"Start Spreading the News........" New York City by Ramonq

click: New York, New York music

A month in New York was not enough. I do intend to return one day, as it is the greatest city on earth. So much has been written about this city, that "my 2 cents worth" is just a "drop in the ocean". Oops, cliches dropped left and right! New York is just so popular that it has turned into a cliche!! This city has influenced every person in this planet directly and indirectly including. It's the world financial capital; where the United Nations is established; the arbiter of tastes and fashion, top English literary capital etc. etc. To be walking the streets of NYC can be quite electric. I'm not exaggerating! This is the Alpha of all alpha cities oveshadowing London, Tokyo,, or Paris. Maybe I'm exaggerating this time.

Trinity church 5th Ave

Arriving in New York City for the uninitiated can be quite daunting. This is America's most densely populated city where more than 15 million inhabitants live in the island of Manhattan and its surrounding burroughs, and millions more commute from other areas of New York State, New Jersey and even further afield. New York City is a behemoth which has captured the minds of Americans and the whole world. One can see from the crush of rushing pedestrians on Fifth Avenue, one of the city's main avenue, that this is a city on a mission. Men and women on serious business attires, yet wearing running shoes, scurry in all directions under the shadow of massive skyscrapers, completely oblivious to poor lost souls like me who would be at pains to decide as to where one would start exploring the city. The frenetic chase for the almighty dollar gets even faster as one approaches the financial centre near Wall Street, so I'd suggest to leave section that later, and start with a more leisurely walk around the vast Central Park.

Midtown skyscrapers

This is a city that's very much on the global radar, and in fact, its mythical importance dominates the American psyche, partly owed to the grand skyscrapers that dominate the skyline. New York's famous skyline has been organically changing since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Even in the early 1900's the city has already started to build upwards whilst the rest of the world were still contructing vertically-challenged belle-epoque edifices. New York started this trend of expanding vertically, now de-rigeur in many modern cities, and reached note-worthiness in skyscraper-construction technique during the 1930's, by erecting the Empire State Building, then the world tallest building and still is among the world's highest. One cannot be unamazed at the preponderance of ornate concrete skyscrapers that were built in the early 20th century. This can be clearly observed around Mid-town Manhattan where the Empire State Building is cloistered with other notables such as the Rockefeller Centre and the spectacular Chrysler Building, a shiny building dominated by steel. Many more nondescript skyscrapers were built during the 1950-60's economic boomtime and a fine example of this genre is the United Nation's building. The city is stilll shooting skywards with new post-modern skyscrapers made of glass and chrome. Such is the relentless construction that Manhattan's skyline is constantly changing but probably not as quick as Shanghai or Hong Kong nowadays.

Defaced skyline

This obsession to grow skyward has been shattered by the events of September 11, now very much on the minds of New Yorkers. The imposing Twin Towers which has dominated the skyline of lower Manhattan is now gone and for some reason, the city looks vulnerable and incomplete. Many New Yorkers feel lost about the obliteration of the two towers, even though they were much maligned when they existed. You see, New York's identity is tied to its skyline and if a dominant one disappears, the city feels like it has lost a family member. To appreciate what I'm talking about, I'd recommend seeing the city's skyline from the mouth of the Hudson River and compare the current view with a photo when the towers were still standing. Sad to say, New York's skyline looks like, dare I say, Chicago, without the Twin Towers arrogantly dominating over the surrounding hirghrises.

It's hard to imagine that the city was once a colonial backwater with dirtroads, log cabins and Native Americans living in the peripheral forests. The Dutch first discovered the harbour in the 17th century and pitched a "one-horse town" called New Amsterdam. British colonizers took over the town and began using its fine harbour as the British Empire's gateway to North America. As more and more European settlers decided to stay in their first port of entry, the town's population grew and it soon became an important mercantile city on America's Atlantic Coast. Trade between Europe and America grew rapidly and the young city was right in the thick of it. After America became independent and the dawn of industrial revolution arrived, New York's economic power grew rapidly. The inland pioneering towns of the United States were very much reliant on goods being shipped to and from New York City. Trade made the local financial institutions expand and grow. During those prosperous earlier times an ambitious urban planning and infrastructure development were implemented and much of the city's layout that we see today were spawned by the early planners. The Central Park, the subways, the wide avenues and streets interlocked by a grid pattern were put into place back then. By the early 20th century, New York City has never looked back, and the rest is history.

Veiw from Central Parkl

The city is made up of burroughs which have personalities of their own. The island of Manhattan is where the city proper is located and this is where most of New York City's touristic sights are located. The incredibly vast Central Park lies in the middle of the island like a rectangular hole in a hollowed-out book and it divides Manhattan into the Eastside and Westside. For a mega-city, it's astonishingly difficult to get lost in New York because of its layout. The northern part of Manhattan is called Uptown, the middle part is Midtown and of course the southern portion is Downtown. North-South roadways are called Avenues and the East-West ones are called Streets that are mostly numerically christened. The famous avenues are Broadway and Park Avenue and I walked on the entire length of Manhattan to get to know the city initially. The character of the neighbourhood changes as one walks up or down these avenues.

Finance District (Wall Street)

Some of the more famous neighbourhoods are Greenwich-SoHo (South of Houston St) which is the artistic district. Then there's Wall Street, the yuppie finance district in the southern end of Manhattan; Upper East Side with it's well-appointed multi-million dollar apartments; Upper Westside which is the university area and where many Latinos from diverse places as Guadalajara, Lima, San Juan, Guatemala, Buenos Aires, or La Paz have arrived to live; the black neighbourhood of Harlem; the ethnic districts of Little Italy, that reminds you of Rome and the Hong Kong-like Chinatown. Of course, there's the Time Square area, New York's fabled entertainment district. Manhattan itself has so much things to offer, travellers need a lot of time to get to know this city.

The metropolitan city has spilled out of the confines of Manhattan island and has sprawled to the neighbouring burroughs such as Queens and Long Island to the East, Brooklyn and Staten Island to the South, Yonkers to the North and even Jersey City to the West which is in alreay in the state of New Jersey. Some of these burroughs are merely dormitory suburbs for those who spend most of their working lives in Manhattan.

New Yorkers feel that they're in the centre of the world where important things germinate and propagated to the rest of the world. Many Americans and foreigners want a piece of the action and the city has attracted the best and brightest as well as the desperate and destitute. People of all nationality and colour can be seen doing their daily business on the impersonal streets of New York. The high cost of living and overcrowding makes living this fast-paced city very stressful and alienating. Yet most New Yorkers cope because there's somehow still a flicker of community spirit in the divided societies. For a modern Western mega-city, that is a feat in itself.

1

1

1

1

1

1

• Pros:Exciting City
• Cons:Exhausting City
• In a nutshell:Simply the Best