"Fifth Avenue reflected," October 2006

Fifth Avenue reflected

I took a plane, I took a train
(Ah, who cares, you always end up in the city)
-- "Myriad Harbour," The New Pornographers

Around here, "The City" only means one thing, one place, one city. New York.

New Jersey has its own cities and its own highlights, but if you say you're going to "the city" or were in "the city" over the weekend, you mean New York. Most of the time, we're only talking about Manhattan. The other boroughs are referred to by name, but the big island gets the singular title.

The City.

What else do you call a 301-square-mile metropolis with eight million people? Taking Manhattan alone, it's 23 square miles -- 13.4 by 2.3, at its widest -- with 1.6 million people on it. Who knows what the average number of people in New York at any one time is when you consider the commuters and the tourists.

One thing's for sure, though -- if there are one million people in Times Square, 999,832 of them are tourists.