The Big City

New York glitters from afar. Even on a dull gray morning from the Staten Island ferry, the city shines beneath the clouds with a light that nothing can overshadow. A million eager eyes gaze longingly at the mass of concrete that rises out of the ground like a mountain standing on a tiny island. It is the city of opportunity - where anyone can do anything and be anything they want. In New York, nothing is impossible.

The streets are filled with rushing cabs and pedestrians, and even underneath the city it's busy. Trains rumble underground carrying people to work, to play, to almost anywhere. Anyone is welcome on the subway - from the homeless man wearing garbage bags for shoes to the two older ladies wearing Chanel tweed jackets and pearls. At rush hour there is no such thing as personal space. Everyone gets real friendly with one another - sometimes too friendly.

At 96th Street everyone begins to clear out. The further up you go, the less crowded the subway becomes. On a hot afternoon in Harlem, the kind of afternoon where it seems that heat not only bears down on you from the sun but also up from the ground at your feet, children dance and play in water rushing down the streets from a nearby fire hydrant. A group of older men sit in their folding chairs under the shade of a tree on the corner, listening to music playing out of an old portable radio and arguing with each other across the sidewalk as people walk by. The Hudson River gleams under the sun off Riverside Drive and offers a cool breeze to families in the park.

As the sun goes down, the lights at Times Square shine brighter. The heat of the day gives way to a warm summer evening and friends gather at their local watering holes for drinks and dinner (it's impossible not to find a good meal in New York). All those pedestrians walking anonymously through the streets earlier in the day don't seem so anonymous now. They are your friends, your neighbors, your fellow New Yorkers.

There is nothing better than a night in the city. You drink, you dance, you meet all sorts of new people, and you end the night with a giant slice of pizza. When you wake up the next morning to birds chirping through the open window, the city doesn't seem so big, so ominous as before. Day after day, this apple gets a little bit smaller and one day, you'll be holding it in the palm of your hand.