unseemly to remark upon
such an obvious fact.
--Michael Harrington (1928—1989)
American socialist and author.

-

We'll have Manhattan,
The Bronx and Staten
Island too.
It's lovely going through
The zoo.
It's very fancy
On old Delancey
Street, you know.
The subway charms us so
When balmy breezes blow
To and fro
And tell me what street
Compares with Mott Street
In July?
Sweet pushcarts gently gliding by.
The great big city's a wondrous toy
Just made for a girl and boy.
We'll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy.

[. . .]

We'll go to Coney
And eat baloney
On a a roll.
In Central Park we'll stroll,
Where our first kiss we stole,
Soul to soul.
...The city's clamor can never spoil
The dreams of a boy and goil.
We'll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy.

"Manhattan" [1925 song]
--Lorenz Hart (1895—1943)
American lyricist.
(Music by Richard Rodgers.)

-

The only credential the city [New York] asked was the boldness to
dream. For those who did, it unlocked its gates and its treasures,
not caring who they were or where they came from.
--Moss Hart (1904—1961)
American playwright.
_Act One_ [1959], pt. II

It couldn't have happened anywhere but
in little old New York.
--O. Henry [William Sydney Porter] (1862—1910)
American short-story writer.
"A Little Local Colour"
_Whirligigs_ [1910]

The renowned and ancient city of Gotham.
--Washington Irving (1783—1859)
American author, essayist, and travel book writer.
_Salmagundi_ [1807-1808]
(The first reference to New York City as Gotham.)

It’s a fickle town, a tough town. They getcha, boy.
They don’t let you escape with minor scratches and
bruises. They put scars on you here.
--Reggie Jackson (1946— )
American professional baseball player; elected
to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1993.

-

Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood
Hop a flight to Miami Beach
Or to Hollywood
But I'm talking a Greyhound
On the Hudson River Line
I'm in a New York state of mind

[. . . ]

It comes down to reality
And it's fine with me 'cause I've let it slide
Don't care if it's Chinatown or on Riverside
I don't have any reasons
I've left them all behind
I'm in a New York state of mind

--Billy Joel (William Martin Joel) (1949— )
American pianist, singer, and songwriter.
"New York State Of Mind" (1976 song)

-

No other city in the United States can divest
the visitor of so much money with so little
enthusiasm. In Dallas, they take it away
with gusto; in New Orleans, with a bow;
in San Francisco, with a wink and a grin.
In New York, you're lucky if you get a
grunt.
--Fletcher Knebel (1911—1993)
American journalist and author.
In "Look" magazine [26 March 1963].

This is New York, and there's no law against
being annoying.
--William Kunstler (1919—1995)
American civil liberties lawyer.

-

"The Sidewalks Of New York"

Down in front of Casey's old brown wooden stoop
On a summer's evening we formed a merry group;
Boys and girls together, we would sing and waltz
While the "Ginnie" played the organ
On the sidewalks of New York.

That's where Johnny Casey and little Jimmie Crowe,
With Jakey Krause, the baker, who always had the dough,
Pretty Nellie Shannon, with a dude as light as cork,
First picked up the waltz-step
On the sidewalks of New York.

Things have changed since those times,
Some are up in "G,"
Others they are wand'rers, but they all feel just like me.
They'd part with all they've got could they but once more walk
With their best girl and have a twirl
On the sidewalks of New York.

East side, west side, all around the town,
The tots sang "Ring-arosie," "London Bridge is falling down";
Boys and girls together, me and Mamie Rorke
Tripped the light fantastic
On the sidewalks of New York.

--Charles B. Lawlor (1852-1925) [words]
& James W. Blake (1862-1935) [music]
"The Sidewalks of New York" [1894 song]

-

A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe,
and fifty times, a beautiful catastrophe.
--Le Corbusier (1887—1965)
French architect.

If a day goes by and I haven't been slain, I'm happy.
--Carol Leifer (1956— )
American stand-up comedian and comedy writer.

New York attracts the most talented people in the
world in the arts and professions. It also attracts
them in other fields. Even the bums are talented.
--Edmund Love (1912—1990)
American military historian.
_Subways Are For Sleeping_ [1957]

-

Latin and soul music have been the traditional
musical forms in Spanish Harlem; Latin music
because it represents our own unique life-force,
and soul because for better or worse our destinies
are inextricably tied to that of the black nation
insofar as we live, work, and die with it.

