After moving to what I swear to Jebus is called on the Shitysearch map "South Central Midtown" I now know why there are so few residential buildings.
Kill me now.
The New York Public Library
Bryant Park
Grand Central Terminal
The Oyster Bar
The Campbell Apartment
The little gardens at Tudor City
That crazy bar in the Equitable Building
The Waldorf Astoria
MoMA
The Algonquin Hotel
The Morgan Library
Etc, etc, etc.
As long as you see Midtown as a varied collection of landmarks, public spaces, services and whatnot as opposed to a "neighborhood" I see nothing wrong with the place.
Midtown is a place you have to go sometimes, unhappily and with no lack of complaint. There, you fight through the hordes of (lost?) tourists to get to your destination, and then back again. Someone asks you for directions every block or so. The streets are numbered. THE STREETS ARE NUMBERED. When you get home, you crack a beer and weep quietly.
Back from what? I always liked Midtown. It's the fucking middle of Manhattan, where all the skyscrapers and theater are. The only people who don't like Midtown are those fucking hipsters and people who utter platitudes about tourists.
@gawkimo: Ironically, any hipster that has moved to New York City from the outside has moved there because of a trip they took to Midtown as a little kid.
I get it -- you want to distance yourself from the tourists. You were one, once.
@eatsshootsleaves: I know a lot of New Yorkers who have a love/hate relationship with Midtown for that very reason. I don't think it makes them hipsters.
I have a theory that Times Square is like New York's foyer. It's nice as a welcoming and meeting point, but when people want to hang out there exclusively it just seems silly (especially if they haven't even seen the rest of the house).
@Steverino Begins: Well, "midtown" is huge to the point that the word doesn't really mean anything. I don't think anybody meant to use it as a definition of the neighborhood's personality - midtown has no personality of its own, because it has so many different ones.
Times Square is a place most New Yorkers (native or transplanted) avoid, but there are other parts of midtown that we certainly don't. Say what you want about Ippudo, but midtown still has the best ramen shops in the city, for just one example. Ah, ramen.
@eatsshootsleaves: I don't want to distance myself from the tourists. Tourists are good for the local economy! I went to kindergarten in the UWS when heroin addicts were knifing gays on W 83rd St., raised by a good Queens man who was a cab driver when cabbies were struggling artists not struggling Subconties, and I lived in NYC as an adult.
@Understater: I love it so much I live there--down the street from Cheyenne Jackson, Christopher Meloni, Rosie O'Donnell, and the famousest Julia Allison!
Agreed. I was first alerted to the burgeoning midtown cultural scene by the constant line of tourists waiting behind velvet ropes outside the Abercrombie & Fitch on 5th. The whole block smells like cologne; it's everything I had hoped for when I moved to the city.
@Sergio Hernandez: Someday we'll be able to tell our grandchildren magical, sepia-toned stories of our years in the city. The bedbugs, the time I was chased down Lexington by a galloping rat in the middle of the night, the shirtless teenaged "models" shivering outside of Hollister during Christmas season, the time someone pressed a boner against my leg on the subway . . . ahh, memories.
@sanyucat: Speaking of sepia-toned memories... when I was a child, I — no joke — used to think the world had actually been in black and white until whenever it was color television came along.
@Sergio Hernandez: That's awesome! Like there was a worldwide "Wizard of Oz" moment. Except without the terrifyingly earnest representatives of local guilds, leagues, etc.
@downwithdebbie: I swear, EVERY time I walk by that place those guys are outside. Go away teens! I don't want to see nipples at 10 in the goddamn a. m.!
@Sergio Hernandez: You should download the This American Life radio episode called "A Little Bit of Knowledge." The first several minutes of it are about people who thought certain bizarre things were true until it was revealed otherwise later in life, like a college-age girl who asked at a keg party "when did unicorns become extinct?" The anecdotes are hilarious, quite like your b&w world story.
@Sergio Hernandez: @Atilla the Bun: I love that episode, especially the unicorn part. My sister thought until very recently that the two-headed llamas from Dr. Doolittle were real, because our Nana used to always refer to the llama farm near our house as the "push-me-pull-you farm."
Which begs the question -- why would someone farm llamas?
@SidAndFinancy: Also, what does "midtown" even mean? North of 14th? Is Flatiron part of midtown? Where's the northern border? So many questions, that I only marginally care about answering.
And as long as there are movie stars in Broadway shows, there will be celebrities hanging out in midtown. Stars: they're just like us -- they don't want to stagger more than two blocks to begin their after-work drinking!
@laurasaurus: It's the fact that the bedrock is close to the surface that defines midtown - 18 feet down in Times Square, hundreds of feet down in Greenwich village. You can build tall buildings on it cheaply relative to other parts of town, where you'd have to dig much deeper; the same goes for the the financial district. But I can't find anything that shows the depths against streets.
So a media end-times freelancer is blessed with a shot writing for the Times and he meets the opportunity with hitting up Help a Reporter Out. How about trying to leave your apartment next time deadweight? #faketrends
11/20/09
Kill me now.
11/19/09
Bryant Park
Grand Central Terminal
The Oyster Bar
The Campbell Apartment
The little gardens at Tudor City
That crazy bar in the Equitable Building
The Waldorf Astoria
MoMA
The Algonquin Hotel
The Morgan Library
Etc, etc, etc.
As long as you see Midtown as a varied collection of landmarks, public spaces, services and whatnot as opposed to a "neighborhood" I see nothing wrong with the place.
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/20/09
I live here - go back to your hotel. You know the one who's trash is picked up at 4AM weekdays.
11/18/09
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11/18/09
I get it -- you want to distance yourself from the tourists. You were one, once.
11/18/09
I have a theory that Times Square is like New York's foyer. It's nice as a welcoming and meeting point, but when people want to hang out there exclusively it just seems silly (especially if they haven't even seen the rest of the house).
11/18/09
Times Square is a place most New Yorkers (native or transplanted) avoid, but there are other parts of midtown that we certainly don't. Say what you want about Ippudo, but midtown still has the best ramen shops in the city, for just one example. Ah, ramen.
11/18/09
And, yes, I've been a tourist too :^) Love it!
#tips
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(Although anywhere on Broadway south of Houston is a bad example of Places in New York City That Should Be Sacred)
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Although I guess our equivalent of the munchkins and lollipop guild would be the FCC, heh.
11/18/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
Which begs the question -- why would someone farm llamas?
11/19/09
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11/18/09
Yes! In so many ways...
And as long as there are movie stars in Broadway shows, there will be celebrities hanging out in midtown. Stars: they're just like us -- they don't want to stagger more than two blocks to begin their after-work drinking!
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
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11/11/09