Can you add a little New York to my life please?

Being in another major metropolis, I always find myself comparing it to other cities. New York is dirtier than Tokyo, Boston's buildings are prettier than New York's. Tokyo had so much less space to move around. Thoughts like this pop into my head every fifth ave of a second, every day. But there is one thought in particular that I keep thinking to myself. New York has a hell of a personality.

I reconnected with an old friend today, Jamie. We met at school in Boston. After feeding me the best cupcakes of my life, she took me on a walking tour of Manhattan. We chatted the usual catching up conversations, but we found ourselves doing the same thing that I do by myself - comparing New York to the rest of the world. We walked through an intersection, and Jamie would comment on how it reminded her of Boston's financial district. Then we walked through Washington Square park and I commented on how it reminded me of Boston Common. Later we reach the seaport and we talked about how it looked like Faneuil Hall.

The comments kept pouring out of us, partially because Boston was our common ground. But probably we just wanted to take a small trip down memory lane together...without actually visiting memory lane.

However I soon realized...as much as we try to compare New York to other places...we simply can't. There are similarities here and there, but New York is so unique, and so diverse, that there is no such thing as a sister city.

While we walked south, we passed an NYU dorm. Some spunky student left us a happy surprise in his or her window.




And just in case we were looking at the wrong side of the building, a friendly neighbor was offering directions.



Everywhere we went there was something to do, something to see, or something worth blogging about. We walked down to Washington Square Park and found a very talented street artist, painting with sand.

















We then walked about 15 meters and were distracted by some thesbians, putting on a show about Cesar. Then after a couple blocks we found the giant rotating cube. So we pushed. We pushed hard.

















Eventually our path led us to the waterfront. We caught a beautiful view of Brooklyn, and tried our absolute hardest to look happy by the freezing cold river.

















So what did I learn today? New York has spunk. Not Regina George, call up Planned Parenthood on Taylor Wedell spunk, but a good kind of spunk. There is sketch, and there is class...often times on the same block. But no matter where New York takes you, there will always be something beautiful, interesting, or just plain strange to look at.

New York will always have plenty of surprises up its sleeves. Surprises like running into a tambourine taping monkey in the subway, holding up a sign that says, "Your smile is beautiful."