In every slum in New York there were always
several singing groups who would stand on street
corners hunched up in a circle to avoid the ridicule
of passing adults and to make sure the harmony
was tight. Hands cupped over their ears to magnify
the sound, they would croon for hours in the sultry
ghetto summers or the dry cold of New York
winters.

They sang songs like "The Wind," "Valerie,"
"Florence," "Who Wrote the Book of Love,"
"Tears on my Pillow," and "Look in My Eyes"
— cuts that still crack the facades of some
of the meanest hustlers in Harlem.

--Felipe Luciano
_New York Magazine_

-



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PART 5 (M)

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Photograph: Statue of Liberty from the Staten Islamd Ferry.


There are only two things that ever make the
front page in Maine papers. One is a forest
fire and the other is when a New Yorker shoots
a moose instead of the game warden.
--Groucho [Julius Henry] Marx (1895—1977)
American film comedian.
In a letter to "Variety" [23 August 1934],
quoted in his _The Groucho Phile_ [1976].

New York City is a place where one can
weep on the sidewalk in perfect privacy.
--William Maxwell (1908—2000)
American writer and "New Yorker" editor.

A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere
else. The same with good manners.
--Mignon McLaughlin (1913—1983)
American journalist and author.
_The Second Neurotics Notebook_ [1966]

-

New York is simply inconceivably rich — richer than
all the capitals of Europe put together, with all the
lesser towns of America, save perhaps one or two,
thrown in for good measure. Is wealth merely
flamboyant and stupid? Not necessarily. It may also
be luxurious and beautiful. There are more beautiful
things in New York, in all probability, than in Paris
and London combined — and I am not forgetting
beautiful buildings. Is the new Telephone Building
a crib from the Germans? Then where is the match
for it in Berlin?
--H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880—1956)
American journalist and literary critic.
_The Baltimore Evening Sun_ [26 July 1926]


It costs a great deal of money, but New York is filled with people
who seem to have it. Are they rooked? I am inclined to doubt it.
They pay huge prices, and out of those huge prices come huge
profits, but they actually get something for their money. They
get a kind of luxury that is unobtainable in Europe, save as a
sort of miracle: the luxury of being surrounded by perfect and
unobtrusive slaves, human and mechanical. Nor is all that luxury
for the body alone. There were more orchestra concerts in New
York last winter than in Berlin. The town has more theaters, and
better ones, than a dozen Londons. It has at least five times as
many good restaurants as Paris. It has more night clubs, cabarets
and other such gilded dens than hell itself.
--H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880—1956)
American journalist and literary critic.
_The Baltimore Evening Sun_ [26 July 1926]

-

He speaks English with the flawless
imperfection of a New Yorker.
--Gilbert Millstein,
on restaurant owner Andrι Surmain,
quoted in "Esquire" magazine [January 1962].



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PART 6 (N-S)

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Photograph: Metropolitan Museum of Art


"Owed To New York" [1906]
by Byron Rufus Newton (1861—1938)
American poet.

Vulgar of manner, overfed,
Overdressed and underbred,
Heartless, Godless, hell's delight,
Rude by day and lewd by night;
Bedwarfed the man, o'ergrown the brute,
Ruled by boss and prostitute:
Purple-robed and pauper-clad,
Raving, rotting, money-mad;
A squirming herd in Mammomn's mesh,
A wilderness of human flesh;
Crazed by avarice, lust and rum,
New York, thy name's "Delirium."

-

It is one great purpose of the [Central] Park to
supply to the hundreds of thousands of tired
workers, who have no opportunity to spend their
summers in the country, a specimen of God’s
handiwork that shall be to them, inexpensively,
what a month or two in the White Mountains or
the Adirondacks is, at great cost, to those in
easier circumstances.
--Frederick Law Olmsted (1822—1903)
and Calvert Vaux (1824—1895),
report submitted with "Greensward" Plan,
awarded first prize by the Board of
Commissioners of the Central Park [28 April 1858].

The Great White Way.
--Albert Bigelow Paine (1861—1937)
American author and biographer.
Title of play [1901].

