about new york city

It's New York City -- what more do we need to say?!

Here's Columbia's Guide to New York: NYC guide

And here's what some other people have had to say about the "Big Apple"...

I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the contstant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.
(F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)

It is generally pretty quiet on Broadway along about four bells in the morning, because at such an hour the citizens are mostly in speakeasies, and night clubs, and on this morning I am talking about it is very quiet, indeed, except for a guy by the name of Marvin Clay hollering at a young doll because she won't get into a taxicab with him to go to his apartment. But of course Regret and I do not pay much attention to such a scene, except that Regret remarks that the young doll seems to have more sense than you will expect to see in a doll loose on Broadway at four bells in the morning...
(Damon Runyon, The Bloodhounds of Broadway)

There are flags on all the flagpoles up Fifth Avenue. In the shrill wind of history the great flags flap and tug at their lashings on the creaking goldknobbed poles up Fifth Avenue. The stars jiggle sedately against the slate sky, the red and white stripes writhe against the clouds.
(John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer)

Down in the concourse, where the city mob flowing out into Fiftieth Street station of the Independent met the tourists with circular tickets around their necks looking with awe at every last wonder in Rockefeller Center, the chromium and steel frames around the window glass glistened more brightly than ever while on the wings of light itself messages sped from the cable center to every part of the world.
(Alfred Kazin, New York Jew)

New York is the focus, the point where American and European interests converge. There is no topic of general interest to men that will not betimes be brought before the thinker by the quick turning of the wheel.
(Margaret Fuller, Farewell)

Suddenly I found myself on Times Square. I had travelled eight thousand miles around the American continent and I was back on Times Square; and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream -- grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying, just so they could be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City.
(Jack Kerouac, On the Road)

From the restaurants and cafeterias came the smells of chicken soup, kasha, chopped liver. The bakeries sold bagels and egg cookies, strudel and onion rolls, In front of the shop, women were groping in barrels for dill pickles.
(Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story)

In New York you can have anything you want... You can also find anything that you are interested in here, and you don't have to have money to do so.
(Brooke Astor)

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second is the New York of the commuter -- the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
(E. B. White, Here is New York)

I live in an apartment, sink leaks thru the walls Lower Eastside full of bedbugs. Junkies in the halls House been broken into. Tibetan Tankas stole Speed freaks took my statues, made my love a fool.
(Allen Ginsberg, New York Blues)