Entries tagged “nyc”

I'm here at the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC today, my first big tech industry conference in a long time, where I'm also excitedly getting ready for my keynote tomorrow.

But one of the things I'm most proud of is that has something of a valedictory feel to it, as we note that many of the best, most interesting, most subversive and disruptive startups in the world are based here. From Foursquare to Hunch, Kickstarter to Square, Etsy to the newly-funded 20×200 (they're hiring!). That's not counting the dozens of tech-based media businesses that have spring up in the wake of Gawker and Huffington Post. And best of all, I think many of them have been influenced by the seminal NYC Web 2.0 startup, Meetup, which not only helps knit our startup community together, but introduced many of the elements of social responsibility and an old-fashioned We Make Money business model that distinguish New York startups from those in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

(Update: To my chagrin, I forgot Outside.in, another great NYC startup that I've found inspiring. I'm sure there are more omissions, too, but I'll add 'em as they come to me.)

New York City startups are as likely to be focused on the arts and crafts as on the bits and bytes, to be influenced by our unparalleled culture as by the latest browser features, and informed by the dynamic interaction of different social groups and classes that's unavoidable in our city, but uncommon in Silicon Valley. Best of all, the support for these efforts can come from investors and supporters that are outside of the groupthink that many West Coast VC firms suffer from. When I lived in San Francisco, it was easy to spend days at a time only interacting with other web geeks; In New York, fortunately, that's impossible.

Am I biased? Sure. But are there half a dozen startups anywhere in the world as interesting and full of potential as these new NYC efforts? Isn't it exciting that these are all built around the full potential of the open web, instead of merely trying to be land grabs within the walled gardens of closed platforms? I'm more optimistic about the environment and opportunity for starting new ventures than I've been in ages, and for me the fundamental reasons why are demonstrated best by startups that could only happen in New York City.

Plus, we have bagels. Delicious bagels.

Here are some interesting recent blog posts and articles, mostly by friends or acquaintances of mine, all of which add up to an interesting narrative.

• Spencer Ante in BusinessWeek documents Mint's sale to Intuit:

Mint.com owes much of its success to one such investor, First Round Capital, which opted to back the fledgling company at a time when other VCs demurred. Indeed, the Mint.com acquisition is First Round Capital's largest exit, beating out the $100 million sale of portfolio company Powerset to Microsoft (MSFT). And although First Round Capital would not quantify the return on its investment, co-founder Josh Kopelman says the Mint.com deal generated the highest return of any deal the firm has done. Previously its best return came when eBay (EBAY) acquired StumbleUpon for $75 million, which generated more than 14 times First Round Capital's original investment. "I don't think this changes our strategy," Kopelman says. "It is continued validation for our approach."

• Sarah Lacy of TechCrunch reminds startups that they're supposed to be changing the world:

I did interviews with most of the TechCrunch50 experts backstage and there was a common gripe about the companies launching there: Not enough passion, not enough swinging for the fences, not enough trying to change the world. There were too many people building safe businesses, too many companies just trying to make existing things slightly better, and too many people wanting to be the next Mint.com, not the next Google. Nothing against Mint, but Silicon Valley wasn’t built on $170 million exits.

Web visionaries like Reid Hoffman and Sean Parker struggled to come up with positive feedback on stage. Robert “I-get-excited-by-nearly-any-start-up” Scoble was so bored he was playing Hangman via Twitter with Paul Carr. Marc Andreessen praised Udorse—a company that he joked would make the world a worse place if it succeeded—because at least it was a new idea. Tim O’Reilly said he didn’t care whether Cocodot, one of the companies he judged, succeeded or failed because it was so meaningless in the world. And Tony Hsieh just said it blatantly: “I didn’t see anything that was trying to change the world.”

In some ways, I feel like Sarah's post is a direct corollary to my own earlier post where I'd suggested that the U.S. Government is the most interesting tech startup of 2009.

The ever-diplomatic Jason Fried of 37Signals riffs on a topic that he and I were just talking about last night, a lamentation of modest ambitions:

Mint’s sale to Intuit really pissed me off.

Why should I care? Because I think it’s indicative of a VC-induced cancer that’s infecting our industry and killing off the next generation. I don’t know the full backstory, but I’d bet this sale was encouraged by a Mint investor.

Here’s a fresh new company that was gunning for an aging incumbent. And not only gunning, but gaining. They had a great product, great design, and great potential. They were growing rapidly and figured out the revenue game. They were on their way to redefining an industry — one that was left for dead by the current custodians.

They were everything their main competitor, Intuit, was not. While Mint was inventing, Intuit was out of it. People used Quickbooks/Quicken out of habit and legacy. People used Mint because they loved it. Intuit was disgruntled, Mint was disruptive.

But here’s what happened: Intuit, last decade’s leader in personal finance, just became the next decade’s leader in personal finance. Mint had their number, but they sold it for $170 million. A big payday for sure, and if that was their two-year goal then they nailed it, but I can’t believe that was the point behind Mint. It had too much potential.

Mint was a key leader of the next generation of game changers. And now it’s property of Intuit — the poster-child for the last generation. What a loss. Is that the best the next generation can do? Become part of the old generation? How about kicking the shit out of the old guys? What ever happened to that?

• Chris Dixon, co-founder of Hunch, talks about the impending era of interesting new NYC tech startups:

There are a bunch of veteran entrepreneurs actively investing in and mentoring seed stage startups. Google has a big office here and many people seem to be leaving to go start companies.

...

New York City has many of the same strengths as Silicon Valley - merit-driven capitalism, the embrace of newcomers and particularly immigrants, and a consistent willingness to reinvent itself. Silicon Valley will always be the mecca of technology, but now that people here are getting back to, as Obama says, making things, New York City has a shot at becoming relevant again in the tech world.

• And Caterina Fake talks about how the connections in our city will fuel this tech renaissance:

Yes. As someone who goes back and forth between New York and Silicon Valley, I see more companies being started in the Valley. But I am seeing some great consumer internet companies being started out here too. Etsy is a great example. Hunch has to be on this list. And Kickstarter, which just recently launched, and is changing the way that creative projects themselves are funded. A promising beginning. There need to be more startups, naturally, and more seed capital, and a hometown newspaper, as Chris also notes. And the CS grads moving into startups rather than financial services companies. I'm optimistic.