[Henry Bergh] was a notable defender of animals, and was
the founder, in 1866, of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals. This was the first humane society in
the United States, antedating — a strange commentary
— the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,
founded by another Fifth Avenue resident, Elbridge T.
Gerry, in 1874. Bergh was originally outraged by the
treatment of horses on New York's streets, especially
the overworked beasts that pulled the omnibuses and
stages.
--Jerry E. Patterson
_Fifth Avenue: The Best Address_ [1998]

Is New York the most beautiful city in the world?
It is not far from it. No urban nights are like the
nights there. I have looked down across the city from
high windows. It is then that the great buildings
lose reality and take on magical powers. Squares and
squares of flame, set and cut into the ether. Here
is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars
to our will.
--Ezra Pound (1885—1972)
American expatriate poet and critic.
[18 September 1912]

I do not go outdoors. Not more than I have to.
As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of living
in New York City is indoors. You want greenery?
Order the spinach.
--David Rakoff
_Fraud_ [2001]

Now folks, all I know is what little news I read every day in
the papers. I see where another wife, out on Long Island,
here in New York, shot her husband. Season's opened a
month earlier this year. Never a day passes in New York
without some innocent bystander being shot. You just
stand around this town long enough and be innocent, and
somebody's gonna shoot ya. One day there were four shot.
That's the best shootin' they ever done in this town. Hard
to find four innocent people in New York. That's why a
policeman never has to aim here. He just shoots up the
street at anyone: No matter who it hits it's the right one.
--Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (1879—1935)
American humorist and actor.
_Timely Topics_

When its 100 degrees in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles.
When it's 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it's still 72.
However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York,
and 72 in Los Angeles.
--Neil Simon (1927— )
American playwright.

Buildings will collapse, power plants will
stop generating electricity. Generals will
drop atomic bombs on their own populations.
Mad revolutionaries will run in the streets,
crying fantastic slogans. I have often thought
it would begin in New York. This metropolis
has all the symptoms of a mind gone berserk.
--Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904—1991)
Polish-American novelist who won the 1978
Nobel Prize for Literature.
_Collected Stories_ [1986], "The Cafeteria"

Visitors to New York will find that both exercise
and excitement may be had at a minimum of
expense through the simple practice of jay
walking. With only a little experience, they
may actually compete on even terms with
the native New Yorker.
--Sig Spaeth
_The Advantages of Jay Walking_ [1926]

It is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal.
Its politics are used to frighten children. Its traffic is
madness. Its competition is murderous. But there is one
thing about it — once you have lived in New York and it
has become your home, no other place is good enough.
--John Steinbeck (1902—1968)
American novelist.
In Kenneth T. Jackson, "100 Years of Being Really Big,"
_New York Times_ [28 December 1997].

Everywhere in the world, music enhances a hall, with
one exception: Carnegie Hall enhances the music.
--Isaac Stern (1920—2001)
Ukrainian-born violinist.

Notwithstanding, if he could be reincarnated and placed in a
New York subway — provided that he were bathed, shaved,
and dressed in modern clothing — it is doubtful that he would
attract any more attention than some of its other denizens.
(Of Neanderthal man.)
--William L. Strauss and A.J.E. Cave,
in "Quarterly Review of Biology" [Winter 1957].

...set off with George Anthon and Johnny to explore the
Central Park, which will be a feature of the city within
five years and a lovely place in A.D. 1900, when its
trees will have acquired dignity and appreciable diameters.
--George Templeton Strong (1820—1875)
American lawyer and diarist.
In _The Diary of George Templeton Strong_
[Found in the 1930s, first published 1952]

My face
a negative in the slate
window,
I sit
in a lit
corridor that races
through a dark
one.
--May Swenson (1919—1989)
American poet.
_Riding the 'A'_ [1963]



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PART 7 (T-W)

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Photograph: Trinity Church


-

Were all America like this fair city, and all, no,
only a small proportion of its population like the
friends we left there, I should say, that the land
was the fairest in the world.
--Frances Trollope (1780—1863)
English author [mother of Anthony Trollope.]
_Domestic Manners of the Americans_ [1832]


