Destinations Of the Month

New York is a major global center for the television, advertising, music, newspaper and book publishing industries and is also the largest media market in the United States. It's got its fair share of the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses, but it also has world-class museums, big statues, even bigger buildings and outrageous excess. New York is a densely packed mass of humanity and all this living on top of one another makes the New Yorker a special kind of person. It's hard to put a finger on what makes the place buzz so hard, but the city's hyperactive rush keeps drawing more and more people to it. The city was the epicenter of jazz in the 1940s, abstract expressionism in the 1950s, and the birthplace of hip hop in the 1970s. Punk rock developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and the city has also been a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature.

The building form most closely associated with New York City is the skyscraper, a pioneering urban form that saw city building shift from the low-scale European tradition to the vertical rise of business districts. Surrounded mostly by water, New York's residential density and extremely high real estate values in commercial districts saw the city amass the largest collection of individual, free-standing office and residential towers in the world. New York's novella-length weekly entertainments listings tend to include a favourite performer you never dared dream you'd see live. The city also contains thousands of venues, ranging from poky East Village bars to pulsating mega-clubs or luxurious late-night lounges. New York is home to teams in each of the major American professional sports leagues. Baseball is the city's most closely followed sport. There have been fourteen World Series championship series between New York City teams; such matchups are called Subway Series.

“ From the top of the Empire State Building to the bottom of a glass in a Manhattan nightclub, New York has it all. ”

New York's famous hustle and bustle was abruptly cut short on 11 September 2001 when a terrorist attack in the form of two hijacked passenger aircraft razed the gleaming twin towers of the World Trade Center. Thousands of people were killed in the worst terrorist act ever on US soil. New York, though severely shaken, showed its grit. The city was fairly quick to regain its composure and normality, rebuilding its business district and its confidence. Shops and restaurants near the site re-opened and tourists re-appeared. However, memories of the attack still linger for most New Yorkers but the rebuilding for the Ground Zero site's rebirth is underway.