Though Caterina is still optimistic about startups in Silicon Valley, I'll offer up that one of the biggest changes in her perspective since saying three years ago that it was a bad time for a startup is that she's spending a lot more time in New York City these days. Finally, my friend Jen Bekman exemplifies the diversity of NYC's nominal "tech" community, in that her startup and company are squarely focused on the world of fine art. As Jen says:

[T]here’s so much else going on aside from technology — the valley might hold the title of the best place for start-ups in technology, but NYC is the best place for many things.

The diversity of experience on the 20×200 team is incredible and inspiring. Everyone I work with has done a bunch of other things aside from technology, and not one of them set out for a tech career to begin with. Among us are photographers, musicians, artists, writers, lawyers, teachers and wine experts. We all love the internet (a lot! too much?) but what drives us most is our love of art and the people who make it.

Does this happen in Silicon Valley? Perhaps, but my time spent there — which I loved, for the record — was about an immersion in technology. Here in NYC it’s about the thing itself.

...

Then again, if you live too long inside the echo-chamber, it’s easy to forget who’s going to be using all this technology in the end. The reality check is important, almost as important as being able to hail a cab whenever I damn well please.

The thread that ties all of these things together for me is that technology adoption happens now because of culture and media, not simply for its own sake or because certain types of capital are available. It happens because a vision is ambitious enough to capture the attention of artist and writers and creators of all sorts, not just other technologists or people within the bubble of the existing tech community. And cities like Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C. and, particularly, New York City, have a decided advantage when it comes to connecting to those in the tech community to the rest of the world. We also have an unparalleled history of ambition (and, yes, ego) to match that potential.

I hope entrepreneurs learn a lesson from the few underwhelming startups that are out there, and realize that the model of making incremental improvements on companies that already exist is a recipe where, even if you achieve your goals, you may not have achieved much of a success. And if everyone around you has similarly unambitious goals, then maybe you need to be in a place where that's not true.

Note: I use, and like Mint.com, and I'm happy for their success and am hopeful that they have a positive impact on Intuit. I am not arguing that their definition of success should be the same as mine, but rather that they may have defined a different set of goals if they had been part of a different community.

One year ago, I wrote a remembrance, as I do every year, of where I'm at compared to where I was on this day in 2001. As a New Yorker, it's a personal ritual, one that I share publicly but do more for myself than for anyone else.

It was startling to see how angry I was a year ago, because I'm not angry today. Writing then, I said,

Finally getting angry myself, I realize that nobody has more right to claim authority over the legacy of the attacks than the people of New York. And yet, I don't see survivors of the attacks downtown claiming the exclusive right to represent the noble ambition of Never Forgetting. I'm not saying that people never mention the attacks here in New York, but there's a genuine awareness that, if you use the attacks as justification for your position, the person you're addressing may well have lost more than you that day. As I write this, I know that parked out front is the car of a woman who works in my neighborhood. Her car has a simple but striking memorial on it, listing her mother's name, date of birth, and the date 9/11/2001. Every single day I walk by there and know that blowhards who only ever saw the attacks as a video loop on CNN would never dare pontificate to her about Never Forgetting.

But this year, I am much more at peace. It may be that, finally, we've been called on by our leadership to mark this day by being of service to our communities, our country, and our fellow humans. I've been trying of late to do exactly that. And I've had a bit of a realization about how my own life was changed by that day.

Speaking to my mother last week, I offhandedly mentioned how almost all of my friends and acquaintances, my entire career and my accomplishments, my ambitions and hopes have all been born since September 11, 2001. If you'll pardon the geeky reference, it's as if my life was rebooted that day and in the short period afterwards. While I have a handful of lifelong friends with whom I've stayed in touch, most of the people I'm closest to are those who were with me on the day of the attacks or shortly thereafter, and the goals I have for myself are those which I formed in the next days and weeks. i don't think it's coincidence that I was introduced to my wife while the wreckage at the site of the towers was still smoldering, or that I resolved to have my life's work amount to something meaningful while my beloved city was still papered with signs mourning the missing.

Certainly, some of this is just the nature of growing up. I'm not the young man I was back then, and some of this is just the maturity of being at a different stage of life now. But I find some consolation in the idea that at least one of my lessons taken away from such a senseless loss of life was that I needed to live my own life with urgency, passion, love and obligation to others. I'm not there yet, but I am trying, and I can at least look back at the last eight years and see a bit of progress, in my own life, in the work of those around me, and in my city and my country as well.

If you're interested in taking a look back, I posted on the day of the attacks. I can also offer some excerpts from past years.

In 2002, I wrote On Being an American:

Get annoyed, get angry, be incensed as you are with your sister who always votes the opposite of you, as annoyed as you get with your father who never quite got where you were coming from politically. And come back, shaking your head but still smiling, and enjoy the chance to appreciate those Americans that your reflexes tell you to resent. Be thankful for the chance to have neighbors or fellow citizens who raise your ire or offend your sensibilities. Be thankful that we can sit in a quiet small town and roll our eyes at the inanities of a visitor from a big city.

In 2003, Two Years:

There's other people, who are consumed by their anger, unable to move forward with their lives, and determined to pick the scab and make sure it never heals. They find honor in making sure the pain never subsides, and in trying to make others hurt like they do. We have some of those, and I understand why they have to hold on to their anger. I just hope they see that it's not the best thing for them, in the long term. I spent a lot of time, too much time, resenting people who were visiting our city, and especially the site of the attacks, these past two years. I've been so protective, I didn't want them to come and get their picture taken like it was Cinderella's Castle or something. I'm trying really hard not to be so angry about that these days. I found that being angry kept me from doing the productive and important things that really mattered, and kept me from living a life that I know I'm lucky to have.

In 2004, Thinking of You:

I don't know if it's distance, or just the passing of time, but I notice how muted the sorrow is. There's a passivity, a lack of passion to the observances. I knew it would come, in the same way that a friend told me quite presciently that day back in 2001 that "this is all going to be political debates someday" and, well, someday's already here.

In 2005, Four Years:

I was so defensive because I saw people who hated New York City, or at least didn't care very much about it, trying to act as if they were extremely invested in recovering from the attacks, or opining about the causes or effects of the attacks. And to me, my memory of the attacks and, especially, the days afterward had nothing to do with the geopolitics of the situation. They were about a real human tragedy, and about the people who were there and affected, and about everything but placing blame and pointing fingers. It felt thoughtless for everyone to offer their response in a framework that didn't honor the people who were actually going through the event.

In 2006, I wrote After Five Years, Failure. At the time, I was feeling resigned to a more cynical observance of this anniversary:

[A]fter all the grief of the day, one of the strongest feelings I came away with on the day of the attacks was a feeling of some kind of hope. Being in New York that day really showed me the best that people can be. As much as it's become cliché now, there's simply no other way to describe a display that profound. It was truly a case of people showing their very best nature.

We seem to have let the hope of that day go, though.

In 2007, I was trying to come to terms with the sense of distance that had developed, with Six Is Letting Go:

On the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, and especially on September 12th, I wasn't only sad. I was also hopeful. I wanted to believe that we wouldn't just Never Forget that we would also Always Remember. People were already insisting that we'd put aside our differences and come together, and maybe the part that I'm most bittersweet and wistful about was that I really believed it. I'd turned 26 years old just a few days before the attacks, and I realize in retrospect that maybe that moment, as I eased from my mid-twenties to my late twenties, was the last time I'd be unabashedly optimistic about something, even amidst all the sorrow.

Thank you to those of you who've joined me over the years in remembering, and especially those who were there for me eight years ago today. As I said earlier today, eight years later, I am still thankful for the memory of my city showing its best nature on its worst day. I love New York.

Everyone claims to be at the Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell:

And yet, this venue has no mayor! THE BLOGOSPHERE IS FACT-CHECKING YOUR ASS, Das Racist! As you might expect, Foursquare shows some delightful results if you check the venue "On A Boat".

Finally, if you're really interested in knowing where in the world your musical favorites are geographically, check out the Word Magazine map of album covers.

In two weeks, I'll be marking the 10 year anniversary of blogging on dashes.com. I'm celebrating by making a simple request: Tell me what you'd like to see me blog about. I can't guarantee I'll get to every request that's made, but I am going to try to cherry-pick the best ideas that fit into what this site is all about. (If you're curious what that means, check out my Best Of, or just view the Most Popular things I've written.)

To support the effort, I'm taking off the next few weeks to focus primarily on writing and researching. While it might seem like a weird way to spend a "vacation", running this site over the past 10 years has been among the most fulfilling and rewarding things I've done in my life. So it only seemed natural to me to dedicate even more time and energy to it.

And to that end, if you're in the NYC area and we haven't had the chance to meet up in person, or it's been too long since we've caught up, drop me a line to anil@dashes.com or give me a ring at (646) 833 8659 and if I've got time, I'm happy to grab coffee or a drink with anybody who's a reader of this site. (I'm also open to suggestions of things I should check out in NYC that I might have missed — the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel is already on my list, but I'm open to anything. And you know, parties and meetups are fun, too.)

Thanks to everybody for helping me celebrate my site's anniversary in style, and I look forward to getting even more ideas and inspiration from all of you!

A few weeks ago, as a surprise gift for our anniversary, my wife got us a night's stay at the Revolving Hotel Room, part of theanyspacewhatever exhibition at the Guggenheim.

Created by Carsten Höller, the room is a remarkable art installation that also happens to be a complete room suite that you can stay in for a night, letting us live the dream of camping out in the museum and sneaking out among the exhibits while it's closed.

I had no inkling of the plan, just being told by my wife when to be ready to go out. Adding to the surreality, the BBC was there to greet us, filming our entrance and initial encounter with the exhibit for their video segment.

I had been inclined to write a Yelp-style review of the stay ("The continental breakfast served in the morning was serviceable, but our room didn't even have a television!"), but since the Revolving Hotel Room is sold out, it seemed as if that would be unnecessary. As it turns out, the signature revolving motions of the platforms that hold the furniture in the room are barely noticeable once you're asleep, though when you're awake it's very easy to observe how quickly you're moving. In fact, that only thing that might have kept the night from being restful was the noise generated by the other exhibit pieces, echoing through the giant open rotunda of the building. But we had a friendly attendant/guide/security guard who, after escorting us through a personal tour of all the exhibits, graciously turned off all the artworks that used bright lights or loud sounds.

Right when we returned from our stay in the room, Alaina posted a brief writeup as well as a photo set on Flickr including some images and video from our vantage point staying in the room. Since our stay was only the third night the room was open, not many reviews or images of the exhibit had filtered out, so we inspired quite a few follow-up stories, from Gothamist's salacious take to Art21's more analytical look. Art21 also hints at the part of the experience that perhaps lingers with me most: The other exhibits we took in.

Being able to see the museum uncrowded and unhurried by the usual crush of competing patrons was the most memorable and distinctive part of the experience. We could take our time, really appreciate the works (as well as the incredible architecture of one of NYC's signature buildings), and form our opinions without the awareness of thousands of people around us. The fact that, to me, many of the works seemed informed by the short, text-heavy world I live in, all a blur of Twitter updates and SMS messages, made the exhibit in its entirety particularly resonant.

The truth is, the Guggenheim as a space makes a terrible hotel. The room was hardly secluded, the amenities were perfunctory, and while the bed and chairs were comfortable enough, the gracious staff was the only part of the experience that compares to the quality of other fine hotels. That being said, I'd stay there again in a second.

Each year, I try to write a memorial post on the anniversary, to remind myself, and as a record of where I am compared to where I was that day. As I read back over them, what I see nearly ever year is that I wanted to cling to the sadness of the day, the very real sense of grief and loss that I think colors the day for those of us who were in New York City then in a slightly different way than it did for people who were more distant.

If you could smell the smoke, I think, it was a different experience.

And as a result, I never had as much of the anger that so many others, who were more distant, felt as a reaction to the attacks. "Let's grieve first", I thought. "There will be plenty of time for being angry."

In 2002, I wrote On Being an American:

Get annoyed, get angry, be incensed as you are with your sister who always votes the opposite of you, as annoyed as you get with your father who never quite got where you were coming from politically. And come back, shaking your head but still smiling, and enjoy the chance to appreciate those Americans that your reflexes tell you to resent. Be thankful for the chance to have neighbors or fellow citizens who raise your ire or offend your sensibilities. Be thankful that we can sit in a quiet small town and roll our eyes at the inanities of a visitor from a big city.

In 2003, Two Years:

There's other people, who are consumed by their anger, unable to move forward with their lives, and determined to pick the scab and make sure it never heals. They find honor in making sure the pain never subsides, and in trying to make others hurt like they do. We have some of those, and I understand why they have to hold on to their anger. I just hope they see that it's not the best thing for them, in the long term. I spent a lot of time, too much time, resenting people who were visiting our city, and especially the site of the attacks, these past two years. I've been so protective, I didn't want them to come and get their picture taken like it was Cinderella's Castle or something. I'm trying really hard not to be so angry about that these days. I found that being angry kept me from doing the productive and important things that really mattered, and kept me from living a life that I know I'm lucky to have.

In 2004, Thinking of You:

I don't know if it's distance, or just the passing of time, but I notice how muted the sorrow is. There's a passivity, a lack of passion to the observances. I knew it would come, in the same way that a friend told me quite presciently that day back in 2001 that "this is all going to be political debates someday" and, well, someday's already here.

In 2005, Four Years:

I was so defensive because I saw people who hated New York City, or at least didn't care very much about it, trying to act as if they were extremely invested in recovering from the attacks, or opining about the causes or effects of the attacks. And to me, my memory of the attacks and, especially, the days afterward had nothing to do with the geopolitics of the situation. They were about a real human tragedy, and about the people who were there and affected, and about everything but placing blame and pointing fingers. It felt thoughtless for everyone to offer their response in a framework that didn't honor the people who were actually going through the event.

In 2006, I wrote After Five Years, Failure, which marked the beginning of me feeling resigned to the far more cynical remembrance this day was starting to have:

[A]fter all the grief of the day, one of the strongest feelings I came away with on the day of the attacks was a feeling of some kind of hope. Being in New York that day really showed me the best that people can be. As much as it's become cliché now, there's simply no other way to describe a display that profound. It was truly a case of people showing their very best nature.

We seem to have let the hope of that day go, though.

Then finally, last year, resignation with Six Is Letting Go:

On the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, and especially on September 12th, I wasn't only sad. I was also hopeful. I wanted to believe that we wouldn't just Never Forget that we would also Always Remember. People were already insisting that we'd put aside our differences and come together, and maybe the part that I'm most bittersweet and wistful about was that I really believed it. I'd turned 26 years old just a few days before the attacks, and I realize in retrospect that maybe that moment, as I eased from my mid-twenties to my late twenties, was the last time I'd be unabashedly optimistic about something, even amidst all the sorrow.

Over and over, I've resisted getting angry, but this year when I first saw the Towers of Light, I finally understood that I am finally, genuinely mad. Not just at those murderous barbarians who attacked us, but at the sheer number of people who've actually stopped caring about the victims or the attacks at all, except so far as chanting "9/11" is useful to them. People who would mock the idealism and optimism that made so many of us hopeful in the days after the attacks, treating our best instincts with condescension.

Because to me, as naive as it may seem seven years later, the attacks were about hope. The hope that immediately after, people would remember the basic, decent humanity they'd shown to one another that day. Along with the memories of those lost, that's what I've tried to never forget.

I'd hoped observances would stay apolitical. I remembered seeing some of my most cynical and jaded friends moved to tears by the site of a bunch of tuneless congressmen singing hoary old patriotic songs. But the insistence of those who proclaim that they'll "Never Forget" has been used to mask the fact that we're only a few years away from footage of the attacks being used to sell pickup trucks. The thing they'll Never Forget is not the genuine grief of losing so many lives, or the inspiring hope of people putting aside their differences. Instead, they want to Never Forget that this unforgiveable violation could be used as an unassailable political bludgeon.

Finally getting angry myself, I realize that nobody has more right to claim authority over the legacy of the attacks than the people of New York. And yet, I don't see survivors of the attacks downtown claiming the exclusive right to represent the noble ambition of Never Forgetting. I'm not saying that people never mention the attacks here in New York, but there's a genuine awareness that, if you use the attacks as justification for your position, the person you're addressing may well have lost more than you that day. As I write this, I know that parked out front is the car of a woman who works in my neighborhood. Her car has a simple but striking memorial on it, listing her mother's name, date of birth, and the date 9/11/2001. Every single day I walk by there and know that blowhards who only ever saw the attacks as a video loop on CNN would never dare pontificate to her about Never Forgetting.

And I get even more furious at the random meaninglessness of it all. The pathetic denoument to the Anthrax attacks is a sad, small man who was bitter about being rebuffed by a sorority girl forty years ago. The mighty and mysterious terrorist network that was going to upend our daily lives forever turned out to be, while still a persistent and real threat, just as likely to be populated with incompetent and disaffected bumblers as with criminal masterminds. If they had a goal of disrupting the American economy and reducing our standing overseas, well it's been accomplished, and yet it's not as if that's going to make the terrorists any happier. They're just differently miserable, making the whole thing seem even more pointless and unnecessary.

The thing is, it's in my nature to try to find a silver lining. I am proud that my memory of how decent people can be has not faded. I'm comforted that my vulnerability to images and feelings of that day has not muted. But finally, sadly, I'm angry that the spirit of remembrance on this day has so often been perverted on every other day of the year.

I'm not a Pollyanna — I don't expect everyone everywhere forever to bow and scrape reverently at any mention of the hallowed date. The kids at school on the next block over are too young to even really remembered what happened, and I envy them that. But I did think that perhaps this one thing that, for all its terrible tragedy, had inspired some hope could remain meaningful. It feels like there have been people continuously chipping away at that idea for years.

So I haven't given up, and I will still remember that day seven years ago for how a display of the worst impulses of mankind turned into the best of mankind. But I don't think I can feel that untarnished hope anymore without feeling a bit angry and bitter about how some of the promise of that day has been squandered. And for that, I offer my apologies to the memory of those who died. You deserve a better honor.

It looks like I wasn't the only one having a Gawker reckoning; A remarkable post revealed that both Emily Gould and Choire Sicha are leaving the site. (Thanks to Rex for the link.)

That post impressively uses Carla Blumenkranz's words about Gawker to highlight the worst tendency of the site: "The status of Gawker rose as the overall status of its subjects declined, and it was this that made Gawker appear at times a reprehensible bully." I'd tried to make the same point, albeit less eloquently, in my own post a few weeks ago:

I'm all for snarky-smart assed blogging, I just think that emulating traditional media's willingness to destroy people who aren't villains isn't a strategy for long-term success.

Perhaps as impressive as Emily and Choire's self-reflection was Gawker's post announcing an opening for a new Managing Editor. It kind of makes explicit that this (re-?) imagining of Gawker is not as the site that takes down the traditional media by mocking them, but as the site that takes down the traditional media by stealing their advertising dollars. In their own words:

It's no longer enough to take stories from the New York Times, and add a dash of snark. Gawker needs to break and develop more stories. And the new managing editor will need to hire and manage reporters, as well as bloggers. Gawker.com receives more than 10m pageviews per month. Think of Gawker less as a blog than as a full-blown news site. The right candidate will oversee Gawker's evolution.

I always believed that those of us who were creating personal media online would win. I still hold out hope that when we do so, it's not because we were willing to fight dirtier (or work cheaper) than the media that inspired us, but rather because we could do a better job of making media than the legacy media does today. Congratulations to everybody involved for being willing to indulge in a little bit of the most positive sort of creative destruction.

If you're in NYC, you should join me, and my friends from Serious Eats, A Hamburger Today, and Gothamist for the Burger Bash at Water Taxi Beach tomorrow. It's going to be a pile of delicious burgers, accompanied by some good beer (first keg is free, courtesy of my employers) and then later on, holy crap, Grandmaster Flash is spinning! What's not to love?

The only tricky part is that you have to buy tickets in advance. Go buy them now, it's only $13.50 and they're even going to have Butter Burgers. Mmm, butter.

Didja like the series of posts on How to Visit New York City? Then you might want to check these out:

• Mark Dominus has a lengthy, well-considered view of New York Tourism, centered around the maxim that I “…may be a little misleading when he says ‘the natives are friendly and helpful.’ I would say not. Neither are they unfriendly or unhelpful. What they mostly are, in my experience, is brusque and in a hurry.”
• And Monsur takes a run at the Apple, too: “New York City never ceases to surprise you. Toss aside the map, walk around, and let the city reveal herself to you.”

Last year, when I wrote Draw the Map, Draw the World about the New York City subway map and Massimo Vignelli, one of the signature designers in the map's history, I was surprised how many people were interested in the topic.

There's been some great writing on Vignelli's map:

• Visual Complexity's look at the map, which I linked to last year, is wonderful.
• Design Observer offers Mr. Vignelli's Map, which was published a few years ago in observance of the subway's centennial.

But perhaps one of the coolest recent bits of media about Massimo Vignelli and his work on the subway map is this outtake footage from the documentary film Helvetica. It's well worth a look for those enchanted with the fellow who said, The only thing you are interested in is the spaghetti.

In 2001, I checked in with everyone on the morning of the attacks, and then again that night before I finally went to bed.

In 2002, I reflected on what it is to be an American. And it was just as important to me to note that we're all wrong.

In 2003, I was stuck thinking about the impact that violence and anger have on all of our lives.

In 2004, I had to watch and remember from a distance.

And last year, I think I finally started to understand how others may have seen the attacks when they happened.

But this year is something sadder for me. I feel as if we've failed in so many ways. All of us. I have alluded to it in all the pieces I wrote in the past, but after all the grief of the day, one of the strongest feelings I came away with on the day of the attacks was a feeling of some kind of hope. Being in New York that day really showed me the best that people can be. As much as it's become cliché now, there's simply no other way to describe a display that profound. It was truly a case of people showing their very best nature.

We seem to have let the hope of that day go, though. I see that public discourse has dissolved, again, into the same petty partisan politics that we were occupied with in the past. I remember in 2001 it was a summer of shark attacks and Gary Condit and I'll be damned if we're not right back to the same depths of idiocy now. There's no genuine appreciation for the fact that we share our American experience with people whom we can love despite our disagreements.

I'm a hypocrite here, too; I fall into the bickering myself. But I hope, at least, that I'm a sinner trying to be saved, and I loathe the fact that I only ever hear those horrible attacks used as a lever to help win an argument. Just once, I wish I'd hear someone talk about "9/11" as a justification for compromising with their neighbor, or with the person across the aisle. Just once.

And I don't feel safer. I feel like we understand less of the threat against us today than we did when we were attacked. I have not forgotten that, despite the lunacy of news reports about duct tape recommendations and hair gel policy, there actually were envelopes of anthrax mailed around. There really are threats, but all the day-to-day precautions seem to be focused on trying to close the door after the horse has already bolted. What happened to Osama Bin Laden?

I got complacent, too. I was ready to make a change. I was ready to make a sacrifice. I wanted to be asked to buy war bonds, to spend steel pennies, to plant a victory garden. I did make some changes, trying to use less gasoline or to better understand the world around me. I even got a solid start on embracing the ideas of people whom I thought I disagreed with, and have become a passionate moderate. But when we had a chance to really change the way people live their lives in our country, those who should have been leaders asked us to go back to our normal lives.

Today, I'm not 100% satisfied with our normal lives. I want the better life I saw from my friends and neighbors for a few brief moments after the worst day of our lives. I grieve not just for all the lives we lost that day, but for the fact that their loss could have helped us all be better, and that it could have inspired us to keep living the way we do at our best.

Honestly, looking around today, I feel we've failed. We aren't properly honoring those we lost. But I'm still optimistic that we can revive the effort, and that we can do justice to those we remember. Maybe we can still get it right. Most of all, I just hope that we never get a reminder that forces us to realize what an opportunity we've missed.

The Sunday New York Times ran a fantastic article by Alex Mindlin, Win, Lose, Draw: The Great Subway Map Wars that details a battle that has brewed, off and on, for the past 30 years.

There are, it seems, at least two distinct systems of belief about what constitutes the proper set of assumptions for the New York City subway map. The core tension between the camps is a debate about the goals of a map this ubiquitous, one so frequently used by millions of people. Should the Metropolitan Transit Authority strive for an idealized conceptual diagram that helps people understand the system at the expense of literal accuracy? Or should the map reflect the true environment that the subway system lives in, providing necessary context even at the expense of superficial clarity?

The right answer, of course, is that we all want both. But the pendulum swings back and forth over decades, based on design trends or the arbitrary caprices that inform the workings of any large, old public institution. The good news is that all this back-and-forth leaves us with a lot of beautiful maps to ponder.

The map used in the 1930s, excerpted above, was fairly uncontroversial. As the Times story notes, the classic London Tube map was an influence on the entire genre. But the heart of the Times story is the debate over the 1972 map, which was the first NYC Subway map I ever collected, and is excerpted here, showing roughly the same area as the 1930s-era map above.

The elegance of this map is even more delightful when you know about the sheer contrariness of its creator, Massimo Vignelli. He's quoted in the Time story defending the liberties taken in the 1972 map:

Of course I know Central Park is rectangular and not square. Of course I know the park is green, and not gray. Who cares? You want to go from Point A to Point B, period. The only thing you are interested in is the spaghetti.

For those interested in more spaghetti, as well as more plate, more cheese, and more tortured metaphors, here's some more NYC Subway map links:

• Visual Complexity's survey of transportation networks includes a look at the 1972 Vignelli map.
• The best independent NYC Subway site is nycsubway.org, where you'll find a
  comprehensive list of maps, including some fantasy maps created by subway fans.
• Also on nycsubway.org is a comprehensive list of links to other subway fansites.
• And finally, the Abandoned Stations site, which I've linked to before but never get tired of exploring.

Today's my birthday! And I'm hoping you'll do me a favor on my birthday: Donate to a good cause, and with a good reason.

You see, my sister in law Jennifer Browne (along with my wife Alaina and several of our friends) is running in this year's New York City Marathon. But she's running as part of the New York Road Runners Special Charity Initiative, which means she has to raise $2500 to participate in this year's marathon, which is on November 5, 2006.

Even though I'd watched the NYC Marathon for years, the 2004 race was the first one where I had a group of friends and family participating. It was an amazing event for all of us, and I'm happy that this year it'll also be for a good cause. (The photo to the left is Jennifer right before she and Alaina crossed the finish line.)

So, since I know my readers can be exceptionally generous, I'm hoping you'll lend a hand. Here's what to do:

• Visit the Special Charity Initiative donation page. (It's a secure payment page.)
• Enter a donation amount. (I think $26.20 is particularly appropriate; That's a dollar a mile.)
• Enter in Marathon Entry # 70972.
• Enter member's last name Browne.

Then just enter your payment info. With your donation, you'll be supporting a number of deserving organizations, each receiving a percentage of the total amount:

• The Armory Foundation - 30.5%
• USA Track & Field, Inc. to support its USA Distance Project - 23%
• Central Park Conservancy - 15.5%
• The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, for the benefit of Van Cortlandt Park - 8%
• Achilles Track Club - 7%

You can see more about the Charity Initiative on the New York Road Runners site.

The marathon is a pretty special event for my circle of family and friends, and I'm hoping you can help make it possible for Jennifer to participate. If you want to find out a little more, you can check out Jenn's MySpace profile or shoot me an email or leave a comment and I'm glad to answer any questions.

From Overheard in New York, one of my all-time favorite blogs, an anecdote from tourist season. It's funny because it's true!

From the New York Times' Sunday Styles section Silicon Alley's resurgence, pegged to a tech Meetup where the crowd was discussing new web startups. Yep, Web 2.0 is hitting the East Coast, though apparently not all of the startups are as interesting as del.icio.us or, well, Meetup itself. Fortunately, people aren't afraid to criticize things in New York, and Scott reveals his prescience:

He began by asking his tech-savvy listeners simplistic questions about their knowledge of the Web.

"You're going to get booed off before you start," shouted Scott Heiferman, a founder of the social networking company Meetup and the organizer of the Tech Meetup.

Prescient words, it turned out. Mr. Robertson faced a barrage of withering questions and eventually slunk offstage to mocking laughter from the audience.

"I got ambushed," he said afterward. "I didn't know it was a 'Gong Show' thing."

Perhaps the tone, especially in this context, was a bit unkind. But that sense that, sometimes at least, ideas just suck is exactly what I was lamenting in my post a few weeks ago. "A complete unwillingness to be critical, an almost astoundingly low set of criteria for acceptance -- these aren't the traits that encourage a community or a culture to improve."

So, to everybody looking for the flip-to-Yahoo-cuz-we've-got-tags Next Big Thing, find a room with a tough crowd. Pitch your idea. See if you get booed. And if you're in the Bay Area? Start being more judicious with the applause.

I can't see the date anywhere today without just stopping, freezing in my tracks. It surprises me it's still that close to the surface, even after four years. Even after writing about it over and over and over and over. Even after being 3000 miles away, again.

The worst part about remembering the attacks this year is that now we have a tragedy that's on the same scale, at least in some ways. There's a world of difference between natural disasters and humans attacking one another, of course, but in terms of an event being big enough to stop you in your tracks and make you really reconsider where you are, how your life is going, how damn lucky you've been, there's some similarity.

The biggest difference in remembering September 11th for me in 2005 is that I finally understand, at least a little bit, what it was like for people who weren't in New York. For a long time, for years, I carried around a lot of resentment towards people who weren't in New York City during the attacks but felt as if they understood. I'd rant, to myself or others, that they'd just seen it on television, or read about it in the papers, but that they couldn't possibly understand what it was like to be there.

Dear New York,

I'm sorry I couldn't be there today. I feel guilty that I couldn't be present to observe. I had to look up the weather there to find out it was, again, a clear, beautiful day in September. I almost wish it weren't, because I know that it just acts as a reminder for so many in the city of the perfect indian summer day we were having three years ago.

Things are very different here, a continent away. They're clearly sympathetic and thoughtful about this date, but... it feels like an observance. Not that it's not sincere, but people are sincere on Memorial Day or in remembering Pearl Harbor, too. They just don't feel them at a visceral level.

Every September 11th since three years ago, someone I know has made a dark joke or not-quite-covered their nervousness with an offhand remark wondering whether there will be an anniversary attack. I have faith that there won't be, but I get a sick pit in my stomach thinking that so many people I love and care about are having to go through that and I can't be there for them. It's that obligation again; When someone you love is afraid, you're not supposed to leave them.

And today doesn't have any of the bittersweet beauty, either. Besides perfect weather, my memory of this day three years ago includes all of the most touching and humane kindnesses between strangers that I've ever seen. It feels like another world being away, where nobody's ever seen strangers hug in the streets, where stores have never thrown their doors open to offer free clothes to businessmen wearing tattered and dust-covered suits, where restaurants have never had a "sit down and have some water" sign in the window.

I'm sure people here would be good and kind in extreme circumstances. I've seen the people of New York do it, and it binds me to them and makes the city a permanent part of my identity.

I don't have an elaborate observance. Last year, I realized my "tradition", if any, is to let this be the one day I really let myself feel it again. Feel the dread that entire day of waiting to hear if there was any more horrible news. Of watching those hellish videos of the attacks replay on television, since I don't allow myself to rewatch them the rest of the year.

I recently saw a personal website that features a picture of the Twin Towers burning at the top of the page, ostensibly as a reminder to "never forget" what had happened. I found myself growing extremely angry and realized that the reason for my anger was the presumption that I could forget, and that someone could be so desensitized to the image that they could see it every day on the top of their page, letting themselves become blind to it like it was a banner ad. But though I still can't look at those images, on the anniversary I force myself to.

The prompt for me to look back in past years was always when it gets dark and I could first see the Towers of Light. Something about remembering that nightfall three years ago, where we all eventually had to make a leap of faith and assume that we'd all be there in the morning, that it was safe to go to sleep... it was the first step to moving forward. Those beams of light remind me of that, and of course they're beautiful.

You're not supposed to say that, because they're an observance of a horrible memory, but they are, and these beams of light that make something beautiful of the tragedy feel to me like a tacit granting permission to look back. That it's okay to let return that dread, that pit in my stomach, everything else that was choked back that day still seems right under the surface for me. Because it will pass.

I don't know if it's distance, or just the passing of time, but I notice how muted the sorrow is. There's a passivity, a lack of passion to the observances. I knew it would come, in the same way that a friend told me quite presciently that day back in 2001 that "this is all going to be political debates someday" and, well, someday's already here.

But for me, it's a day to remember how much we've lost, both in human lives that day, and in my own innocence. So New York, I feel guilty that I can't be there, but please know that you're on my mind and in my heart. I love you, and I miss you, and take care of yourself today.

I've been putting off writing about it because it seems like too much to cover, but then that's probably the whole point. We make obstacles of things by building them up in our minds, when they were never really that big a deal to begin with. And no attempt at writing ever got easier through procrastination.

I'm home in San Francisco now. It's been a week since our stuff was packed into the truck, and 6 days since we hopped on a plane here and 4 days since I've really felt at all settled in. It'll be another two or three weeks until I have little niceties like my CDs or books or, well, a real bed.

In some ways, nothing changes. I'm still a New Yorker, even here, but I don't hate San Francisco and I think I'll grow to like it. The interesting thing, to me, is how much it still matters to me to assert that I'm New Yorker. It's like all things we pick up as part of our identity when we're young: arbitrary, idiosyncratic, and impossible to let go of.

My fascination with New York City started early, as I'm sure most of you can guess. Reading Superfudge and trying to imagine a place where there was a Chinatown that sold little turtles to little boys. (And still does!) The novelty of the then-new pooper scooper law. All the other trappings of something very different than the place I grew up.

It stuck with me on my first "real" trip to the city when I was fifteen. I'd been there countless times before, mostly on trips where we'd take whatever distant relative was visiting from India to see the Statue of Liberty and a couple other checklist tourist traps before heading back home to Pennsylvania. Rote, uninspiring, and tiring.

But at fifteen, I went as part of a school trip and that meant independence, of a sort. I spent most of the day trying unsuccessfully to impress the girl I had a crush on, naturally, but in between I saw a show on Broadway and really looked at the tall buildings for the first time. I walked around Battery Park before the jaunt to Liberty Island and really understood for the first time that all this water meant that Manhattan really was an island, despite its absence of beaches and palm trees. I went to the top of the World Trade Center.

That's where it all circles back, of course. Those towers. The day we lost them was the day I realized I had an obligation to the city. But it took some time to develop. Fast forwarding a few years from when I was fifteen, I'd just arrived in Manhattan, having packed all my belongings into the trunk of my car and being fortunate enough to have no idea what I was getting into. On my second night in the city, I finally ventured out, terrified at what I'd done and not really sure what to do next.

I walked down the block at about three in the morning, when it was too late at night for me to call anybody who would reassure me, and having far too much pride to actually break down and start crying. At the end of my block was a pretty standard bodega, with the usual mishmash of newspapers and fresh flowers and other essentials, and next to it was a man opening up a packing box. The box was filled with fresh mangos, mangos that had probably been on a tree in Mexico 48 hours before. And now, for less than a buck, just a block from where I lived, I could have a mango.

In the little town where I'd grown up, mangos had only shown up in the local grocery store a few years earlier, being considered an ethnic food. My mother had brought them home for us regularly, partially in celebration of their availability, but mostly because they were delicious. And here, now, was this fruit in my hand, in the middle of the night. I'd always been a night owl, but this somehow seemed like a sign, that this crate was being unpacked at three in the morning. This city was about exactly that kind of potential.

A few years later, after I'd been in New York City long enough to feel like I knew my way around, I found myself broke, out of work, recently split up from a not particularly pleasant relationship, and living next door to my ex. Not living in the building next door, mind you. The apartment next door. I was still struggling with my depression, I'd recently dealt with some serious illness in the family, and everyone was telling me that the Internet as a career path was dead. I had hit rock bottom, and I was pretty sure I never wanted to go outside ever again.

But over the course of a few months, it all came back. I spent my time off work exploring the city, meeting new people and figuring out as much of the history of New York City as could be teased from searching out abandoned subway stations or by striking up random conversations with people in Central Park. Through luck and opportunity and sheer neccessity, I got a great job and I started making real friends and finally felt like things were clicking. Nearly every step of rebuilding my life had been made possible just through the opportunities that arise by being in New York City, being smart, and having some bills to pay.

It was around that time that, instead of saying "I'm from Pennsylvania but I live in New York City." I started simply saying "I'm a New Yorker." Even after four years of being in Manhattan, it felt a little false, a little disingenuous, but as with most parts of my identity that I've appropriated from my surroundings, I grew into it pretty quickly. And it seemed the most appropriate way to acknowledge a city that had gotten me back on my feet, by identifying myself as part of that city. Later that year, a friend had called me on my birthday and given me the "If you can make it there..." line and I'd said "After this past year, I think I can get through just about anything."

Six days later was September 11, and it turns out, unfortunately, that I was probably right.

A lot of people made a lot of promises that day, and in the days afterward. I was, and in some ways still am, just unbelievably sad about it. I talked a lot about the attacks and their aftermath, both for the relief of telling my story, as trivial as it may have been, but also to help people understand that this was something real that happened, not just something on TV or something used as a slogan on t-shirts. This was something that happened to my city. And I made a smaller promise to myself.

What I wanted to do was honor my obligation to the city that I felt had sustained me. A lot of people have asked why I dwell so much on promoting New York City, and why I make such a big deal about something that's just, well, a place. "Sure, it's great," they say. "But there are lots of great places in the world. And most of them are cheaper!"

It's not that way for me, of course. Some people have religion, and some people have politics, and some people have art. And it makes sense to me to find salvation in any of those things, to find comfort in singing their praises. For me, finding a city I love was comfort. It was a place I belonged after spending my entire childhood in a place where nobody else looked like me, nobody else was raised in the religion I was, nobody else spoke the same language I did at home, and nobody else seemed to care about the things I cared about. In New York, everybody was just as weird as me, and it didn't stop them from inventing and being creative and changing the world.

And that's why it mattered to me that other people know about it. Though I can't take any of the credit for their moves to New York, I'd promoted the city like crazy to people whom I knew were considering a move, regaling Alaina and Jason and Meg and Kathryn and Lia with stories of how much they'd love it. And that's just the people whom I talk to on a weekly basis. There are dozens more, people whom I knew were probably looking for a place where they belonged, too, even if they didn't phrase it that way.

All of these friends arrived after the towers fell. I promised I'd return the favor to a city that had picked me up and dusted me off, and the engine that's always kept New York City moving was new people, new ideas, new energy. And having extraordinary people adding their energy to the city seemed like the most that could be done to honor its spirit. All I was trying to give back was people I cared about, who I knew would love the city the way I do.

New York will always be a center of art, of culture, of architecture and music and any other kind of expression. But it mattered to me that there be something new as well, something created in honor of everything we lost. Others are far better than me at the more literal acts of creation, so I tried to rebuild by encouraging new people to become New Yorkers and by nurturing the medium that I know best.

Being the geek that I am, part of that naturally meant making New York a world-class city for blogging. When I'd started out, there were precious few people with weblogs in the city. I went to Cam's dinner in late 1999 and all of the known New York City bloggers could fit around a two tables, with room for guests from San Francisco.

Now, though certainly through no actions of mine, there are thousands of people inventing and expanding weblogs in New York. From the various Gawker Media blogs (which are collectively probably the most famous blogs in the world) to the hundreds of regular sites by individuals with something to say, there's certainly no better-represented city in the blogosphere. I'm in there somewhere, too, and it's good company to be in. It feels like I'm contributing to something significant.

And that's why I had so much trouble letting go of living in New York. I'd built up my own sense of obligation to the city, as if I were failing by leaving, as if I were failing the city by leaving. Even if only for a while. But I'm realizing that what seemed to me at first like a high-minded sense of obligation is really just hubris. New York City doesn't need my help. You don't need to help someone back onto their feet if they were always standing. And the city isn't going anywhere.

That's the part I struggle to remember, that I'll be glad to see how the city's evolved in my absence, and that I've already had a wealth of experiences that would last me a lifetime even if I could never return. This is closing a chapter, certainly, but not closing a book, and in the meantime I have what I've had. I worked at the top of the Empire State Building. I got to shake Rudy Giuliani's hand and say thanks. I got to buy the last mango I bought in Manhattan, and all that it entails. I got to watch the hot dog contest and the fireworks on the Fourth of July. I got stuck on the wrong side of the Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving. I walked through a silent Times Square in the middle of a snowstorm and pushed my way past the crowds in the Square on New Year's Eve. I stayed at home a hundred Saturday nights, knowing that there were tons of people having the time of their life out on the town, and didn't regret it for a minute.

So for now I'm a New Yorker who doesn't live in New York. For those of you who email me every time I post about the city, writing to complain about my choice of subject matter, you'll be glad to know that the love letters are likely to be less frequent. For those of you still in New York City, please don't stop sending the invitations to whatever cool little thing you're doing this weekend. I'll just pretend I can't make it due to time constraints.

While hunting for apartments in San Francisco, I was struck how ubiquitous New York City is. I walked by ads for To The 5 Boroughs, which pushed the amazing "An Open Letter To NYC" and showed the Manhattan skyline plastered on walls a continent away. I walked down the street and saw a poster for Spiderman, with the hero crouched atop the Chrylser Building. Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I'd never noticed superheros swinging from the Bay Bridge when I was walking around Manhattan. Seems to me like my city is following me home.

Leaving New York, we flew out of JFK. That's the same airport my father flew into almost 41 years ago, when he arrived from India. Though I doubt he (or any man of his generation) would phrase it this way, I suspect he was looking for the same thing I was looking for when I arrived in New York. A place to be, a place to belong, and a chance to take some chances. He'd headed west leaving behind everything and everyone he'd ever known, and all I'm losing is the chance to have a good bagel as often as I'd like. But I like to think I've got some of the same spirit my father does, and that part of honoring my love for both him and New York is to chase adventure wherever it takes me.

So for now, it's California. There's no shortage of mythology about the American West, about people travelling to California to seek opportunity or riches. I hope I'll partake in that, though I'm certain I'll be less taken in by the romance of it than I am by the romance of New York City. That's a fair trade, though. The first city I ever loved can get by without me for a while, and I can certainly do with less fawning over my place of residence and more nuts-and-bolts living of life. My obligation to New York won't ever go away, I'll just honor it differently now, and in the meantime I have some quieter but even more important obligations to fulfill.

See you soon, New York.

For those of you who live in the United States or are familiar with its culture, imagine a place that starts with a political and social system that's identical to today's United States, but has a few significant differences.

In this place, most people speak more than one language. Almost no one owns a car, even the millionaires. Many people don't even know someone who owns a car. There's no Wal-Mart, no Target, no Home Depot.

People regularly and willingly use mass transit to get around for the few things they can't approach on foot. Almost every neighborhood has the basic amenities in walking distance, like a hardware store or dry cleaner or drug store, and they're almost all mom-and-pop operations, not multinational chains.

The people in this place, in addition to being well-educated on average, are extremely friendly, showing a repeated willingness to talk to and greet strangers, and an eagerness to educate tourists or visitors on the customs and rituals of their home. Their cultures are an extremely varied mix of cultures, backgrounds and identities, pervaded with an astonishing level of tolerance and respect.

There's also a deep ethic of civic-mindedness. Average citizens are not just aware of, but actively engaged in efforts such as city planning and zoning laws and the design and preservation of public spaces. Architecture is valued and protected by well-organized, well-financed groups, often consisting of canny partnerships between public, private, and corporate concerns. New urbanism is an understood goal, not just a theoretical ideal.

And this society exists within an unparalleled environment of artistic and entrepreneurial innovation. Constant reinvention paired with startling new creations. Music, dance, theater, film, sculpture, writing, and any other manner of expression all functioning at levels unsurpasssed anywhere else in the world at almost any other point in history.

So this place? It's where I live, Manhattan. New York City. That's why I write about the city with such reverence, and why it exists as a living, breathing character in my life and in the lives of every New Yorker. It seemed like something I needed to remind people about, if they're interested in reading what I have to say.