Situated on an island which I think it will one day cover,
it rises like Venice from the sea, and like that fairest
of cities in the days of her glory, receives into its lap
tribute of all the riches of the earth.
--Frances Trollope (1780—1863)
English author [mother of Anthony Trollope.]
_Domestic Manners of the Americans_ [1832]

-

I think my favorite sport in the Olympics is the one in which you
make your way through the snow, you stop, you shoot a gun, and
then you continue on. In most of the world, it is known as the
biathlon, except in New York City, where it is known as winter.
--Michael Ventre, "L.A. Daily News"

Skyscraper National Park.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922—2007)
American novelist and short-story writer.
_Slapstick_ [1975]

I'd rather be a lamppost in New York than the mayor of Chicago.
--Jimmy Walker (1881—1946)
Mayor of New York City [1925—1932].

-

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the
New York of the man or woman who was born here, who
takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its
turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is
the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured
by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there
is the New York of the person who was born somewhere
else and came to New York in quest of something. Of
these three trembling cities the greatest is the last — the
city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this
third city that accounts for New York's high-strung
disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the
arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters
give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity
and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether
it is a father arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery
store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town
in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed
by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with
a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes
no difference: each embraces New York with the intense
excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the
fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light
to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.
--E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (1899—1985)
American essayist and literary stylist.
_Here Is New York_ [1949]


New York is nothing like Paris; it is nothing like
London; and it is not Spokane multiplied by sixty, or
Detroit multiplied by four. It is by all odds the loftiest
of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in
the sky at the lowest moment of the depression. The
Empire State Building shot twelve hundred and fifty
feet into the air when it was madness to put out as
much as six inches of new growth. (The building has
a mooring mast that no dirigible has ever tied to; it
employs a man to flush toilets in slack times; it has
been hit by an airplane in a fog, struck countless times
by lightning, and been jumped off of by so many
unhappy people that pedestrians instinctively quicken
step when passing Fifth Avenue and 34th Street.)

Manhattan has been compelled to expand skyward
because of the absence of any other direction in which
to grow. This, more than any other thing, is responsible
for its physical majesty. It is to the nation what the
white church spire is to the village — the visible symbol
of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying that the
way is up. The summer traveler swings in over Hell
Gate Bridge and from the window of his sleeping car
as it glides above the pigeon lofts and back yards of
Queens looks southwest to where the morning light
first strikes the steel peaks of midtown, and he sees its
upward thrust unmistakable: the great walls and towers
rising, the smoke rising, the heat not yet rising, the
hopes and ferments of so many awakening millions
rising — this vigorous spear that presses heaven hard.

It is a miracle that New York works at all. The
whole thing is implausible. Every time the residents
brush their teeth, millions of gallons of water must be
drawn from the Catskills and the hills of Westchester.
When a young man in Manhattan writes a letter to his
girl in Brooklyn, the love message gets blown to her
through a pneumatic tube — pfft — just like that. The
subterranean system of telephone cables, power lines,
steam pipes, gas mains and sewer pipes is reason
enough to abandon the island to the gods and the wee-
viIs. Every time an incision is made in the pavement,
the noisy surgeons expose ganglia that are tangled
beyond belief. By rights New York should have
destroyed itself long ago, from panic or fire or rioting
or failure of some vital supply line in its circulatory
system or from some deep labyrinthine short circuit.
Long ago the city should have experienced an insoluble
traffic snarl at some impossible bottleneck. It should
have perished of hunger when food lines failed for a
few days. It should have been wiped out by a plague
starting in its slums or carried in by ships' rats. It
should have been overwhelmed by the sea that licks at
it on every side. The workers in its myriad cells should
have succumbed to nerves, from the fearful pall of
smoke-fog that drifts over every few days from Jersey,
blotting out all light at noon and leaving the high
offices suspended, men groping and depressed, and the
sense of world's end. It should have been touched in
the head by the August heat and gone off its rocker.

--E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (1899—1985)
American essayist and literary stylist.
_Here Is New York_ [1949]


The city has never been so uncomfortable, so
crowded, so tense. Money has been plentiful and New
York has responded. Restaurants are hard to get into;
businessmen stand in line for a Schrafft's luncheon as
meekly as idle men used to stand in soup lines. (Pros-
perity creates its bread lines, the same as depression.)
The lunch hour in Manhattan has been shoved ahead
half an hour, to 12:00 or 12:30, in the hopes of beating the
crowd to a table. Everyone is a little emptier at quitting
time than he used to be. Apartments are festooned with
No Vacancy signs. There is standing-room-only in Fifth
Avenue buses, which once reserved a seat for every
paying guest. The old double-deckers are disappearing
— people don't ride just for the fun of it anymore.

