An Adventure in New York City

Growing up in Manhattan was an epitome of excitement. Back in the day, and also to its founding, New York has always been a beehive of activities. Going down memory lane, I reminisce on trips that we’d take to loads of places around the city for entertainment during weekends and on holidays. Raised by Spanish immigrants, my father was a chef in a small but busy restaurant along Fifth Avenue. Since I can recall, fifth avenue has always had some of the major and well known fashion stores and hotels in the city. This would have

New York City’s old slum neighbourhood, the Five Points, was notoriously known for its vice and crimes. The first organized crime group in New York City was the Forty Thieves which was led by Edward Coleman, started in 1825, in the back of a grocery store. The Dead Rabbits were an Irish gang in the Five Points area, and are most known for the riot they caused in 1857. The Eastman Gang were a Jewish group in the Five Points area, which began in the late nineteenth century, and were the rival of the Five Points Gang. The Five Points Gang was another group, started by Paul Kelly and included future famous mobsters. In Five Points, where most of New York City’s crime started, it also started some of history’s most notorious gangs, and mobsters.

Travel back to New York city during the 1920s, a melting pot of culture, a place where new ideas, technology and business mix and mingle into a metropolitan jungle, where dreams are made and stars are born. During this era, in a small neighborhood on the island of Manhattan, an explosion occurs that would forever change the course of history. The explosion would liberate an entire race that had been ignored for centuries into a new era! The explosion was known as the Harlem Renaissance. It was during this time black culture was freely expressed and openly excepted by the mainstream white culture. Today, the culture is still openly expressed but there is a sense of segregation. It affects our culture to this day! Television programs are

When the plane finally landed in New York, I remember everyone cheering and clapping. We had made it to America. I looked through the window and saw a place completely different than what I had ever known. I immediately started to feel the chilly weather of New York. I had never experienced cold temperature, but I came prepared with a light jacket and sweater for my daughter and me.

New York City has been in a constant state of change since the 1970’s. Evolving from a state of art and decrepitness to a glistening city of consumption. Yet in Jeremiah Moss’ book, Vanishing New York, the city did not “evolve” for the locals who breathed and lived in the city– the ones who made New York City the place to be, but rather for the big businesses who lure in the tourists who change the city into some kind of sister city to their middle American hometown. Moss uses the same ideas bell hooks wrote about in her “Eating the Other” essay, in that New Yorkers, the “other”, in all their artsy, queer, and ethnic ways are used to “spice up” the city, to make it a place worth coveting so that the rich and elite can sell a watered down/hollow

Ever since I was a little girl, New York City always seemed like a place that was magical. My family’s TV on Thanksgiving was always broadcasting the enormous balloons, extravagant floats, and millions of people lining the streets of the city for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Freshman year, excited squeals and giggles erupted from my brother and I after our parents told us that we would be visiting New York City for the first time to witness the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. After several months of waiting and lots of turbulence, our plane hit the landing with a thunk at Laguardia airport and reality set in: we were in the city. Walking out of the airport was absolutely surreal. The sights, sounds, and smells surrounded my family and

New York in the 1920's: The time period of the 1920’s was widely known as an era of prosperity. It was also an era of contradictions for New York as a modern industrial city that, with engineering feats of such wonder, had conquered the sky and constructed a hidden network of underground power lines, sewer lines, and water lines. They also bridged the gap between the city's infrastructural capacity and its population then again widened. The city's roads did not keep up with the rapidly increasing popularity of the automobile.

During a small trip to a site in the Bronx, I have realized there are a lot of changes that need to done. The site is located between Westchester Ave and Brook Ave. There were two different kind of yards, A and B, they were right across the street from each other. Both of them were large, B was slightly larger than A. By the look of both yards, it seems as if people use them to throw away their trash or unnecessary belongings. The sidewalks are very hard to walk on and there are not a lot of people on the streets.

My dad and I had always lived in New York City. After 15 years of experience and the guidance of my older brother, you could say that I knew my way around town. The coffee shops with the best lattes, the highest swinging swing sets in every park, and most importantly, the buildings with the best views. You would think that after living here for so long I would get sick of seeing the view of the city every day, but it just never gets old. The best spot is at the top of my apartment building, on the far northeast corner, looking over the horizon and onto the Hudson. There was no other way of completing my day, no matter the rain, snow, or blazing heat I sat on that rooftop every night as the sun disappeared, along with the overworked New Yorkers for the night. The most interesting part is, every single night, the color of the sky is always slightly different. No sunset was ever the exact same. Anyways, as I was walking back down the stairs to my condo, 7B, I got the jitters in my stomach, I was beyond excited for tomorrow, the first day of Winter Break. My older brother, Todd, was taking me and my best friend Hannah up to Vermont to go skiing. I opened our apartment door, took a quick shower, and fell asleep with Cooper on my lap while watching Full House.

As I walked out of the airport into new territory, I could immediately feel the change in atmosphere. The air once chilled from morning dew, had turned into radiating heat from the cement and metal structures in the evening sun. As I looked out in my jeans and tee-shirt, I felt out of place. I was surrounded by the 8.55 million people who populate New York City. Each person with their own style and demeanour. As I walked down streets in search of the correct subway stop with my church group, everyone could tell that we were tourists. We were lugging our impossibly heavy suitcases through the streets, down the unforgiving stairs, and onto the crowded subway. After walking up and down what felt like hundreds of steps and changed subway trains

Living in America is a fantasy for a lot of people, but living in New York City is something even better, and more magical than any fantasy.

The sounds of the city penetrated the walls of the cab as we drove through the streets of Manhattan. I could hardly wait to partake in the action that was happening outside. The buildings themselves were an amazing site to behold. The buildings took on personalities of their own. Each building was bigger and more graceful than the next. When lights were added to the mix it was a dazzling combination. The city itself felt like a great big hug, and I felt overwhelmed by its power. The city allowed me to become part of it just like many others many years ago who immigrated to this awesome city. As I was looking out of the cab I finally got to see in person the sight of all sights; Times Square. The main juncture of

Last summer, my family and I took a trip to New York City. We’ve visited this city about five years ago, but I didn't remember much since I was only eleven years old. This trip changed my mindset on life. I got to experience the unexplainable and took pictures that were priceless. This trip is definitely a trip to remember and will always be special to me.

As someone walks over the grates in the sidewalk, they can feel the wind rush up from the subway cars flying through the tunnels. While they continue walking down the street and looking at all the different people that they pass, they can smell the hotdogs being cooked in the food truck. In the distance, they hear a siren weaving through the congested narrow streets of this busy city. New York City is a one of a kind type of place. It is the only place in the world where so many different cultures and backgrounds are all in one place. Along with the multitudes of different types of people and cultures, New York City truly is the city that never sleeps. The city that never sleeps, New York City, is full sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feels.

Trails of exhaust were propelled out of every single car in the bumper to bumper traffic, making the recirculation button a necessity. The dull roar of hundreds of people walking, talking, shouting, and blaring their car horns gradually blended into one unpleasant, continuous track that I was forced to listen to. Litter and cigarette butts pooled around gutters and lined the curbs, so I redirected my gaze upwards at the towering skyscrapers. I liked the view, so long as I kept my eyes above street level, and I supposed I liked the city, so long as I did not breathe in too deeply. I tried to appreciate nicer aspects of the busy city, but where I really wanted to be, was hiking somewhere in the mountains.