Bright Lights, Big City

There is a place in New York City that is avoided at all costs by locals unless they must absolutely frequent it for work, meetings or the theatre. That place is known as ~~hell on earth~~ Times Square. There are way too many people, it's filled with tourist traps (and the tourists to be trapped), people walk slow, the intersections are giant clusterfucks and on top of it being plainly annoying, it's rather abrasive.

Most people who are on a visit in the Big Apple stay around this area and proclaim "they could NEVER live here!". Neither could we. This is why no one lives there. Sure, the extremities of midtown comprise a periphery of semi-habitable neighborhoods like Hell's Kitchen and Kip's Bay, but the bigger part of that geographic area is peppered with hotels, bad restaurants, office towers and Broadway theatres. The residential abodes in between are short-term apartment leases and international businessmen-owned "investment properties". So no, no person in their right mind actually lives around there.

That said, no matter how you cut it, how irritating navigating the meeting point of Broadway and 7th Avenue may be, there's always an element of utter marvel that strikes when you actually take a moment to look up and take in what you see: larger-than-life billboards, enough lights to make it look like daytime at any given hour of the night, giant displays of American megalomania. Unless you've been to Tokyo, nothing in the world compares to the magnitude that is the heart of midtown Manhattan.

While I'm shitting all over this place, you undeniably need to see it at least once in your life. Ignore the tour guides hounding you to get on a bus, the creepy man-size Elmo mascots and Batmans (they're either meth heads or heavily inebriated (#justkidding #notreally)), the fanny packs resting on gunts attacking your eye-sight. Ignore the fact that you would lose a race with a snail and plop yourself in the middle of the pedestrian zones or on the TKTS staircase, look up and take it in. And remember that not even 20 years ago, what seems now like the center of the universe used to be one of the biggest dumps known for criminal activity.

But in all honesty, it's always an impressive sight, especially by night.

Times Square nighttime, TKTS staircase, army jacket, Asos skinny denim, Bottega Veneta intrecciato cross body bag, stiletto pointy toe metal cap toe leather booties