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Manhattan

Posted by Native New Yorker on August 01, 2001

In Reply to: Manhattan posted by Evil drunken Rat. on July 31, 2001

: : : : : :
: : : : : : So a New York Minute would be LESS than your average minute? For fun, would anyone be willing to hazard an estimate of the amount of seconds contained in a New York Minute?

: : : : : : When I was trying to puzzle it out myself I supposed it might be longer than your average minute. I imagined a New Yorker saying "be there in a minute" and not arriving for an hour or so due to congested traffic.

: : : : : Yes, it's less time than say an Arkansas minute. Maybe 35 seconds.

: : : : As a Manhattanite myself, everything must be done by yesterday and we need what we need an hour ago. The morning is considered a full day, the afternoon is considered another day and the evening is another day. So there are three days of work to be done in one day. Visitors feel the energy. For me it's a rush. This place is an ocean of stimuli.

: : : I visited N.Y. once, for about ten days. You betcha I felt the energy. There's almost a (musical) beat. This is hard to understand without having been there. I was amazed to see garbagemen running as they carried cans to their truck.

: : stimuli? I see rats just walkin' around and some sunning themslves.
: : energy? I hear the non-stop whine of emergency vehicles.
: : Police drunk on steroids!
: : Guiliani. Ugh. Nasty little man.

: : Having lived and worked in many locales on the Isle of Manhattan I do not miss the cacophony that attracts the masses.
: : Herman Melille agrees with me when he defined Manhattan as "...the swarming nest of all that is evil and unnatural".

: Rats, emergency vehicles and nasty little men? You're right, only New York has that.
: There's always someone quick to bash the city that never sleeps. Yet millions visit each year and return. The fall and the December holidays are the best time to come. The Broadway shows, the plays, the jazz music, the restaurants with city views, the sidewalk café's, the Statue of Liberty, Chinatown, Chelsea piers, South street seaport, the Twin towers, the Empire State Building, Little Italy, Little Brazil, Central Park, concerts in the park, dinning in the park, horse drawn carriages through the park, Park Ave, Fashion Ave, Battery Park, hundreds of museums-exhibits---art---filming on the streets, Wall Street, SOHO, the Village, Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Times Square, Herald Square, Union Square, hundreds of cathedrals, dinner cruises around the island, mid-town, downtown, uptown, upper eastside, upperwestside....I'm getting tired thinking about it. Oh yes, I forgot --sanitation workers who run because rats are chasing them. Rats are running because drunk cops are shooting at them in the streets who are only doing that because our nasty little mayor ordered them too.

: May I suggest a Caribbean resort sabbatical for you where it's boring. Where all you can do is lie on the beach starring at the ocean all day (which eventually becomes mundane) because outside of resort walls there's nothing else to do but see impoverished residents try desperately to force/sell their handmade goods.

: Evil and unnatural? Unfortunately, working and living anywhere is not as exciting as visiting another place. That's why most people don't vacation in their own town. Maybe they should. You'd be surprised how many tourists know more about your city than you and enjoy it.
It is quite upsetting that some would make very ignorant statements about NY. They should have presence of mind to understand that what they speak of is in every major city. There's only one capital of the world...and sorry fellows it's New York City.

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