At certain hours on certain days it is almost impossible
to find an empty taxi and there is a great deal of
chasing around after them. You grab a handle and open
the door, and find that some other citizen is entering
from the other side. Doormen grow rich blowing their
whistles for cabs; and some doormen belong to no door
at all — merely wander about through the streets, opening
cabs for people as they happen to find them. By
comparison with other less hectic days, the city is
uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers
temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience
— if they did they would live elsewhere.

The subtlest change in New York is something people
don't speak much about but that is in everyone's
mind. The city, for the first time in its long history,
is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger
than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island
fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges,
turn the underground passages into lethal
chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation
of mortality is part of New York now: in the
sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines
of the latest edition.

All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn
fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat
more concentrated because of the concentration of the
city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a
certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted
dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must
hold a steady, irresistible charm.

It used to be that the Statue of Liberty was the sign-
post that proclaimed New York and translated it for all
the world. Today Liberty shares the role with Death.
Along the East River, from the razed slaughterhouses
of Turtle Bay, as though in a race with the spectral
flight of planes, men are carving out the permanent
headquarters of the United Nations — the greatest
housing project of them all. In its stride, New York
takes on one more interior city, to shelter, this time, all
governments, and to clear the slum called war. New
York is not a capital city — it is not a national capital or
a state capital. But it is by way of becoming the capital
of the world. The buildings, as conceived by architects,
will be cigar boxes set on end. Traffic will flow in a new
tunnel under First Avenue. Forty-seventh Street will
be widened (and if my guess is any good, trucks will
appear late at night to plant tall trees surreptitiously,
their roots to mingle with the intestines of the town).
Once again the city will absorb, almost without showing
any sign of it, a congress of visitors. It has already
shown itself capable of stashing away the United
Nations — a great many of the delegates have been
around town during the past couple of years, and the
citizenry has hardly caught a glimpse of their coattails
or their black Homburgs.

This race — this race between the destroying planes
and the struggling Parliament of Man — it sticks in all
our heads. The city at last perfectly illustrates both the
universal dilemma and the general solution, this riddle
in steel and stone is at once the perfect target and the
perfect demonstration of nonviolence, of racial broth-
erhood, this lofty target scraping the skies and meeting
the destroying planes halfway, home of all people and
all nations, capital of everything, housing the delibera-
tions by which the planes are to be stayed and their
errand forestalled.

A block or two west of the new City of Man in Turtle Bay
there is an old willow tree that presides over an interior
garden. It is a battered tree, long suffering and much
climbed, held together by strands of wire but beloved
of those who know it. In a way it symbolizes the city: life
under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the
midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the sun.
Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow
of the planes, I think: 'This must be saved, this particular
thing, this very tree.' If it were to go, all would go — this
city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which
not to look upon would be like death.

--E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (1899—1985)
American essayist and literary stylist.
_Here Is New York_ [1949]


For six days of the week we find it no trouble at all to drive a car
about town. New York's traffic, however furious, is predictable;
and her taxis, even in moments of great verve, are accurate. For
six days driving is a pleasure, but on Sundays all is changed: the
town, we have discovered, fills up with visiting motorists who have
come in from the Oranges and the Pelhams to see a movie. They
make driving a hazard almost too great to take on. The minute a
red light shows, they stop dead, imperiling everybody behind. The
instant a taxi seems about to sideswipe them, they swerve
desperately over and sideswipe somebody else, usually us. When
they are confronted by a mass of pedestrians at the crossing, instead
of charging boldly in and scattering them in the orthodox manner by
sheer bluster, (which is the only way), they creep timidly up blowing
their horns, which lulls the pedestrians and ties up everything. They
are easy to spot, these visiting motorists; and the only thing to do,
we have found, is to nudge them frequently on the bumper, and
chivy them about.

