My father worked in the city. Nobody who lives in NYC or the surrounding area calls it NYC; they call it "The City."
People who live and work there don't have neighbors as most people think of neighbors. I would go to the city as a teenager with my father who worked there. He became a character, too when we'd go over the Triburro bridge from Rockland County where we moved when I was thirteen. He wanted to park his car in front of my uncle's apartment but "Son of a b - - - - these (another colorful euphomism) can't park. They never think about anybody else." He shouted more obsenties as he created his own space. He simply manuevered his car back and forth into the space by bumping the car in front of him and behind him six or seven times. No one seemed to notice or care. He created the space he needed, and in we went to visit Uncle Tommy.
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It's amazing, NYC is the only place where one can never own a car or a house, you really don't need one, it's seen as a luxury item. Did you live in the city proper or did you hail from Westchester? Because to "city people", that's technically upstate. Even Yonkers is considered upstate and for awhile when I was younger, Staten Island was grudgingly called one of the five boroughs. I see they've gained social acceptance since I've left NYC.
When I get really homesick, I order it online, www.katzdeli.com. They've been there since the late 1800's, it may even be a historical landsite and you can pick up some cheap and unique (even chintzy) things at the local shops in the area.
Some of my best times were wandering around Chinatown, eating in the local restaurants where the menus were all in Chinese and pasted up on the walls (and I was the only non-Chinese in the place). Then getting fish balls or squid on a stick from the street vendors before heading up to Soho or the Village.
Speaking of the Village, I seem to remember a place called Jekyll and Hydes (?) that had mummies and vampires on the walls, and a Frankenstein's monster on a rack periodically lowered from the ceiling.
The first time our son was about 10 years old and we drove to Niagara Falls going through Detroit and Windsor and around the Canadian side of Lake Erie. Such a pretty drive! When we were on our way home we were going through Buffalo, NY and around Lake Erie on the US side. We had been in Canada for a few days and our son was happy to be going back to the USA. When we approached the bridge into Buffalo we told our son that there was New York (meaning state) just ahead - he looks around and said - well I thought it would be bigger! We rolled with laughter - he is 18 now and still wants to see NYC.
It was interesting, but I don't think I could stand long periods of time there.
"We will accept all articles detailing the processes you use to write and links to sites that are helpful for all aspects of writing."
No hard feelings. This is just a friendly reminder of what we accept. (It's hard to wade through trivia and such when we are looking for fiction writing methods and works of fiction, you know.. just keeping it clean.) :)