Well it only took like 11 years of running this website for me to come back to New York City! Ironically I’d been to NYC fairly regularly up until I started this website, but my long absence has finally been brought to satiating end. It was very cool to see this place through new(ish) eyes! 👁👄👁
An Introduction to NYC & Manhattan
I’ve spent a combined ~5 years of my adult life living outside of the United States at this point, and whenever somebody tells me that they’ve “been to the U.S.”, that turns out to mean ONLY New York City probably 65% of the time. It’s hard to explain just how non-representative NYC is of the United States as a whole; this place is its own planet! I can’t recommend it highly enough as a place to visit, but if this is the only piece of America you’ve seen… have you really been to the U.S.? There are a lot of potential tangents here, but my main aim here is to underscore the singular unique-ness of this place. There is no other place like NYC on Earth. The city that draws comparisons most often is perhaps London, but as a London resident myself…
Spanning 3 US states, and boasting a whopping 23.5 million residents, the New York City metro area is massive. Quite frankly, there’s no point trying to write about this whole place at all once, so we’re going to be breaking it down into bite-sized pieces. Zooming in from its sprawling metro area, the core of New York City is composed of 5 boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and of course—the island at the center of it all—Manhattan. Our first “bite” will be a high-level introduction to Manhattan as a whole. Even this is quite a massive topic on its own, but we’ll be diving deeper into specific pieces of it in forthcoming articles, on this and future yet-unplanned trips. Fear not!
If you’d like a quick reminder on the geography of this place, here’s Manhattan on the map, sitting in the middle of one of the largest natural harbors on planet earth. Sitting immediately to the left of the straight of water to the right of Manhattan (the Hudson River) is the beginning of New Jersey, but the rest of it is The Empire State!
Although the beginnings of the U.S. as we know it today began with British roots, New York City actually began as a Dutch colony called New Amsterdam. It passed into British hands in 1664 and actually served as the capital city of the newly independent United States from 1785 to 1790. So it has been vitally important since the very beginning. As of 2023, the city alone (its metro area, that is) had a stand-alone GDP of $2.30 trillion, making it the most valuable city in the world. In fact, if treated as an independent country, New York City would rank within the top 10 largest economies in the world, ranking above Italy, Canada, and Australia, to name a few. For a domestic point of comparison, the next largest economy in the United States is Los Angeles with an approximate GDP of $1.1 trillion.
What exactly makes NYC such a power-house? In short, it’s the center of commerce in the largest economy in the history of planet Earth. Its financial sector (colloquially known simply as “Wall Street”, named after the actual Manhattan street at the center of NYC’s financial district) is world-famous, but it is also home to some absolutely iconic players in the realms of law, consulting, advertising, media, publishing, fashion, tech, real estate, as well as massive footprints in every other sector imaginable.
Unsurprisingly, there is no other city that has captured the collective imagination of Hollywood quite like New York. Not even Los Angeles! Manhattan is arguably the most filmed piece of urban geography on Earth, and certain movies/TV shows have practically defined how the world imagines New York. With upwards of 1,500 movies set in New York (currently 25–30% of all major US-set films), New York is the backdrop to more films than the the next 2-3 cities combined. Of this, Manhattan takes up the lion’s share. Notable movies include Elf, Spiderman (in all its forms), Taxi Driver, You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally, Ghostbusters, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Home Alone 2, The Devil Wears Prada, American Psycho, West Side Story, and many more. And that’s BEFORE we even get to television! Seinfeld, Friends, Sex and the City, Mad Men, How I Met Your Mother, Gossip Girl, Law & Order, 30 Rock, Broad City, Succession, the list goes on.