--E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (1899—1985)
American essayist and literary stylist.
"Visiting Motorists, December 2, 1933" in
Rebecca M. Dale (ed.) _E.B. White: Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976_ [1990].


A plan to build an outdoor dining terrace at the headquarters
of the United Nations, in Turtle Bay, has been abandoned
because of "atmospheric conditions" — which is a diplomatic
term for sootfall. We happen to be a student of atmospheric
conditions in Turtle Bay, having dwelt there happily for many
years, and we can testify that sootfall does not preclude terrace
life if you have any guts. Our own terrace — a small, decadent
structure a few blocks from the U. N. — is a howling success as
far as we are concerned, and we are in a good position to give
the U. N. a few helpful hints on terrace living under heavy
sootfall. First of all, you have to get an awning. The awning is
not to ward off soot but merely to give the terrace dweller a
cozy feeling. It soon catches fire from cigarettes tossed out of
upper windows, but the fire is a clubby affair and you get to
know your neighbors (a valuable experience for the United
Nations, if you ask us). Next, you've got to have a glass-top table
and some iron chairs with little thin detachable cushions that
fade. Every time you come indoors from the terrace, even if
only for a moment, you pick up your cushion and heave it
ahead of you through the open door into the living room. If you
leave a drink standing on the table to go inside and answer the
phone, you simply drape your handkerchief over the glass, and
when you come back you dump the soot out of the handkerchief
and resume drinking. If the drinks are properly mixed, the soot
can lie roundabout, deep and crisp and even, and nobody will
mind. Soot is the topsoil of New York, giving plants a foothold,
or soothold, on ramparts far above street level. We have a five-
year-old ailanthus, a lovely tree, rooted in soot, and we are
shocked and discouraged at the capitulation of the United
Nations in the face of this mild threat — an organization created
to bring peace to the world yet scared to death that some tiny
foreign particle is going to fall into its drink.

--E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (1899—1985)
American essayist and literary stylist.
"Coping With Sootfall, September 11, 1954" in
Rebecca M. Dale (ed.) _E.B. White: Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976_ [1990].


In a half-deserted street, on a day of high wind, a discarded
Christmas tree came bearing down on us, rolling rapidly.
"Tumbleweed!" we muttered, dodging to one side, and were
suddenly transported to the Western plains and experienced
again, after so many years, the excitement of our first
meeting with the weed. New York seems able to reproduce
almost any natural phenomenon if it's in the mood.

--E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (1899—1985)
American essayist and literary stylist.
"Tumbleweed, February 23, 1957" in
Rebecca M. Dale (ed.) _E.B. White: Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976_ [1990].

-

The beautiful city, the city of hurried
and sparkling waters!
The city of spires and masts!
The City nested in bays! My city!
--Walt Whitman (1819—1892)
American poet.
"Leaves of Grass"

A little strip of an island with a row of well-fed
folks up and down the middle, and a lot of hungry
folks on each side.
--Harry Leon Wilson (1867—1939)
American novelist and playwright.
_The Spenders_ [1902]

-

All its inhabitants ascend to heaven right after their
deaths, having served their full time in hell right on
Manhattan Island.
_The Bernard Bulletin_ [22 September 1967]

-

Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately deserves.
Even when we had Penn station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean.
We want and deserve tin-can architecture and a tin-horn culture.
And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build out
but by those we have destroyed.
--"The New York Times" [1963]




Click picture to ZOOM
PART 8

.
.

Photograph: Woolworth Building


The first thing that strikes a stranger
in the Big Apple is a taxicab.
--anon.


THE BUDDING BRONX

Der spring is sprung
Der grass is riz;
I wonder where dem boidies is?

Der little boids is on der wing;
Ain't dat absoid?
Der little wings is on der boid!

--anon.




Click picture to ZOOM

Photograph: Times Square



Click picture to ZOOM
PART 10 (END)

.
.

Photograph: Downtown skyline


TRIVIA: The 1,340-foot-long wall that gave New York's Wall
Street its name was only 12 feet tall. It was erected in
1653 by Dutch colonists to protect against their enemies.

Photographs of the people, the city,
and the life of New York:
http://www.quarlo.com/121602.html

-----

Knickerbocker (noun)
Somebody descended from the early Dutch settlers of New York


end page



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