Jack Kerouac - Dylan Thomas - Dorothy Parker - Misha Glenny - Sam Harris - Alien Investigation TV - Andrew Graham-Dixon, Simon Schama TV - Letter signed Son of Sam - Banksy & the Rise of Outlaw Art TV - Gordon B Hinckley - Taking on Tyson TV - Iain Stewart & Kathy Sykes - America: The Story of the US Revolution TV - New York: Centre of the World TV - James Stewart - James Fox TV - Marc Singer: Dark Days TV - Kenneth Clark TV - F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby 1974 - The Great Gatsby 2013 - Bernstein & Comden & Green - Susan Sontag - Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! - Aravind Adiga - James Weldon Johnson - News Report of Amadou Diallo - James Burke TV - Weird or What? Strange Survival TV - Ancient Discoveries: Ancient New York TV - Ken Burns & Lynn Novick TV - Storyville: Client 9: The Call Girl & the Governor TV - New York: City of Tomorrow TV - Once Upon a Time in New York: The Birth of Hip Hop, Disco & Punk TV - David Maysles, Grey Gardens TV - Robert A M Stearn - Fiorello la Guardia - Grandmaster Flash - Theme from New York New York, Sinatra et al - Manhattan 1979 & Woody Allen - Citizen Kane 1941 - Scam City: New York City TV - Bob Dylan - Salvador Dali - Charlie Chaplin - John Steinbeck - George Carlin - Henry James - H L Mencken - Leon Trotsky - John Updike - Stir Crazy 1980 - Autumn in New York - Sylvia Plath TV - Michael Portillo TV - Panic in Needle Park 1971 - Robbed short 2014 - Weiner 2016 - The Wolfpack 2015 - The Office TV - The Ten Year Lunch: The Wit & Legend of the Alonquin Round Table 1987 - Paris is Burning 1990 - Style Wars 1983 - Banksy Does New York 2017 - Secret War on Drugs 2017 - CIA Declassified TV - In Search of History TV - Crime & Punishment 2018 - Operation Jane Walk 2018 - Precinct Seven Five aka The Seven Five 2014 - Field of Vision: Adversary short - Big City Life: Homelessness in New York 2014 - American Experience: Stonewall Uprising TV - Monty Don’s American Gardens TV - The Age of Architecture TV - Monsterquest TV - Empires of New York TV - Stacey Herbert TV - Mobsters TV -
I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life. LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets godawful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle. Jack Kerouac, On the Road
I love this fabulous filthy city. Dylan Thomas: A Poet in New York, Dylan in back of cab, BBC 2014
As only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you’ll live through the night. Dorothy Parker
In 1973, inspired by President Nixon’s War on Drugs, Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of New York, introduced a new set of Drug Laws that remain in force to this day, continuing to bear his name. For possessing a risible amount of any drugs, New Yorkers risk draconian sentences of between fifteen years and life in a state penitentiary. And New York State pays out more than $500 million every year to keep incarcerated those who have fallen foul of this regime. Misha Glenny, McMafia
Perhaps the most terrifying statistic of all that Soares uncovered was that in Albany County (minority population 13 per cent) more than 95 per cent of imprisoned Drug Laws offenders were black or Hispanic. Whichever way you look at the figure, it can only mean one thing – something is rotten in the state. ibid.
If they [apocalyptic Christians] turned on their television sets and saw a mushroom cloud had replaced New York City, they would see a silver lining in this cloud. Sam Harris, New York 2005 Society for Ethical Culture lecture
Long Island, New York: an unknown creature washed up on the shore. Alien Investigation, Channel 4 2012
The abandoned their home city of Philadelphia and came to New York not just to live but to make the city the subject of their art ... They became known as The Ashcan School. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art of America 2/3, BBC 2011
Rothko had come to New York in 1923 to wander around, bum about, and starve a bit, he later said. He enrolled in an art class. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Rothko, BBC 2006
Hello from the gutters of NYC which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood. Hello from the sewers of New York which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. Letter to rozzers signed Son of Sam
Painting, or bombing, the New York subway system soon became the primary focus for young graffiti writers obsessed with having their name seen as widely as possible. The nascent art movement developed it own grammar, rules and culture. Banksy & the Rise of Outlaw Art, Sky Arts 2021
Basquiat and Keith Haring were really the beginning of street art, modern street art. ibid.
We’ve brought Zion to Babylon ... the greatest day ever for the city of New York . . . I can’t think of anywhere that needs a place of peace and of refuge and of repentance more than New York City. This temple is a blessing. Gordon B Hinckley, New York June 2004
He conquered the world at the age of twenty. But the chaos that follows the self-styled baddest man on the planet trampled anyone in his way. ‘Tyson bit Evander Hollyfield twice’. Now aged forty-four Mike’s rejected drugs and alcohol, embraced religion and undergone years of therapy. Now Mike has turned to the one thing in his life he’s always cared about. Determined to leave his bad behaviour in the past the former boxer is taking up bird racing. He’s returning home to New York and back to the people and the birds he grew up with. To a secret world that exists on the City’s skyline. Mike’s swapping the ring for the rooftops to compete in a six-month-long pigeon racing season ... Mike’s team of beginners is going up against seasoned pros. Taking on Tyson, 2011
Three hundred million years ago New York was at the foothills of a huge mountain range. Dr Iain Stewart, Rise of the Continents, BBC 2013
There are earlier hurricane strikes in New York’s history. Iain Stewart & Kathy Sykes, Future Earth
On July 12th two British warships open fire on New York City. America: The Story of the US: Revolution, History 2010
‘I think I love them [Twin Towers] from the inside ... I love their strength and their arrogance.’ New York: Centre of the World I, Philippe, PBS 2003
For nearly thirty years they stood at the foot of Manhattan. Two of the tallest and most instantly recognisable structures on Earth. ibid.
His elder brother Nelson was sworn in as governor of New York State. ibid.
The Rockefeller brothers had managed to make a half billion real estate capital not only plausible but inevitable. ibid.
The Port Authority prevailed on every front. ibid.
In early January 1974 he [Philippe Petit, high wire artist] flew to New York for the first time. New York: Centre of the World II
‘I actually find myself trespassing.’ ibid. Philippe Petit
‘The Towers – the more I got to know them the more they are alive ... my friends.’ ibid.
The hour of the coup finally arrived: at six o’clock on the evening of Tuesday August 6th 1974 ... Three heavy crates of equipment. ibid.
And a bow and arrow. ibid.
Petit was immediately taken into custody and rudely manhandled down into an underground police station ... No less than fourteen misdemeanours. ibid.
The astonishing feat of high-wire poetry was the highest point in Philippe Petit’s life, and in many ways in the lives of the Twin Towers themselves. ibid.
An instant folk hero. ibid.
Petit himself would never lose his love of the Towers. ibid.
He would return to the high perch whenever he could. ibid.
A day of seemingly infinite visibility, one man later said. ibid.
The machinery of the largest media apparatus in the world began to focus on the sixty acre site. ibid.
Paper on that day was a constant presence. ibid.
High up in both towers the raging fires were now generating three to five times the heat of a nuclear power plant. And the interior temperature had soared in places to nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. ibid.
The floor trusses on the 80th floor of the South Tower began to give way, columns along the east wall began to buckle outwards, and the entire building began to come down. ibid.
Chaos on some mathematical level ... Hurtled into the ground at a virtual freefall ... A surreal landscape of smoke and flames. ibid.
We had an apartment on west side of Central Park. The rent was very reasonable. We found out later it belonged to a gangster called Legs Diamond and it was a front for his headquarters. It was fine. James Stewart