Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2007 16:54:59 GMT -5
Hehe! Just thought I'd share. I LOVE my city so much!!!! After all, it's so nice, they had to name it TWICE!:
New York City, sometimes called "The City That Never Sleeps," is famously fast-paced and active, and the American idiom "in a New York minute" means "immediately." The stereotypical "hard-boiled New Yorker" has a reputation as self-centered, rude, and impatient, and takes pride in the crowds, noise, and hardships of city life. New York City residents are called "New Yorkers," although this term may also refer to suburbanites, and there is some use of borough-specific identifications, such as Manhattanites, Bronxites, Brooklynites, Queensites and Staten Islanders. Residents of the metropolitan area generally refer to New York City (or sometimes just Manhattan) as "The City," or "New York," and the acronym "NYC", as opposed to just "NY", help to avoid confusing references to the State of New York and the City. Other nicknames attributed to New York City include "the Big Apple", "Gotham", "the Naked City", "the Capital of the World", and the slogan introduced in 2005 by Mayor Bloomberg in an effort to win a bid for the 2012 olympics, "the World's Second Home."
Immigration and international flavor
New York absorbs a greater diversity of immigrant groups than any other American city, and it absorbs a larger number of immigrants every day than all other U.S. cities except Los Angeles, giving New York an international flavor, and making it the archetype of the American ideal of a "nation of immigrants." The city government employs translators in 180 languages.
The Statue of Liberty, icon of the city, rises from Liberty Island in Upper New York Bay in front of the Lower Manhattan skyline. The Statue of Liberty was from 1886 until the jet age often the first sight of the city for European immigrants to the United States.The five boroughs are home to many distinct ethnic enclaves of Irish, Italians, Chinese, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, Caribbeans, African-Americans, Jews, South Asians and many others, and there are also many multi-ethnic neighborhoods where people of different backgrounds coexist comfortably. Regardless of ethnic origin, all groups share a common identity as New Yorkers.
Some celebrated ethnic/racial neighborhoods include Harlem, Little Italy, and the Lower East Side.
Commuter culture
Because of traffic congestion and the well-designed New York Subway, six in ten residents, including many middle class professionals, commute to work via public transportation, making the everyday lifestyle and "pedestrian culture" of New Yorkers substantially different from the "car culture" that dominates most American cities. This pattern is strongest in Manhattan, where subway service is better and traffic is worse than in the outer boroughs. Even the city's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is a "straphanger," (subway commuter), and can be encountered on the train to City Hall each morning.
Shopping is popular with many visitors, with Fifth Avenue being a famous shopping corridor for luxury items. Macy's, the nation's largest department store, and the surrounding area of Herald Square are a major destination for more moderately-priced goods. In recent years 23rd Street has become a major location for "big-box" retailers. In southern Manhattan, Greenwich Village is home to hundreds of independent music and book stores. The "diamond district" (located on 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues) is the city's main location for jewelry shopping, and SoHo, formerly the center of the New York art scene, is now famous for high-priced clothing boutiques, and the art galleries are now concentrated in Chelsea. There are also large shopping districts found in Downtown Brooklyn and along Queens Boulevard in Queens.
Many tourists only think of "New York" in terms of Manhattan, but there are four boroughs more, which, if they can't compete in skyscrapers, still offer other kinds of attractions. Brooklyn's old Coney Island is still a center of seaside recreation, with its beach, boardwalk, and amusement parks. Many enjoy the spectacular views available from the deck of the Staten Island Ferry. The Bronx Zoo is world-famous, and the Bronx Bombers don't play in Manhattan. Flushing, Queens is home to the legacy of the 1964 New York World's Fair (including the Unisphere), (I live overlooking this) the US Open in tennis and Shea Stadium.
Theater
New York City boasts a highly active and influential theater district, which is centered around Times Square in Manhattan. It serves both as the center of the American theater industry, and as a major attraction for visitors from around the world. The dozens of theaters in this district are responsible for tens of thousands of jobs, and help contribute billions of dollars every year to the city's economy. Along with those of London's West End theater district, Broadway theaters are considered to be of the highest quality in the world. Despite the name, many "Broadway" theaters do not lie on Broadway the street, and the distinction with Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway (which tend more toward experimental theater) is simply a reference to the seating capacity of the theater.
