I Heart New York

Lots of people hate cities like New York, which I understand — they can be an overwhelming, noisy, dirty, and aggressive assaults on one’s senses. But I love it.

New York is a marvel. A wonder of the world. There is no way at all it should work. Eight and a half million people, plus the surrounding areas, converging into just 300 square miles. Manhattan alone has 1.6 million people in its 23 square miles.

Everyone is there: Orthodox Jews walk past six-foot-tall drag queens rubbing shoulders with $10k-suit-wearing Wall Street types. Dudes with gold chains that could tie down a cruise liner, flamboyant gays in booty shorts and rainbow shirts, construction workers, Mexican street vendors, Indian cab drivers, Irish bartenders, Cuban buskers, and — every frickin’ kind of human in between.

It is proof that we can all live side by side, in relative harmony. Nobody bats an eyelid when these people bump into each other or cross paths. They’re all New Yorkers, all walking on common ground, paying the same taxes, drinking the same water, and sharing the same streets.

The same can be said for the engineering: towering skyscrapers of glass and steel next to stone apartments, brick houses, and dilapidated warehouses. Old and new, rich and poor.

Michelin-star restaurants share street corners with hot dog stands and 24-hour pizza joints.

New York hip hop seeps from the buildings, while jazz, show tunes, and standup comedy wafts through the gaps.

Twenty-first-century druggies adopt the “fentanyl fold,” while a lady in high heels holding a Prada handbag finds a swift route around them. Small dogs and drunks fill the air with the not-so-faint smell of piss, and sirens are always singing the state song with a flashing blue-and-red accompaniment.

It is a place of incredible juxtaposition and divide. One street away from Park Avenue and you’ll find penniless street folk. One street away from the Hudson River and you’ll find nothing but dry concrete. One street away from the lush green expanse of Central Park and you’ll find little in the way of trees or bird life.

Times Square is New Yorks Buckingham Palace - the centre point for all its showboating. It’s even known as “The Crossroads of the World”. Over fifty million people visit here each year - supposedly the most of any tourist attraction in the world. It is an accumulation of theatres, street vendors, fast food restaurants, street hustlers, pick pockets, television screens, advertising, taxis and selfie-snapping admirers. At 3am there’s more people walking around here than is awake in the entirety of Vancouver.

How do 8.5 million people get along? Work, play, rest, love, dine, and coexist? It’s chaos, organized mayhem, regimented anarchy. There should be fires burning in the streets, fights breaking out left, right, and centre, and crime on every corner. Buildings should be crumbling around you, cars should be crashing, and people should be constantly bumping into each other.

It should be like John Carpenter’s Escape from New York — the 1981 post-apocalypse fever dream of a future USA. But it isn’t. It isn’t any of that. It’s like a well-oiled machine. Not a Rolls Royce, but certainly an ’80s Land Rover Discovery: well-worn, rusty, but with solid bones and an audible charm.

I lived in London for years, and in Madrid and Vancouver. And I’ve been to a dozen other large cities along the way — they’re all amazing. They are improbable realizations of human achievement and coexistence, functioning ecosystems that thrive in pollution, garbage, noise, overcrowding and aggression.

It ain’t for everyone, but everyone fits in when it comes to New York.