Why I love New York

Why I love New York City:

1. You walk down the street and you feel so alive. Everything feels so right. Everywhere else seems like the land of the half-dead, especially the nearby suburbs and towns. This does not apply to all of New York – there are parts of it that will pound all the life and joy out of your eyes.
2. You will see more walking one mile of New York than you will see driving through a hundred miles of Ohio. New York has worlds within worlds. People come there from all corners of the earth and make their own neighbourhoods there. It has littles bits of the whole world all in one city. And even if you somehow managed to see it all, it would change by the time you got done and you could start all over again.
3. It has wonderful bookstores. With books on all kinds of things, things you never dreamed of. While Barnes & Noble is way better than it used to be, it is more like a Wal-Mart or Home Depot of books in comparison to the bookstores of New York City.
4. So much of life beyond the city is flattened into something common and acceptable: all the beauty and richness and sweetness is lost. Like the food at McDonald’s.
5. You age faster when you live and work outside of New York. Maybe not physically – I am no doctor – but certainly in your heart and in your soul. Living outside of the city is safer, cheaper and the schools are better, which is why people do it, but it deadens your soul, bit by bit, day by day.
6. The women are so beautiful. People come there from all over the world and even mix, so you see women of every shade, women of a beauty you never dreamed of. This is more true of Queens than Manhattan. And just because you see more women you are bound to see one who makes your heart stop.
7. I love hanging out with my friends there and talking the night away.
8. I love the Chrysler Building.

I fear the day when I am too old to walk up the subway steps. It would be a kind of death.

I assume there are other cities like this, like maybe London, San Francisco or Rio. If you know of any, please let me know.

I am a city mouse but I married a country mouse. My wife says New York is dirty and violent, a Sodom and Gomorrah – she only goes there to visit her friends. It is all those things, but it is so much more.

When I married her I moved out of the city, partly to make her happy but mainly because I thought it would be better for our children. But now I am not so sure. It is certainly easier to bring up children outside of the city, but I am not sure it is better for them in the long run.

See also:

• New York