Music Industry and Music Scene
With its connection to media and communications and its mix of cultures and immigrants, New York City has had a long history of association with American music. Famous large venues dating from the 1920s, such as Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall have their smaller counterparts in the subsequent eras, from the Copacabana and The Bitter End to CBGB and Studio 54.
Modern composers such as native Aaron Copeland and George Gershwin were inspired by the City, at a time when New York based RCA was the nation's largest manufacturer of phonographs. The radio and musical stars of the Golden Age of Broadway gave way to the Brill Building's "Brill Sound." The Juillard School of Music trained New York Native Tito Puente, "El Rey de las timbales." The folk music scene in Greenwich Village nurtured the careers of Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. Later, Bowery clubs such as CBGB helped spawn the American punk rock and New Wave Music movements, with The Ramones and The Talking Heads in the lead, while the height of the disco era saw throngs lined up outside the famed nightclub Studio 54. As if this weren't enough for one city to contribute to American music, modern New York is widely acknowledged as the birthplace of Hip hop.
Skyline
New York City has by far the most famous skyline in the world, which has become something of a tourist attraction in and of itself. Because of its high residential density, and the extremely high real estate values found in the city's central business districts, New York has amassed the largest collection of office and residential towers in the world. In fact, New York actually has three separately recognizable skylines: Midtown Manhattan, Downtown Manhattan (also known as Lower Manhattan), and Downtown Brooklyn. The largest of these skylines is in Midtown, which is the largest central business district in the U.S., and also home to such notable buildings as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center. The Downtown skyline was once characterized by the presence of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Today it is undergoing the rapid reconstruction of Lower Manhattan, and will some day include the new "Freedom Tower" which will be the tallest building in the world when it is completed in 2007. The Downtown skyline will also be getting notable additions soon from such architects as Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry.
The Downtown Brooklyn skyline is the smallest of the three, and is centered around a major transportation hub in Northwestern Brooklyn. The borough of Queens has also been developing its own skyline in recent years with a Citigroup office building (which is currently the tallest building in NYC outside Manhattan), and the City Lights development of several residential towers along the East River waterfront.
Sister cities
New York has ten sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International (SCI): Beijing, Budapest, Cairo, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, London, Madrid, Rome, Santo Domingo, and Tokyo.
(from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
New York City, sometimes called "The City That Never Sleeps," is famously fast-paced and active, and the American idiom "in a New York minute" means "immediately." The stereotypical "hard-boiled New Yorker" has a reputation as self-centered, rude, and impatient, and takes pride in the crowds, noise, and hardships of city life. New York City residents are called "New Yorkers," although this term may also refer to suburbanites, and there is some use of borough-specific identifications, such as Manhattanites, Bronxites, Brooklynites, Queensites and Staten Islanders. Residents of the metropolitan area generally refer to New York City (or sometimes just Manhattan) as "The City," or "New York," and the acronym "NYC", as opposed to just "NY", help to avoid confusing references to the State of New York and the City. Other nicknames attributed to New York City include "the Big Apple", "Gotham", "the Naked City", "the Capital of the World", and the slogan introduced in 2005 by Mayor Bloomberg in an effort to win a bid for the 2012 olympics, "the World's Second Home."
Immigration and international flavor
New York absorbs a greater diversity of immigrant groups than any other American city, and it absorbs a larger number of immigrants every day than all other U.S. cities except Los Angeles, giving New York an international flavor, and making it the archetype of the American ideal of a "nation of immigrants." The city government employs translators in 180 languages.
The Statue of Liberty, icon of the city, rises from Liberty Island in Upper New York Bay in front of the Lower Manhattan skyline. The Statue of Liberty was from 1886 until the jet age often the first sight of the city for European immigrants to the United States.The five boroughs are home to many distinct ethnic enclaves of Irish, Italians, Chinese, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, Caribbeans, African-Americans, Jews, South Asians and many others, and there are also many multi-ethnic neighborhoods where people of different backgrounds coexist comfortably. Regardless of ethnic origin, all groups share a common identity as New Yorkers.
Some celebrated ethnic/racial neighborhoods include Harlem, Little Italy, and the Lower East Side.
Commuter culture
Because of traffic congestion and the well-designed New York Subway, six in ten residents, including many middle class professionals, commute to work via public transportation, making the everyday lifestyle and "pedestrian culture" of New Yorkers substantially different from the "car culture" that dominates most American cities. This pattern is strongest in Manhattan, where subway service is better and traffic is worse than in the outer boroughs. Even the city's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is a "straphanger," (subway commuter), and can be encountered on the train to City Hall each morning.
Shopping is popular with many visitors, with Fifth Avenue being a famous shopping corridor for luxury items. Macy's, the nation's largest department store, and the surrounding area of Herald Square are a major destination for more moderately-priced goods. In recent years 23rd Street has become a major location for "big-box" retailers. In southern Manhattan, Greenwich Village is home to hundreds of independent music and book stores. The "diamond district" (located on 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues) is the city's main location for jewelry shopping, and SoHo, formerly the center of the New York art scene, is now famous for high-priced clothing boutiques, and the art galleries are now concentrated in Chelsea. There are also large shopping districts found in Downtown Brooklyn and along Queens Boulevard in Queens.
Many tourists only think of "New York" in terms of Manhattan, but there are four boroughs more, which, if they can't compete in skyscrapers, still offer other kinds of attractions. Brooklyn's old Coney Island is still a center of seaside recreation, with its beach, boardwalk, and amusement parks. Many enjoy the spectacular views available from the deck of the Staten Island Ferry. The Bronx Zoo is world-famous, and the Bronx Bombers don't play in Manhattan. Flushing, Queens is home to the legacy of the 1964 New York World's Fair (including the Unisphere), (I live overlooking this) the US Open in tennis and Shea Stadium.
Theater
New York City boasts a highly active and influential theater district, which is centered around Times Square in Manhattan. It serves both as the center of the American theater industry, and as a major attraction for visitors from around the world. The dozens of theaters in this district are responsible for tens of thousands of jobs, and help contribute billions of dollars every year to the city's economy. Along with those of London's West End theater district, Broadway theaters are considered to be of the highest quality in the world. Despite the name, many "Broadway" theaters do not lie on Broadway the street, and the distinction with Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway (which tend more toward experimental theater) is simply a reference to the seating capacity of the theater.
Music Industry and Music Scene
With its connection to media and communications and its mix of cultures and immigrants, New York City has had a long history of association with American music. Famous large venues dating from the 1920s, such as Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall have their smaller counterparts in the subsequent eras, from the Copacabana and The Bitter End to CBGB and Studio 54.
Modern composers such as native Aaron Copeland and George Gershwin were inspired by the City, at a time when New York based RCA was the nation's largest manufacturer of phonographs. The radio and musical stars of the Golden Age of Broadway gave way to the Brill Building's "Brill Sound." The Juillard School of Music trained New York Native Tito Puente, "El Rey de las timbales." The folk music scene in Greenwich Village nurtured the careers of Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. Later, Bowery clubs such as CBGB helped spawn the American punk rock and New Wave Music movements, with The Ramones and The Talking Heads in the lead, while the height of the disco era saw throngs lined up outside the famed nightclub Studio 54. As if this weren't enough for one city to contribute to American music, modern New York is widely acknowledged as the birthplace of Hip hop.
Skyline
New York City has by far the most famous skyline in the world, which has become something of a tourist attraction in and of itself. Because of its high residential density, and the extremely high real estate values found in the city's central business districts, New York has amassed the largest collection of office and residential towers in the world. In fact, New York actually has three separately recognizable skylines: Midtown Manhattan, Downtown Manhattan (also known as Lower Manhattan), and Downtown Brooklyn. The largest of these skylines is in Midtown, which is the largest central business district in the U.S., and also home to such notable buildings as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center. The Downtown skyline was once characterized by the presence of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Today it is undergoing the rapid reconstruction of Lower Manhattan, and will some day include the new "Freedom Tower" which will be the tallest building in the world when it is completed in 2007. The Downtown skyline will also be getting notable additions soon from such architects as Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry.
The Downtown Brooklyn skyline is the smallest of the three, and is centered around a major transportation hub in Northwestern Brooklyn. The borough of Queens has also been developing its own skyline in recent years with a Citigroup office building (which is currently the tallest building in NYC outside Manhattan), and the City Lights development of several residential towers along the East River waterfront.
Sister cities
New York has ten sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International (SCI): Beijing, Budapest, Cairo, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, London, Madrid, Rome, Santo Domingo, and Tokyo.
(from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
