Not European in the layout of it’s streets, but in it’s essence.
there, does that explain it? 
Well, not that pointless considering that the various alternative locations were a damn sight easier for the Americans to attack.
Those people probably feel the same way about any big city, since they do tend to be more left wing politically, as was starkly demonstrated in 2004. But NYC being the biggest by far, it seems to draw most of their ire.
On the other hand, however, I’d say that NYC is the quintessentially American city of film, in the sense that whenever somebody wants to make a movie about urban life in America, they’re likely to choose NYC as the setting. More or less, that is. I’d say that if the movie is supposed to be about prosperous people who live in gorgeous apartments or townhouses, they’re likely to use New York as the locale.
I guess there are two ways of looking at it.
I’d say the famous Saul Steinberg (?) “Map of the U.S” New Yorker cover bears that out…pretty much it’s just Manhattan, and the rest of the country is a narrow strip of land beyond the Hudson.
Haven’t been there, but don’t the parks, and especially Central Park, answer the need for open space and relief from concrete? CP looks incalculably more attractive than anything I can get to in L.A.
I like the passages in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff (pps. 289-93) about astronaut John Glenn’s huge ticker-tape parade and post-parade reception in Manhattan in February, 1963. Wolfe’s description of the event touches upon a couple of enduring truths.
First, there’s the cultural divide between ordinary Americans (and esp. the military) and New Yorkers: “like a free port, a stateless city, an international protectorate, Danzig in the Polish corridor, Beirut in the crossroads of the Middle East, Trieste, Zurich, Macao, Hong Kong. Whatever ideals the military stood for, New York City did not.”
But this seemingly most cosmopolitan and aloof city proved to be at heart as patriotic and sentimental as any small town, turning out by the millions, crowding the airport, lining the miles of highway leading into the city, “out in the freezing cold in the most rancid broken-down industrial terrain you have ever seen,” crying as the Glenn motorcade (which included the rest of the Mercury Seven) roared past… and “there were people hanging over the railings,…crying and waving little flags and pouring their hearts out.”
The parade headed uptown from Lower Manhattan on Broadway. The millions improvised confetti on the spot: “you could see that they were tearing up their telephone books… This horrible rat-gray city was suddenly touching, warm! You wanted to protect these poor souls who loved you so much!” Wall Street loved them, but so did the working-class unionized cops: “Out in the middle of the intersections were the policemen, the policemen they had all heard about or read about, New York’s Finest, big tough-looking men in blue greatcoats – and they were crying! They were right out in the intersections in front of everybody, bawling away – tears streaming down their faces, saluting, then cupping their hands and yelling amazing things to John and the rest of them – ‘We love you, Johnny!’ – and then bawling some more, just letting it pour out. The New York cops!”
That night, the Mercury Seven and their large entourage of family, NASA and Time-Life people, and bodyguards, attended a performance of a hit Broadway play, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. This passage indicates B’way’s accommodation and response:
"…quite an entourage – and all of it arranged at the last minute. The start of the play was held up for them. People in the audience gave up their seats, so the astronauts and their party could have the best seats in the house, a whole bloc. Just like that they gave up their seats… the play was a good thirty minutes late starting – and the audience rose and cheered until John sat down. Then a member of the cast came out in front of the curtain and welcomed them and congratulated John and praised the fellows as great human beings and humbly hoped that the little diversion about to be offered would please them…
“Then the lights went down and the curtain went up, and you had to be pretty dense not to realize what this was: a command performance! Royal treatment, point for point, right down the line, and they were the royal families. And it didn’t stop there. They had rewritten some of the lines, rewritten them in an hour or so… When they left the theater, there were still other people outside, waiting, hundreds more people, waiting in the cold, and they started yelling in those horrible twisted rat-gray New York street voices, but everything they said, even the wisecracks, was full of warmth and adulation. Christ, if they owned even New York, even this free port, this Hong Kong, this Polish corridor – what was not theirs now in America?”
Gah, it was already mentioned. Sorry.
I can’t remember the book, but Joel Gerreau, the former Washington Post columnist, said that you could tell when you were outside the NY Metro area when the baseball caps started turning. Everything else about New Yorkers, he said, applied as far upstate as the Yankees caps.
I grew up in what was essentially a Brooklyn expatriates’ colony outside of Rochester, so I know that Upstaters admire New Yorkers much more than the Upstaters would ever admit, and much less than the New Yorkers could ever imagine.
