…With 8 million people… Where you can walk for 10 miles, yet barely dent it.

New York is part of all our consciousness through references in novels, songs, news and history.

I'll bet you know the names of its neighborhoods and streets. I'll bet you've picked up its slang.

It is the most American of all cities, considering its role as an entry point for early immigrants and origin of political and cultural change.

Smoggy and humid, the city is a symphony of sirens, honking, construction tools and words in a hundred languages. Sewage, salt water and every kind of imaginable food smell permeates the air.

New Yorkers — for all their diversity — behave like a giant community as they weave around construction and monuments, watching each other with a cellular device, cigarette or slice of pizza in their hands. 

They cross streets in a continuous, choreographed rhythm.

They are honest, fashionable, practical adapters.

The reality of life in this concrete habitat, shared by birds and dogs and horses and bugs, is a far cry from life along the back roads.

Then again, the second I stepped off my train in Grand Central Terminal, I knew I could hack it.  So I guess I've got some New York in me. Maybe just enough.

These first three images were taken near Central Park in Manhattan. In the above image, artist Franz West's suclpture "The Ego and the Id" wraps itself metaphorically around a skyscraper.

Times Square puts on a never ending capitalism and media show.

An antique is on display and lockdown off Broadway.

George Washington peers out over Wall Street at the site of the nation's first capitol.

Underpinnings of a funky bridge near Chinatown.

And the buildings may as well be trees…

(I saw lots more, including awesome graffiti and inspiring Halloween shopping along the Bowery, but alas, my camera's battery died.)