I cannot oversell just how much this place matters, and with that scale comes something that you won’t find in many other American urban areas—certainly not to this degree: density. With ~72,500 people/mile² (28,000/km²), New York is 4x denser than SF, 5x denser than Boston, 7x denser than Chicago, and ~30x denser than LA. That level of density is more comparable to cities like Hong Kong and Mumbai. On top of that, millions of people commute into the city everyday for work, pushing the population density even higher. Because of this, New York City has something else you won’t find almost anywhere else in North America; and certainly not on this level: robust mass transit to rival European cities. And what it lacks in cleanliness, it makes up for in 24/7 service and sheer scale. NYC actually has the largest subway system outside of China, and that’s before we even start talking about buses! Here are some pictures I took on the New York subway, and a lil’ chart that ChatGPT helped me whip up for context.
Yup, no matter how you slice the data, NYC is a giant. But at this scale, numbers start to lose meaning. Let’s get out of data-land and feel the streets of Manhattan beneath our feet shall we?
Manhattan @Street Level
There’s a feeling you get when your feet hit the New York City sidewalks; for me, it’s an energy, a rising current of hot air that quietly but firmly tells me that I can do more and be more than I’d previously imagined. The intensity of it is electrifying; it’s an undeniably inspiring place. I’ve never experienced this feeling anywhere else.
But it’s also gritty. This clip from 30 Rock sums up this juxtaposition hilariously well…
NYC is not as gritty as it used to be once upon a time, but anybody who’s ever spent significant time in an urban area will quickly discern that this is a place where ‘street smarts’ are rewarded. The constant, anonymous flow of people around you on the street can start to get a bit overwhelming as you approach Midtown Manhattan. This current of people unites every element of the human condition, good, bad, and everything in between. A puff of smoke from a passing truck, a blast of hot air pushed upward through a vent from the subway, the aroma of fresh coffee wafting through a café door, cigarette smoke, the sudden putrid smell of garbage, a cool ocean breeze, the smell of too much perfume as a woman walks past you, the sizzling, tastier-than-expected aroma of a passing hotdog stand, the gentle smell of a flower shop finding an unexpected opening in the cacophony of smells, garbage again, mysterious hot air, a moment of sweet nothing, exhaust, coffee, cigarette smoke—er, no, that’s weed. It’s legal here now! The soundscape is just as varied and overwhelming. Chances of being approached by an unseemly stranger with some supposedly tiny request for you are 100%. Navigating the ground level of this concrete jungle can initially be so engaging you can forget that, towering above you on all sides are the largest and densest group of skyscrapers almost anywhere on the planet. Never-ending monuments to capitalism, in all of its inspiring, glorious, prestigious, cruel indifference, stand silently with their chests puffed out, many stories above the fray. In every window of these buildings sits somebody who fought for their place their place here.
It’s easy to see why I’ve heard so many NYC residents remark on how, when they are in this city, all they can think about is how to get out of it. But a few blocks north, as the frenetic energy of Midtown fades to something more manageable, I am also reminded about how those same people told me that, the moment they manage to escape this place, they just want to go back.
There are so many layers to this place, the best and worst of us all in parallel, maintaining a raucous, competitive-yet-self-deprecating coexistence. There’s so much to say, but part of the experience is accepting that you’re just not ever going to be able to do it all. So let me instead share a smattering of photos snapped from the streets of Chelsea, the Upper East Side, Central Park, Midtown Manhattan, Lower Manhattan, Bryant Park, and many more places.
And just when all of the streets and buildings of this iconic cityscape start to blend together, something pop out and break through the noise for one reason or another. To give you an example, at one point in this trip, we just so happened to walk past the actual building from the Ghostbusters movies! I would have assumed that we just a movie set, but it’s still here with the Ghostbusters sign and everything! I had no idea this was here; it was quite a surreal find. 😂
Ghostbusters HQ
Sunset on The Highline
One of the best ways to see New York City (which I was not aware of until this visit) is the Highline! In my defense, it was only finished in 2019, so this was the first time I’d visited since. This is an abandoned industrial railway that runs ~1.45 miles (~2.3km) from Hudson Yards, through Chelsea, to the Meatpacking District about 25 feet above street level. It was built during the 1930s to transport meat, dairy products, produce, and other factory goods, but it was abandoned in the 1980s. Here it is on the map for you…
This abandoned railway was converted into an elevated, linear public park that runs above the Manhattan’s streets. There’s a walking path that runs the length of it, with lots of entrances and exits along the way. The whole length of it is chock-full of gardens, seating areas, art installations, and incredible overlooks both over the piers on the Hudson River, and over the streets themselves. If you have 1 hour in NYC and just want to get as much of the flavor as possible, this place can deliver. Here are some photographs from a walk down the Highline at sunset.
