Beating the holidays’ crowd and getting to New York City just in time for tourist crowd to dissolve

Why we fall in love with New York?

...or Many Definitions of "New York" vibe

The city, which air makes you dizzy and which subway makes you sweat just so that you can freeze up later in your over-conditioned office. The city that offers you both – the greatest musicals and the greatest crime rate. The city, where even a homeless feels unsafe pass 98th Street on both East and West ends. The city, where Moldavians are hired to represent Italians at “authentic” Italian cuisine restaurants and where a little bag of ‘who-knows-how-hygienic-they-really-are’ street nuts are bought by locals at a rate of Chinese multiplication in China…

I…wondered for years what it was in the New York air that enabled me to put on the highest heels and the shortest dress after a 10-hour work shift and to walk 10 blocks to a lounge to meet up with friends.

I…wondered what it was in the New York air that enabled me to sit up till wee, wee hours of a night in an atmosphere, which in Paris would make a horse dizzy (or would kill a hamster), but here the air makes the brain just think faster on how to catch a cab in the middle of a busy Fifth Avenue intersection.

(Immigrants at Ellis Island, New York, 1912)

And even when New Yorkers complain about the city, how suffocating it can become, no one misses a city like New Yorkers miss New York. Every year thousands of immigrants arrive at the "shores" of New York. *In 2000 alone, New York City had 2.9 million foreign-born residents, the largest number in its history. These immigrants have come from a multitude of nations that is unmatched by any other city. The 2000 Census shows that New York City welcomed a staggering 1,224,524 foreign immigrants over the course of the decade. And these are just the legal immigrants, not to count the illegal immigrants.

(*New York City Department of City Planning)

New York – is not like the rest of the country - it is like a nation itself - more tolerant than the rest in a curious way. Littleness gets swallowed up here. All the obvious that makes other cities stand out is taken for granted in New York. Puccini – on Fridays, Bangalow 8 party with Paris Hilton – on Saturdays and sexual rendezvous tête-à-tête in at the Trump Tower – on Sundays.

New York – is the place where one can learn more about human nature by attending a Paris Hilton party than by reading the Lonely Planet guidebook.

New York – is a place where one can get the freshest sushi at 3 am in the Village on Tuesday, ran into Woody Allen on the 92nd and Lexington on Wednesday morning and jog along Nicole Kidman at Central Park on a Thursday afternoon, get down on a dance floor with the Bolshoi Theatre troupe on Friday night and spend the rest of weekend tipping bartenders and befriending the doormen at hip clubs with the attitude and face control, which in other places would not consider a dignity, but a kiss-ass human behavior…

New York – is the city where a Manhattan man would go down to State Island just to get laid with a hot Jewish brunette.

New York – is the city where at midnight cheap Chinese eateries are the hot spots for tipsy, horny couples and Indian drug stores are the only open stores where one can get supplies needed to continue the couple’s rendezvous trip.

New York – is the best thing that happened to America, because if it was not here, Bush would have won by 31% more percent votes in 2004.

New York - is the city where smoking was the last thing to abandon, but the only city that would still overlook the fact that people smoke inside the clubs, lounges and bars – talking about courageous NY club owners.

New York – is the only city where the “Fahrenheit 9/11” was met with a standing ovation.

New York – is the city…where Sex meets the City and the City meets Sex.

New York - is the city that had the honor of Soprano and Don Vito Corleone families’ residency. It is the city that gave us “Annie Hall”, “All about Eve,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “Godfather.”

New York - is also the city that stinks all 24/7, has the most obnoxious bums and the cutest firemen, policemen and bartenders.

What can a girl do?