Yeah. We’re almost as self-absorbed and pompous as the twit who wrote that analysis. 
(It’s a fecking joke. New Yorkers are self-absorbed twits. Don’t go on and on like it’s the fucking Mona Lisa. God, I hate art dicks.)
As a Californian/Midwesterner, I’d say no, New York isn’t another country. It’s just a big city. I liked New York fine in the short time I spent there a couple years ago, but I don’t get the aura it seems to have acquired. I’m perfectly happy right here in Chicago.
I once worked with someone who had been a reporter at the newspaper in Buffalo, NY. He said his typical phone calls to state officials started it with:
“Buffalo. BUFFALO! The second largest city in the state!”
Because, of course, Canada had the army to stop the American from marching a whole fifty miles. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
the problem with Ottawa as the “let’s defend ourselves from the Americans” theory is that
- Kingston and Montreal are far more easily defended ground than Ottawa. Montreal is an island, after all, and
- Technically, Toronto is damn near as hard to get to as Ottawa; it’s just as long a walk from any point in the United States. Look how well that turned out,
Ottawa was pure compromise between English and French, Toronto and Montreal.
This is a natural outcome of having a large and newly created state. Places like London and Paris became their country’s capitals because in a very real sense the cities preceded the countries, and the country just naturally had its state take up residence in the most important spot.
In a freshly conceived and very big nation like the USA, Brazil, Canada, or Australia, you have the opportunity to pick your capital. And all four of those chose a lame political compromise.
Really, the capital of Canada should have been Montreal (Toronto would be the logical choice now, but from 1867 to 1976 or so it was Montreal, and had it been so, Montreal would still be the right choice.) Sydney should be the capital of Australia, and either New York or Philadelphia would have been logical choice for the USA.
I grew up in the Adirondack region of upstate New York, which is a very rural offshoot of New England. Even though we were in the same state as Manhattan, it was a different world. I no more thought of New York City as being part of “my” home than I did London or Tokyo.
I now live in the Hudson Valley region, about 80 kilometers north of NYC. From here, NYC cannot be ignored. It is “the city” in conversations - local cities like Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, and Middletown are ignored. Most of our media originates out of NYC, which leaves us in the bizarre predicament of knowing more about what’s going on in Manhattan than we do what’s happening in our own community. I once joked to somebody that if a meteor crashed into Newburgh and killed 10,000 people, I hoped there wouldn’t be a car accident in Manhattan that same day because if there was we wouldn’t make the news.
Here’s a quick way to get a grip on the stereotypical view of New York City: think about all the stereotypes some non-Americans have about the United States - those are the same stereotypes some Americans have about New York City.
Perfect. Perfect.
[sub]Does anybody really love NY accents? Or is it just the associations they carry?[/sub]
You mean there are Americans out there who are afraid of New York deciding to change their regime and bombing the crap out of them?
The STATE?
I don’t understand why people say that. You can like quite comfortibly in Manhattan on $65k a year.
Ironically, that’s now I learned about Austrailia.
Another thing…I would think Texas is the home to the American Stereotype - big, fat, loud, sprawling, SUV driving, gun wielding. Being from New York still allows you to be cool overseas.
Note: comment based purely on personal experience.
Among the New Yorkers i’ve met, some of the most obsessively defensive about how great the city is compared to the rest of the world are often people who have moved there from somewhere else. In my experience, actual New Yorkers (i.e., those born and raised there) often tend to take the city’s magnificence in their stride, almost for granted.
Yes. The state.
On a global level - looking at pure numbers of people affected - Hollywood, or Bollywood, are both far more influential. You may like or dislike that fact, but I don’t think it can be denied.
Yes, NYC affects both Hollywood and Bollywood. And yes, NYC remains the center for printed culture. NYC is no longer the undisputed king of culture. That recent biopic about Rudy Guiliani was filmed in Toronto! And for many things it had never been the cultural center: Opera, for example is still European far more than it is affected by anything happening in the States.
Besides, how can it be considered a cultural center for the US when there’s not a single NASCAR track within any of the five buroughs?
But this is a different issue. Your original assertion was about NYC’s status as a financial, not a cultural capital.
And i think the New York in undisputably more important in terms of global finance and capital movements than Hollywood or Bollywood, and probably more important than just about any other city in the world.