But even from the Highline, it can still be frustratingly difficult to imagine how you fit into New York City as a whole from that low a vantage point. Being a couple of stories off the ground in NYC is nothing. In lower Manhattan, the average building is 15-20+ stories high, although some are MUCH taller. To cherrypick the tallest building in Manhattan as an example, One World Trade Center, which clocks in at 1,775 feet (~541m), is 104 stories high. So, is “the Highline” really that high?
Luckily, we had more than one sunset to work with on this trip, so for our next rotation of the earth, we’re going find a vantage point where we can see a bit more of the FULL picture.
Sunset from Roosevelt Island
Roosevelt Island is a little spit of land that sits between Manhattan and Brooklyn. There is a cable car (Roosevelt Island Tramway) that will bring you from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island, and it’s actually part of NYC’s public transit! Indeed, there are people that live on this little island, so this could be part of their daily commute to work. You can catch this cable car at 59th Street & 2nd Avenue in the Upper East Side, right next to the Queensboro Bridge; it’s a fun way to see New York Harbor! However, if you’re boring, you can also get there by subway, or (less boring) by ferry.
There is a bar on Roosevelt Island called Panorama Room, which sits atop the Graduate Hotel and provides a stunning panoramic view of Manhattan. I was locked and loaded to recommend this place until I found out that it is permanently closed! That’s problem with making restaurant & bar recommendations on this website: they open and close too fast! It’s a tough business I suppose, and that is likely truer in NYC than most places. I asked ChatGPT some pointed questions about this, and it told me that 20-60 bars & restaurants will both open and close in a typical month here. *Circle of life from the Lion King plays
Anyway, here are some photographs from sunset looking across the water toward Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Sunset & Night ON THE STREETS OF Manhattan
Back on street-level, life in New York goes on as always. As the summer light gently fades, the city begins to light up, and the level of activity on the streets does not change even a little bit. New York is truly a 24-hour city. Or, it was… before COVID, this was known as “the city that never sleeps”. Most bars were open until 4am and entire neighborhoods would remain active throughout the entire night. If you walked out your door at 3am, you could reliably find multiple diners, pizzerias, bars, delis, bodegas, and late-night Chinese/Korean food all within walking distance. In fact, if you just started walking in literally any direction, you would find multiple good options relatively quickly. That was the version of New York City I remember from the 2010s, but it won’t be long before talking about this will make me seem like an old fart. Life goes on, and this part of Manhattan—for now at least—has mostly gone dormant. You can still find late-night joints of course, but it’s unlikely to happen by accident; you have to seek them out.
That being said, the irrepressible energy of NYC is still present today, even if the city’s collective bedtime is a bit earlier than it used to be. Once you get to the wee hours of the night, activity drops to a lull, but as any New Yorker will tell you, it’s never fully quiet, and you’re never fully alone. I can see the downside of that, but personally, I find it kind of comforting. I like to feel life happening around me and I find the white noise of a city relaxing. It’s the dead-quiet of rural areas that freaks me out. Here are some street photos from after dark. 🌃
That’s all for today, but we have SO much more ground to cover. Up next, we’re going to pick a few neighborhoods to zoom-in on, starting with Little Italy and Chinatown. Stay tuned!
That only leaves the track of the day, and I think it’s safe to say that I had more options on this article than any other article in the history of this website. “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra? “Empire State of Mind” by JAY-Z/Alicia Keys? “Welcome to New York” by Taylor Swift? The Ryan Adams reboot of that song? There are SO many famous songs about this place. But also see a lot of opportunities to share them with you in our future. For now, this is my pick:
