New York City
From Sixth World Wiki
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New York — officially named City of New York and often called New York City to distinguish it from the state of New York is known affectionately as the "Big Apple" and recognized as one of several "world cities". In the heyday of the city's self-designation as "capital of the world", the United Nations headquarters was located in New York, and the city was home of the East Coast Stock Exchange, back when it was known as the New York Stock Exchange. The city was heavily damaged during a major earthquake and never fully recovered.
In recent decades, the East Coast Stock Exchange has returned to New York City, but the UN has remained in Geneva, Switzerland.
After the earthquake, the corps rebuilt the island of Manhattan, the city's center, with a series of skyrakers and arcologies tearing into the skyline. Manhattan island also features possibly the heaviest corporate security in the UCAS, and perhaps even North America. The island is restricted not only by SIN-carrying citizens but also by a series of color-coded pass-cards, issued by the municpal government dependent on status as a resident, commuting worker, vistor, government official, VIP, etc. Black pass-cards are issued to convicted criminals and ex-cons. The pass-cards are constantly cross-checked and the penalties are downright brutal if an individual does not present and/or possess a pass-card or, in the case of former convicts, possess a pass-card other than the black card.
Manhattan's city government is not only handled by an elected mayor and city council, but also by a corporate council know as Manhattan, Inc. Consortium, shares of which are owned by major megacorporations, and while exact membership has been classified, the Big 10 such as Mitsuhama, NeoNET, and Renraku are believed to have seats on the Consortium. Police contracts for NYC are handled by four security contractors, Lone Star, Winter Systems, Knight Errant, and NYPD, Inc..
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[edit] Vital Statistics (unofficial)
(This population and demographic Vital Statistics data includes the entire New York City Megaplex: Manhattan Island [which, by itself, numbers about 17,000,000], The Counties, Long Island, Northern New Jersey, SW Connecticut, and SE NY State)
[edit] Intro
The most beguiling megasprawl in the world, New York is an adrenaline-charged, history-laden place that holds immense romantic appeal for visitors. Wandering the streets here, you'll cut between buildings that are icons to the modern age – and whether gazing at the flickering lights and holovid ads of the midtown skyrakers as you speed across the Queensboro bridge, experiencing the 4am half-life downtown, or just wasting the morning on the Staten Island ferry, you really would have to be made of ferrocrete not to be moved by it all. There's no place quite like it.
While the events of April, 12, 2005, which shook New York to its core, the populace responded resiliently under the composed aegis of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Until the attacks, many New Yorkers loved to hate Bloomberg, partly because they saw him as committed to turning their city into a city for rich people. To some extent he succeeded, and around the turn of the century New York became more and more difficult for people of average means to earn a living; though seemed cleaner, safer, and more livable, as the city took on a truly international allure and shook off the more notorious aspects to its reputation. However, the maverick quality of New York and its people still shined as brightly as it ever did. Even in the aftermath of the Quake of '05, New York remained a unique and fascinating city – and one you'll want to return to again and again. New Yorkers proved resilient through the Quake of '05, VITAS, the Awakening, the Year of Chaos, the Crash of 2029, Goblinization, the Night of Rage, the Universal Brotherhood, the Corporate Wars, the Year of the Commet, SURGE, and the Crash of and Rebuilding of the Matrix. In fact, there are more of us here now than before.
You could spend weeks in New York and still barely scratch the surface, but there are some key attractions – and some pleasures – that you won't want to miss. There are the different ethnic neighborhoods, like lower Manhattan's Chinatown and the traditionally Jewish Lower East Side (not so much anymore); and the more artsy concentrations of SoHo, TriBeCa (Southside), and The Village. Of course, there is the celebrated architecture of megacorporate Manhattan, with the skyscrapers in downtown and the skyrakers in midtown forming the most indelible images. There are the museums, not just the Metropolitan and MoMA, but countless other smaller collections that afford weeks of happy wandering. In between sights, you can eat just about anything, at any time, cooked in any style; you can drink in any kind of company; and sit through any number of obscure simsense. The more established arts – dance, theater, music – are still superbly catered for; and New York's clubs are as varied and exciting as you might expect. And for the avid consumer, the choice of shops is vast, almost numbingly exhaustive in this heartland of the great capitalist dream.
New York City, officially Manhattan, Inc., is the most populous city in the United Canadian and American States and the most densely populated major city in North America. Located in the state of New York, New York City has a population of over 44 million within an area of 40,910 square kilometers.
The city is a center for international finance, fashion, entertainment, and culture, and is widely considered to be one of the world's major global cities with an extraordinary collection of museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations and financial markets. It is also, once again, home to the headquarters of the United Nations.
The New York metropolitan area has a population of about 44 million, which makes it one of the largest megaplexes in the world. The city proper consists of Manhattan, Inc. and the five Counties: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. With the exception of Staten Island, each of these boroughs is home to at least five million people and would be among the nation's larger metroplexes if considered independently.
Popularly known as the "Big Apple," or "The Rotten Apple," the city attracts large numbers of immigrants—over a third of its population is foreign born—as well as people from all over the UCAS who come for its culture, energy, cosmopolitanism, and economic opportunity. The city is also distinguished for having the lowest crime rate among the 25 largest UCAS cities.
NYC Culture Shock: 2077
To some observers, the New York Megaplex, with its large immigrant and metahuman population, seems more of an international and diverse city than something specifically "American" and corporate. But to others, the city's very openness to newcomers makes it the archetype of a "nation of immigrants and the mythic," Jewell Keitzman, Peterson’s Guide to Paranormal Animals of North America. The term "melting pot" derives from the play The Melting Pot, by Israel Zangwill, who in 1908 adapted Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to a setting in the Lower East Side, where droves of immigrants from diverse European nations in the early 1900s learned to live together in tenements and row houses for the first time. At the turn of the century, 36% of the city's population was foreign-born. Among American cities this proportion was higher only in Los Angeles, Pueblo and Miami in the Caribbean League.
While the immigrant communities in those cities are dominated by a few nationalities, in New York no single country or region of origin dominates. The seven largest countries of origin are the Dominican Republic, one of the Chinese States, Jamaica, Russia, the Italian Confederation, Poland and the Indian Union.
And with over six million Elves, over six million Orks; and nearly two million Dwarves, and nearly two million Trolls from across the Megaplex, the tri-state Megalopolis, North America and the world call New York City home. The city has half a million Changelings and over half a million magicians (both Hermetic and Shamanic, but tending more to the Hermetic). The variety of magic traditions you can find here are staggering...shocking in such a supposedly magic-dead Sprawl. You could find an Aztec nahualli, or an Aztec magicians up in East Riverside and Newtown, or a Black Magic street witch in The Village, Bhuddist magicians on the East Side or in Queens or Nassau County, Chaos Magicians in Battery City or Newtown...pretty much all over the fraggin' place, Christian Tuergists in Midtown and the suburbs, Druids in The Bronx, Washington Heights, Newtown, The Village, and SoHo, Hindus traveling on The Wheel of Life in Jersey, Manhattan and The Counties, Islamic mystics practicing their Craft in the Downtown District and Stuyvesant, Norse magicians in Riverside and the Lower Westside follow the �?satru, Elvish followers of the Path of the Wheel and Irish magicians in Staten Island, Suffolk County, Brooklyn, Southside and TriBeCa, German, Roman, and Greek Idolists in Little Italy, Times Square, Midtown, Jersey, Washington Heights, and Suffolk County, Gypsy Romany bands in The Village, SoHo, Newtown, Downtown, Lower Westside, Terminal, the Lower Eastside, Jersey and Suffolk County, Jewish Qabbalist mages in Westside, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, the Lower East Side, Stuyvesant, Midtown, Central Park East and West, and Downtown, Shintoist and Wuxing magicians in Chinatown and Lower Manhattan, Flushing, parts of Brooklyn, The Bronx, Staten Island, and Jersey, Hedge Witches and Wiccans in Washington Heights, Newtown, The Village, Times Square, Neon City and SoHo, VooDoo magicians in Newtown, East Riverside, Riverside, Westside, and parts of the Counties, and the Zoroastrian magicians are all over the place. Changelings, Dwarfs, Elves, Humans, Orks, and Trolls ... all can be either, though these magic traditions (for the most part) are often divided along cultural lines. And that's not counting all the Mentor Spirits magicians followed by in Manhattan, The Counties, Jersey, Nassau and Suffolk Counties follow. All are urban Mentor Spirits: from the upstart followers of Adversary, to the ingenious Mentor Spirit of Artificer; and including such Mentor Spirits as Cat, Crocodile, Dark Goddess, Dog, Dragon, Great Mother, Gryphon, Horned Man, Raccoon, Rat, Snake, and Spider. All the German, Roman, and Greek Idols are urban. Also, two major dominant magic traditions are West African and Caribbean, mostly in The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Jersey, Newtown, Washington Heights, Terminal, the Lower Eastside, and East Riverside.
They're secretive about it...you'd never know there were so many magicians of every stripe around you as you jander down 6th Avenue and 54th Street at lunch hour surrounded by corporate suits, but look between and in the shadows of the towering corporate skyrakers of gleaming armored, mirrored glass and polymers, and you'll see the occasional druidic lodge or hermetic circle drawing on and enhancing, sometimes cleansing, the few strands of magic remaining in the Sprawl
As in many major cities, immigrants to New York and New York metahumans often congregate in ethnic and racial enclaves where they can talk and shop and work with people of their metatype or from their country of origin. Throughout Manhattan, Inc. and The Counties, the city is home to many distinct communities of Irish, Italians, Chinese, Koreans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Caribbeans, Hasidic Jews, Aztlaners, Russians and many others. To further break it down, you can expect to find various ethnic metatypes such as Irish Elves, Italian Dwarves, Chinese Orks, Korean Trolls, and Dominican Changelings living next to Puerto Rican Humans, Caribbean Orks, Hasidic Elven Jews, Black Humans, Aztlaner Dwarves, Russian Trolls and every conceivable type.
Nearly thirty million New Yorkers are citizens of the Big Eight Megacorporations (no surprise, all have offices in the Rotten Apple). Coincidentally, they are mostly Human. Only about half a million of corporate citizens in New York City are metahuman, and most of those are either Elves or Dwarves.
Many of the largest city-wide annual events are parades celebrating the heritage of New York’s ethnic communities. Attendance at the biggest ones by city and state politicians is politically obligatory. These include the St Patrick's Day Parade, probably the top Irish heritage parade in the Americas; the Parade of Veryn, the biggest Elvish parade out of Tir Tairngire to commemorate the Elves’ survival and triumph over the oppression and hatred borne of the Night of Rage in 2039, named after the local Elvish civil rights champion Cael Veryn; the Puerto Rican Day Parade, which often draws up to 3 million spectators; the March of Torkara named after the local Dwarven ACLU leader, Walther Torkara, who won metahumans the rights now enjoyed throughout the UCAS; the West Indian Labor Day Parade, among the largest parades in North America and the largest event in New York City; and the Chinese New Year Parade. New Yorkers of all stripes gather together for these spectacles. Other significant parades include the Metahuman and Arcane Pride Parade, Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, and the Gay Pride Parade, all icons in the city’s counter-culture pantheon.
New York Changelings have been slowly gathering and strengthening and plan their parade next year.
New York City has a larger Jewish population than any other city in the world, larger than even Jerusalem. Approximately fifty-five million New Yorkers, or about 13%, are Jewish. As a result, New York City culture has borrowed certain elements of Jewish culture, such as bagels. The city is also home to the Jewish Theological Seminary, the headquarters of Orthodox Jewish movements, one of three American campuses of Hebrew Union College of Reform Judaism, and the home of the Anti-Defamation League. Temple Emanu-El, the largest Jewish house of worship in the world, became the first Reform congregation in America in 1845.
The city was the center of a major 5.8 earthquake at 7:20 A.M. on August 12, 2005. Over 200,000 deaths occured and 20 million dollars worth of damage was suffered. Among those who died were workers in the buildings, passengers and MTA employees on two commercial airplanes, and hundreds of firemen, policemen, and rescue workers who responded to the disaster. The city's economy was substantially hurt but has since rebounded after the fifty-plus years it took the Megacorporations to rebuild the city in their image. The only Manhattan building of any size that does not collapse is the Empire State Building. As a result of the quake the East Coast Stock Exchange is moved to Boston and the United Nations is moved to Geneva. Both have since returned to their home in the Big Apple, albeit in newer structures.
When to go
New York's climate ranges from the stickily hot and humid in mid-summer to warm and damp in January and February: high summer (many people find the city unbearable in July and August) is the worst time you could come. Spring is gentle, if unpredictable, and usually wet, while fall is perhaps the best season: come at either time and you'll find it easier to get things done and the people more welcoming. Whatever time of year you come, dress in layers: buildings still tend to be overheated during winter months and air-conditioned to the point of iciness in summer. Also bring comfortable and sturdy shoes – you're going to be doing a lot of walking since all motor vehicles have been banned from Manhattan, except for those with permits.
Arrival
New York's major airports are all within an hour from the city center by taxi or bus, depending on traffic conditions. The city's train, monorail, and bus terminals are centrally located and connected to major subway stations.
By Air
Two major airports serve New York. International and domestic flights are handled at John F Kennedy (JFK) (LTG# 1718 [44-4444]/JFK), in Queens, and Newark (LTG# 5973 [61-6000]/EWR), in northern New Jersey; La Guardia (was seized by the UCAS and is now used as an Air National Guard station).
JFK runs a rapid transit line to Grand Central Station, Port Authority Bus Terminal, Penn Station and Midtown hotels in Manhattan by way of the Ronald Regan bridge for the masses. For the upper-crust, there are full tilt- and rotor-craft service to and from the various Midtown aeropads. The rail line will cost you 10 nuyen and air transport will cost 75 nuyen.
A third airport, Long Island, MacArthur Airport in Suffolk County. LIMA (LTG# 58613 [67-3210]), in Suffolk County, handles domestic HTSC, and Semiballistic flights only.
The Long Island Railroad maglev trains run between Manhattan (Grand Central Station and Port Authority Bus Terminal) and La Guardia every fifteen to thirty minutes either way. The service operates 0600 to 0000 (to Grand Central and Port Authority), 0500 to 2200 (from Grand Central), 0640 to 2100 (from Port Authority). Buses also run to Penn Station from 0640 to 2340 every thirty minutes, 10 and 40 after the hour; from Penn Station, 0740 to 2010 same time-scale as above. Journey time is 45 to sixty minutes, depending on traffic, and the fare is 50 nuyen (students 30 nuyen) each way. For details on services, discounts, etc call 1212 (75-8200).
The LIRR is the best bargain in Long Island New York airport transit, which for 70 nuyen takes you into Manhattan, across 125th Street and down Broadway to 106th Street in New Town. From there, you can transfer to get almost anywhere. Journey time ranges from twenty minutes late at night to an hour in rush-hour traffic.
By Bus, Cab, or Train
If you come by Blueline Tours and Trips, Whippet Bus Company, and Big Apple Express, or any other long-distance bus line, you arrive at the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue. By Amtrak, Inc. train, you arrive at Penn Station, in Terminal, at 32nd Street and Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Both stations are well positioned for all manner of subway service.
Taxis are the easiest option if you are in a group or are arriving at an antisocial hour. Expect to pay a flat rate of 175 nuyen from JFK and 175 - 275 nuyen from Newark; you'll be responsible for the turnpike and tunnel tolls – an extra 25 nuyen or so. And don't forget a tip of fifteen to twenty percent.
Another good way into Manhattan is by bus, the two Manhattan terminals, used by all airport buses, being Grand Central Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
Getting Around
If you're in Manhattan, you most likely don't have a car, unless you have a white card (more on those later) or know the right people. Maybe a bike if you're lucky, but if the cops catch you, they'll probably nail you. Ever since the "Rebirth," vehicles have been banned from Manhattan Island, unless you've got a white card or the right connections. This means that those who can afford it have a car, or two, and everyone else is hoofing it. Bikes fall under the category of vehicle and so, technically, are illegal without the permit. But whether or not the cops will bother you depends on what neighborhood you're in and how fast you're moving at the time.
There's enough public trans options to keep you moving regardless.
Getting around the city is likely to take some getting used to; public transit here is on the whole quite good, extremely cheap, and covers most conceivable corners of the city, whether by bus or subway. Don't be afraid to ask someone for help if you're confused. You'll no doubt find the need for a taxi from time to time, especially if you feel uncomfortable in an area at night; you shouldn't ever have trouble tracking one down – the ubiquitous yellow cabs are always on the prowl for passengers.
The Subway
The New York Subway is 1.5 nuyen one-way. A monthly pass is 30 nuyen. Much of it caved in during the earthquake, but some parts were rebuilt but serves the poorer and more dangerous sections of Manhattan and The Counties.
The parts of the lower Manhattan subway that connect with Brooklyn still go through customs checks. Before crossting the East River, all commuters have to change trains and undego a cursory weapons and contraband check.
Air
All major air commuter companies offer service at a premium between New York's residential and corporate sky-rakers. Cost varies between 250 nuyen to 1,000 nuyen depending on the distance.
Cabs
These are everywhere, both the auto-cabs and those manned by an actual metahuman. The fares are high, two nyuen a block, but the rides are quick and safe.
The MTA bus
A single fare is 2 nuyen. A monthly pass is the same as the subway.
The New El
This runs south along both shores and then heads east-west. This elevated mag-lev serves Midtown and the surrounding areas. Clean and efficient, it's almost the exact opposite of the subway. A single ride around costs three nuyen. A monthly pass costs 40 nuyen.
Walking
Few cities equal New York for street-level stimulation. Getting around on foot is often the most exciting – and tiring – method of exploring. Figure fifteen minutes to walk ten north–south blocks – rather more at rush hour. However you plan your wanderings you're still going to spend much of your time walking. Footwear is important (sneakers are good for spring/summer; winter needs something waterproof). So is safety: a lot more people are injured in New York carelessly crossing the street than are mugged. Pedestrian crossings don't give you automatic right of way unless the WALK sign is on – and, even then, cars may be turning, so be prudent.
Staten Island Ferry
The bargain that still can't be beaten, even more so now that the fare has been eliminated, is the free Staten Island ferry (LTG# 5718 [90-5253]), which leaves from its own terminal in lower Manhattan's Battery Park. It's a commuter boat, so avoid crowded rush hours if you can; at other times, grab a spot at the back (going out) and watch the skyline shrink away. Departures are every 15–20 minutes at rush hours, every thirty minutes midday and evenings, and every hour late at night – weekend services are less frequent.
Passes, Passes...Who's Got The Passes?
Are you a resident? Non-resident worker? Resident-worker? Non-resident non-worker? legal or illegal? Long-term or short-term? Rich or poor? Lots o' questions. Plenty o' answers.
When you first get to New York, you'll find Manhattan has a thing for passes. The three basi types are Resident, Work, or Temporary. Resident passes are white; solid white for full-time residents, white with a green stripe for part-time residents. Work passes are blue and also come in two types: a white stripe indicate you live and work in Manhattan, and a red stripe means that you live, but down't work in the city. temporary passes are red and issued on a monthly basis. Occasionally, you might see a black pass. Those are for permanent guests.
Lifestyle Costs
The overall cost of living in NY shows a wide spread. A Luxury lifestyle is 200,000¥ per month. High is 25,000¥. Middle is 8,000¥, while Low only needs 850¥ and Squatter about 50¥ a month. Street is still street, though a little more physically taxing. Hospitalization runs about 400¥ to 750¥ for basic care, 1,200¥ to 2,000¥ for intensive.
Cyberware
Getting cyberware into Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and The Bronx is easy, just take it with you. The scanners and detectors at the Northern Access and Terminal are old enough they'll pass over any cyberware less than ten years old.
If you're real paranoid about getting busted, have a Fixer arrange a Manhattan CBP-107 permit. You'll need one of those to get through Kennedy.
[edit] Manhattan
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Manhattan is New York City. It's the business center of the city, and the most superlatively urban. It is the most densely populated, and the home of most of the city's skysrakers.
Manhattan Neighborhoods
Inwood (B-C): (Middle Class Commercial, Low Class Residential). It has earned the nickname "The Singer's Slum" as many opera singers, musicians, composers and simsense actors live in the area. Its main local thoroughfare is Broadway (also, at this point UCAS 9), its main highways are the Henry Hudson Parkway and the Harlem River Drive, and its main shopping areas are Dyckman Street, Broadway and West 207th Street. Inwood is a largely residential neighborhood, consisting mostly of apartment houses and parkland. It also houses an aboveground subway yard, a bus depot, a Sanitation Department facility, Columbia University's athletic fields, and the Allen Pavilion (an annex of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, the University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell).
Hudson Heights (B: Middle Class Commercial Predominantly Elven Enclave within Washington Heights): W181 to Fort Tyron Park; Broadway to the river. The neighborhood is mostly commercial, but it also has strips of residential areas nestled between the major streets. Most buildings are pre-war imitation, designed to resemble 1930s building styles, some in Art Deco style, most are "owner [read: megacorporate] occupied residential properties". Among these is Castle Village on the other side of Cabrini Boulevard, the 16-story Cabrini Terrace, the highest building in the neighborhood. In the 2050s, most rental buildings in the area were converted to corporate-owned housing cooperatives or condominiums. In recent years, Hudson Heights has been an attractive area for homebuyers who want to stay in Manhattan, but can't afford to buy condos or co-ops in most other areas of the borough, or who want to buy condos or co-ops larger than those typically found in other areas. The multiple housing cooperatives and condominiums in the area have formed the Hudson Heights Owners Coalition.
Among notable institutions in Hudson Heights are the Catholic shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and The Cloisters, where an order of Hermetic mages called the Children of the New Crusade houses and displays its collection of Medieval art, located in Fort Tryon Park.
The area gained notoriety before The Awakening, in May 2005, when a then-75-year-old retaining wall facing the Hudson River on the property of the Castle Village co-op housing complex collapsed onto the Henry Hudson Parkway, causing much consternation and traffic delays.
Washington Heights (B: Middle Class Commercial): W155 (once 125) to Dyckman St. Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. The Cloisters. Hispanic Society of America. Lore stores and numerous small restaurants offering a variety of cuisines.
The best known cultural site and tourist attraction in Washington Heights is The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park (surrounded by the Elven enclave of Hudson Heights) at the northern end of the neighborhood, with spectacular views across the Hudson to the New Jersey Palisades. This Medieval art and cultural display is under the ownership of The Children of the New Crusade, and is located in a medieval-style building, portions of which were purchased in Europe, brought to the United Canadian and American States (then, the United States), and reassembled. Another major museum, though little visited, is The Hispanic Society of America, which still has the largest collection of works from El Greco and Goya outside of the Museo del Prado, including one of Goya's famous paintings of Cayetana, Duchess of Alba.
The neighborhood has a large Dominican population (the area is sometimes referred to as "Quisqueya Heights"), and Spanish is commonly heard being spoken on the streets. Since the Awakening, the neighborhood has been the UCAS' most important base for Dominican empowerment in the political, non-profit, cultural, arcane, and athletic arenas.
There is also a significant Jewish Elf population, particularly in Hudson Heights Elf enclave, mainly Elvish students in the Jewish occult (and recent graduates) of the neighborhood's Yeshiva University.
The German-Jewish elvish population is based around Khal Adath Jeshurun, a direct continuation of the pre-war Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main, colloquially called "Hanstine's" after Rabbi Dr. Van Hanstine, founder and first elf rabbi of the congregation. Washington Heights is also served by a number of smaller orthodox synagogues, both Human and Metahuman, as well as the Fort Tryon Jewish Center, a human conservative congregation and the Hebrew Tabernacle, a reform metahuman congregation.
The neighborhood was severely affected by the novacoke epidemic of the early/mid-2050s. This was due, in part, because of the neighborhood crack gang, known as The 155 Boys or the Dark Templars Gang, who were associated with Oz. The 155 Boys were responsible for the raising crime rate, especially murder, during the late 50's and early 60's. Homelessness was rampant. Washington Heights had become the largest drug distribution center in the Northeastern UCAS during that time. It was nicknamed "Crack City" by newspapers and was considered to be the murder capital of New York. Its murder rates reached its height in 2052, when 818 people were murdered in the neighborhood. Crime quickly fell due to aggressive police tactics by Knight-Errant and Winter Systems. Police presence increased and building landlords allowed police to patrol in apartment buildings which led to the arrests of thousands of drug dealers a year in Washington Heights. People were also being stopped for quality of life crimes, which deterred people from carrying guns. A new police precinct was also added in the area. Today, its crime rate, along with that of neighboring Newtown, is much lower.
Hamilton Heights (B-A Middle Class Commercial, Middle Class Residential in West Newtown): W135-155; St. Nick to the river. Hamilton Heights is a neighborhood in Harlem in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is bounded by 135th Street to the south, the Hudson River to the west, 155th Street to the north, and Saint Nicholas Avenue/Bradhurst Avenue to the east.
Beautiful and spacious apartment buildings, magnificent brownstones and stately row houses prominently lining the leafy eastern streets of Hamilton Heights, an area traditionally home to a substantial black Human professional class. Today, Human Hispanics and Latinos constitute a majority of the population followed by African Americans, peoples from the Spanish Antilles; the West Indies in the Carribbean League and remainders of earlier time's ethnic whites.
Gentrification between 2055 and March 2057 has drastically increased the proportion of non-Hispanic whites and Asian residents, and with gentrification, all the cultural, economic, personal, and ownership problems we know to expect. It is the home of the City University of New York (CUNY), Dance Theatre of Harlem, The Harlem School of the Arts, Aaron Davis Hall, the Trinity Church Cemetery, an amazing 1¥ store, Hamilton Palace (a department store), both intended for low income consumers, a Botanica, C Town, bodegas, hair salons and barber shops. The problem in the coming months and years is gathering enough small-business/resident support to enact legislation preventing the complete erasure of these groups of people.
The neighborhood offers several parks, including the very modern Riverbank State Park, around which Riverside Park winds its way to Washington Heights and the historic St. Nicholas Park.
Historic Hamilton Heights comprises the Hamilton Heights Historic District and the Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill Historic District Extension, both designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The neighborhood is easily accessed via subway, the number 1 line stops at the 137th Street–City College and 145th Street stations. The famous A train on St. Nicholas Avenue provides service at145th Street. The C train services 135th Street, 145 Street and 155th street and Saint Nicholas Avenue.
The MTA buses M4 and M5 serve Broadway, M100 and M101 run on Amsterdam Avenue, M18 on Convent Avenue; M11 on 135th Street; Bx19 on 145th Street; Bx6 on 155th Street and the M3 on St. Nicholas Avenue.
Strivers' Row (A Middle Class Residential in Central Newtown): W135-155; 8th (centered at W139): The term Strivers' Row refers to three rows of townhouses in western Newtown, in Manhattan. The houses sit back-to-back with each other. Today, the back areas are used almost exclusively for the parking of cars and drones. Strivers Row houses are among the very few private homes in Manhattan that have space for parking. This means, however, that they are among the few townhouses that do not have gardens in the rear. Middle Managers live here in this gated community.
Astor Row (A Middle Class Residential in Central Newtown): centered at W130. Middle Class Metahuman neighborhood, polarized with elves living on the western end and orks living on the eastern end.
West Newtown (B-A Middle Class Commercial, Middle Class Residential in Newtown): W125-155; St. Nick to the river. Dwarfs make up the largest minority here.
Sugar Hill (B-A Middle Class Commercial, Middle Class Residential in Central Newtown): W125-155; Edgecombe Avenue to Amsterdam. Sugar Hill is a neighborhood in the northern part of Newtown, in Manhattan. The neighborhood is defined by 155th Street to the north, 145th Street to the south, Edgecombe Avenue to the east, and Amsterdam Avenue to the west.
It was a popular residential area of rowhouses for wealthy African Americans before the Levelling and the Awakening. Sugar Hill was made a municipal historic district by the Manhattan Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2060; now it is home to a more integrated population. Along with a small remnant of Afro-American and Latino residents, there is a growing number of: Arab, Eastern and Central European, English, French, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Balkan, Scottish, Azanian, Ukranian, and West Indian Humans, though some metahumans live here, too.
Sugar Hill is primarily known for its pastery shops, thus the name, and is the place any New Yorker knows they can go for the best Elaishón in town - you know, that delicious Elven pastery with strawberry filling and rosepetal/blueberry paste mix. An Ork cabbie chummer of mine picks them up special for me when I get the taste for some. Anyway, some olders may remember a different origin, though ... but that's ancient history and not worth the megapulses of this datadump. I'm already taking up enough as it is! Eastern European eateries from Free Macedonia, Albania, Hungary, Brasov-Covasna, and Dalmatia can be found on the ground floors of the biggest condo and office high-rises.
Supply Depots and shipping centers line the Harlem River. Scandinavian and Welsh pastery shops; upscale Balkan, Soul Food, and African restaurants; family-friendly media stores that sell AR for the kids occupy every other block, and which are nestled between blocks of gated communities and 5-20-story apartment towers, co-ops, and condos.
The area is well-served by numerous subway lines, grocery centers and retail shops. There is also a UCAS Post Office, a New York City Public Library, a CUNY campus, and several banks, fast food places, and gas/recharge stations. The Nightengale [read: NeoNET] Corp-owned Newtown Medical Complex is only a few blocks to the east.
The streets are still filled with ghetto-tech rappers and raphop street performers.
Rap group The Sugarhill Krew and ghetto-tech raphop record label Sugar Hill Mediaworks pay homage to the neighborhood's roots in their names.
The Albanian Fares seem to be the puppet masters pulling the strings of the few gangs in the area. Please read the Shadows of Europe Datadump for more info on the Fares.
The Vory also are powerful here behind the scenes, but they are more out in the open about it. About 7 out of 10 Mom and Pops here pay protection cred to the Vor. The Vory and the Albanians are currently engaged in a strange shadow war against each other for the various Black Market rackets: drugs and chips, protection, prostitution, etc. Sometimes, a runner can be working for one against the other, yet all the while they find the situation may be reversed, or worse yet, their target and their Mr. Johnson are collaborating. Watch you back if you want to play on Sugar Hill, chummers.
Manhattanville (B-A Middle Class Commercial, Middle Class Residential in West Newtown): W125-135; St. Nick to the river. Manhattanville is a neighborhood in Manhattan bordered on the south by Morningside Heights on the west by the Hudson River, on the east by Harlem and on the north by Hamilton Heights and Washington Heights. Its borders straddle both sides of West 125th Street, roughly from 122nd Street to 135th Street and from the Hudson River to St. Nicholas Park. It is now the site of the Columbia University campus, which has campuses in Morningside Heights to the south and Washington Heights to the north.
Aside from Grant's Tomb at the southwestern corner, the principal landmarks in Manhattanville are the elevated section of the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line and the elevated Riverside Drive Viaduct. Within the neighborhood is Manhattanville Townhomes, a 1,272 unit development housing Manhattanville's upper-middle class, which opened in 1961 ,and refurbished a hundred years later. Designed in the international style by noted Swiss-born architect William Lescaze, the development was initially created to house middle income residents.
The neighborhood also contains the landmarked Claremont Theater, the Manhattanville Bus Depot, St. Mary's Church, the upper class Fairway Supermarket (a major neighborhood boon, providing fresh produce and a wide variety of groceries).
ViVa, Viaduct Valley (B-A Middle Class Commercial, Middle Class Residential in West Newtown): W125-132; the river.
Marcus Garvey Park, Mount Morris Historical District: E120-124; Madison to 5th. Facilities in the park include the Pelham Fritz Recreation Center and an Amphitheater (both located on the west side of the park at 122nd Street), and Swimming Pool (on the north side of the park), and two playgrounds designed for infants and disabled, Metahuman, and changeling children, which were re-built in 2054. A Little League baseball field occupies the southwest corner of the park.
The Mount Morris Fire Watchtower was designed by Julius Kroel and erected in 1855-57 of cast iron. The tower was fitted with a 10,000 pound bell cast by Jones & Hitchcock. The watchtower allowed observers to use the natural elevation of the park and the added height of the structure to search for fires, in an era when most buildings were made of wood. The 14-meter cast-iron tower is the only one of eleven to survive the Quake of '05 that had been constructed in the city, and was designated as a landmark 110 years ago. The watchtower is located at the center of the park on an artificial plateau called The Acropolis.
Central Newtown (B-A Middle Class Commercial, Middle Class Residential in Central Newtown): E110-155; Park to St. Nick.
East Riverside, was Spanish Harlem, El Barrio, Italian Harlem (B-A Middle Class Commercial, Middle Class Residential East of Newtown): E96-135; the river to Park. Once known as Spanish Harlem, or El Barrio, is a neighborhood east of Newtown, in the north-eastern part of Manhattan, Inc. East Riverside is one of the largest predominantly Human Latino communities in Manhattan. It was also formerly known as Italian Harlem, and still harbors a small Italian American Human population. However, for over 120 years, it has been dominated by residents of Puerto Rican descent, sometimes called Nuyoricans. East Riverside extends from East 96th Street to East 135th Street and is bound by the Upper East Side, East River and the Metro-North Railroad tracks along Park Avenue. The general area of East Riverside stretches from the East River to Fifth Avenue and from 96th Street to 141st Street. The primary business hub of East Riverside has historically been 116th Street from 5th Avenue headed east to its termination at the FDR Drive. Today, the sky above the 116th Street commercial zone is filled with layers and layers of signs (real and AR) mixing Spanish, Italian, and English text scrolling horizontally, vertically, and anywhere else they can possibly fit.
In the 1920s and early 1930s, Italian Harlem was represented by future Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in Congress, and later by Italian-American socialist Vito Marcantonio. Italian Harlem lasted in some parts into the 1970s in the area around Pleasant Avenue. It still celebrates the first Italian feast in New York City, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Some remnants of Italian Harlem, such as Rao's restaurant, started in 1896, still remain.
East Riverside was one of the hardest hit areas in the 1960s and 1970s as New York City struggled with deficits, race riots, urban flight, drug abuse, crime and poverty. Tenements were crowded, poorly maintained and frequent targets for arson. The area still has some of the worst problems with poverty, drug abuse and public health in New York City. However, like the rest of New York, it has enjoyed a resurgence sincethe Levelling.
With the growth of the Latino population, the neighborhood is expanding. It is also home to one of the few major trideo studios north of midtown, Metropolis (106th St. and Park Ave.), where shows like BET's 106 & Park and The Chappelle Show have been produced, is now known for Latino and Afro-American Hits like, Los Inannos and Chillin' ina Matrix. The major medical care provider to both East Riverside and the Upper East Side is the Mount Sinai Hospital, owned by NeoNET's Nightengale's Corporation, which has long provided tertiary care to the residents of Newtown and East Riverside. Many of the graduates of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine make careers out of East Riverside public health initiatives including the battle against asthma, diabetes, unsafe drinking water, lead paint, infectious disease, and many Awakened ailments such as addictions to novakoke, deepweed, and other drugs.
Many famous artists have lived and worked in East Riverside, including the renowned timbalero Ramon Molano (110th Street was renamed “Ramon Molano Way�?), Jazz legend Cortez Madrueno and one of Puerto Rico’s most famous poets, Maia Na (a campaign to rename 106th Street after her is currently in motion), among others. Hector Graza wrote a best-selling AR download titled, "Nuestra Lucha, También" in 2037 during the time of racial tension and strife that precluded the Night of Rage in 2039. It touches on a forgotten fact that cultural minorities were often also descriminated against and were also victims of attacks by white and human supremacists, and seeks to extend an olive branch to the world's Metahuman population. A new generation of artists like Troll sculptor El Solomente, Elf painter The Rose Maker and Human weaver Milan Graza, and Human Carmella Novo, have made East Riverside the epicenter of Latino Art influence.
Influential social establishments like CAMARADAS el barrio and La Fonda Boricua have become social and cultural beacons supporting the growing community and cultural preservation efforts in East Riverside. El Museo del Barrio, a museum of Latin American and Caribbean art and culture is located on nearby Museum Mile and endeavors to serve some of the cultural needs of the neighboring community. There is a diverse collection of religious institutions within the confines of East Harlem: from mosques, a Greek Orthodox monastery, several Roman Catholic churches, including Holy Rosary Parish-East Harlem, and a traditional Russian Orthodox church. Well-known mages and urban shamans say the background count at this site is rather high, possibly due to the amount of powerful and ancient foci consentrated here. Security is very tight, as you might imagine, with guardian spirits and drones fortifying the perimeter.
Despite the moniker of "Spanish Harlem" or "El Barrio," the region is now home to a new influx of immigrants from around the world. Arab merchants, for example, work in bodegas side by side with those from the Dominican Republic. Italians live and prosper next to the influx of Aztlaner and Amazonian immigrant populations. Their neighboring businessmen and local neighbors can be Korean, Chinese or Haitian in origin. The rising cost of living in Manhattan, Inc. has also caused increasing numbers of whites to move in, to take advantage of the inexpensive rentals, relative to the adjacent neighborhoods of Yorkville and the Upper East Side.
Newtown: E96-141 (east), W110-155 (central), W125-155 (west):(B-A Middle Class Commercial, Middle Class Residential in Newtown):
Newtown shows signs of corporate presence as several real estate subsidiaries belonging to Ares Macrotech, Aztechnology, NeoNET, Wuxing, and Saeder-Krup, and Renraku cover these blocks. Residential buildings are eight stories or less, in general...though some as tall as twelve stories exist, especially in the higher-rent areas near the Hudson.
Newtown is named for the fact that 80% of the buildings were rebuilt or refurbished after The Levelling. This occurred more to whipe the slate clean than for structural necessity. The consortium decided that New York would be better off forgetting the crime-ridden neighborhood of Harlem that once occupied this area. Hey, at least The Apollo is still here on 125th between 8th and 7th!
Once strictly an African American neighborhood, Newtown has diversified, though seemingly never forgetting its roots. Today, it is a well-integrated Humans, Dwarfs, Elves, Trolls, and Orks of mainly English, German, Irish, Italian, Polish, and West Indian ethnicity live side by side with Mandarin, Cantonese, Han, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Asian Indian, and the large remaining Afro-American and Puerto Rican population.
Apparently, Ralph Ellison observation: "Wherever Negroes live uptown is considered Harlem," proved as false as it was degrading. Once home to third-world living conditions, crumbling tenements, high crime rates, political activism and riots, as well as drug abuse and prostitution, Newtown is now home to upscale urban boutiques, salons, clothing stores, body shops; office buildings; grocery stores, electronics stores, and media stores; it has excellent transit, police, and fire protection coverage; and residents live in clean and well-maintained three- to twelve-story townhomes.
The Harlem where political dissidents agitated for change within a ghetto neighborhood became Newtown where middle class corporate families can raise their children and enjoy the economic security life with the megacorps can bring.
The gangs here are the Soulmen, Latin Eagles, The Skulls, The Turks, Nick's Boys, and an ork go gang called The Tuskers are warring with a troll gang called The Bloody Goblins.
Manhattan Valley, Bloomingdale District: W100-110; Central Park W to B-way: (Security Ratings AAA closer to the Luxury Enclaves surrounding Central Park; A-B the further west you go into middle class urban residential and commercial areas of the southern blocks of Newtown). This area is known for its excellent Chinese and Filipino restaurants that line 9th Ave and Amsterdam Ave within the shadows of the towering office towers that line those streets.
Manhattan Valley occupies a natural depression running east-west across Manhattan, declining rapidly from high rocky bluffs at the western border of modern Central Park, and following west the valley created by what was once a minor stream draining from roughly the area of the Harlem Meer into the Hudson River.
Broadway and Central Park West provide the largest thoroughfares longitudinally through the neighborhood, but it also transected, from west to east, by Amsterdam Avenue, Columbus Avenue, and Manhattan Avenue. The former two extend through the entirety of the Upper West Side (and beyond). The latter originates at 100th Street and proceeds north into Harlem, and can thus be considered uniquely a feature of Manhattan Valley.
Manhattan Valley has gentrified significantly since the 2040s, along with the rest of the Upper West Side and Newtown. Coinciding with this transition, the Megacorporations organized in the late 2050s to develop stronger presence along the main thoroughfares of Columbus and Amsterdam, and to provide enterpreneurial opportunities to locals.
While Broadway still provides most retail shopping opportunities, Amsterdam Avenue has emerged as a major contender in local nightlife with a glut of six bars in the two blocks from West 110th Street 108th Street. These join the venerable JackPoint West (wizzer AR and BTL if you've got the cyberware!)on Columbus, which has been providing a hipster vibe to the area for a century, but under different names. The renaissance has much to do with increased migration of Columbia and Barnard College students south as Morningside Heights venues become increasingly expensive.
Corporate brokers report the properties in the area remain up to thirty percent less expensive than comparable Upper West Side neighborhoods. The neighborhood's proximity to the much-valued Central Park as well as to three separate subway lines make it attractive to young suits, and prices are rising dramatically as New Yorkers are "tipped off" by their brokers. In a startling and uncharacteristic expression of wisdom, many of the historical brownstones and townhouses were perserved from demolition by the consortium, particularly east of Columbus Avenue, where the property values are the highest.
Morningside Heights (Newtown): W106-125; Columbus to Riverside
Middle Class Residential. Some commercial areas. Human Hispanic community.
Carnegie Hill (Upper Eastside): E86-98; 3rd to 5th (centered at E91 and Park)
Major Japanese Enclave. Large Japanese Dwarven Koborukuru community.
Yorkville (Upper Eastside): E79-96; the river to 3rd (centered at E86 and 3rd)
Caucasian Human Upper Class Residential neighborhood.
Ansonia (Westside and Midtown): W72 and Amsterdam
Caucasian Elvish Upper Class neighborhood owned by Telestrial Light Industries.
Lincoln Square (once San Juan Hill) (Midtown, Central Park West): W65-66; Columbus to B-way
Luxury Caucasian Human neighborhood. Busy business/commercial district.
Upper West Side (Central Park West, Midtown, Westside, Riverside, Newtown): W59-125; Central Park W to the river
Mixed area (see Manhattan, Inc. demographics) ... Mostly Caucasian, high minority of Trolls.
Upper East Side, Lenox Hill, Silk Stocking District (Eastside, Upper Eastside, Central Park East, Midtown, Newtown): E59-96; the river to 5th (and E96-110 along 5th)
Upper Class to Luxury Human Hispanic community. Crowded and bustling business district.
Columbus Circle (Midtown/Central Park West): W59 and 8th
Human Caucasian and Black community on Luxury residential blocks. Crowded and bustling business district.
Sutton Place (Eastside):'E53-59 and Sutton Pl
Middle Class Caucasian neighborhood with a large Dwarven minority.
Rockefeller Center, Trideo City (Midtown): W49-51 and 5th to 6th
High Security. Human Caucasian area. Congested and expensive business district.
Diamond District (Midtown): W47 and 5th to 6th
Tight security. Caucasian neighborhood with a major Ork minority. Crowded and bustling business district.
Great White Way (Times Square, Lower Westside, and Midtown): W42-53 and B-way
Caucasian Human Luxury business/entertainment/urban residential high-rise area. Crowded and bustling business district.
Theater District (Times Square, Lower Westside, and Midtown): W42-53 and 6th to 8th
Luxury business/entertainment/urban residential high-rise area neighborhood with a large Caucasian Elvish community. Crowded and bustling business district.
Turtle Bay (Eastside): E42-53 and the river to Lex
Middle Class business and housing area, mostly Caucasian Human. Crowded and bustling business district.
Midtown East (Midtown, Eastside): 42-59 and the river to 5th
Human Caucasian area. Crowded and bustling business district.
Midtown Proper (Midtown, Times Square, Lower Westside): 40-59 and 3rd to 9th
Human area. Large Hispanic minority in few residential condos. Crowded and bustling business district.
Tudor City Condoplex (Lower Westside): E40-43 and 1st to 2nd
Human Caucasian condoplex area with a large Hispanic community.
Times Square (Times Square): W39-52 and 7th-9th
Caucasian Human area. Major tourist/entertainment.business district.
Hudson Yards (Terminal): W28-43 and 7th to the river
Human Caucasian area with huge minority populations of Hispanics and Amerindians.
Midtown West (Midtown, Neon City, Times Square, Lower Westside): W34-59 and 5th to the river
Caucasian Human with a large Black Minority. Crowded and bustling business district.
Hell's Kitchen, Clinton (Westside, Midtown, Lower Westside): W34-57 (59) and 8th to the river
Caucasian Elf enclave. Wage-slave zone. Lower-middle class/poor residential.
Garment District (Neon City, Midtown, Times Square, Lower Westside): W34-42 and 5th to 9th
Caucasian Dwarf and Troll minorities. Counter-culture.
Herald Square (Neon City): W34 and 6th
Luxury residential/business/entertainment area. Predominantly Caucasian Human. Busy entertainment district.
Korea Way (Neon City, Downtown): W32 and 5th to B-way
Human Asian Commercial District.
Koreatown (Neon City): W31-36 and 5th to 6th
Human Asian Commercial District.
Murray Hill (Downtown, Eastside, Neon City, Midtown): E29-42 and 2nd to 5th
Human Caucasian Upper Class Residential Area.
Tenderloin: W23-42 and 5th to 7th
Human Asian and Amerind Upper Class Residential Area.
Flatiron District, Toy District, Photo District (Downtown, Neon City, Midtown): W23-42 and 5th
Human Commercial District. Residential Streets have a large Amerind and Hispanic minority population.
Midtown South (Stuyvesant, Downtown, Neon City, Eastside, Midtown, Times Square, Lower Westside, Terminal): 23-42 and 2nd to 11th
Human Commercial/Residential Zones. Large Hispanic Minority population.
Madison Square (Neon City): W23-26 and 5th to B-way
Human Caucasian Busy Entertainment Zone.
Little Constance (Terminal): W30 and 8th to 9th
Human Hispanic Ghetto.
Flower District (Neon City): W26-28 and 6th
Human Caucasian Retail District.
Brookdale (Stuyvesant): E25th and 1st to FDR
Luxury Condoplex. Predominantly Human Afro-American.
Kips Bay (Downtown, Stuyvesant): E23-34 and the river to 3rd
Busy Human Caucasian Commercial Zone.
Rose Hill, Curry Hill (Downtown): E23-30 and 1st to B-way
Human Hispanic Commercial District.
Peter Cooper Condoplex Plaza (Stuyvesant): E20-23 and C to 1st
Caucasian Ork Luxury Condoplex.
Chelsea (Southside, Terminal): W14-34 and 8th to the river
Human Caucasian. Heavy Elven Community. Residential slums to the north, the blocks to the sout hare much like Downtown and predominantly commercial/business.
Gramercy (Downtown): E14-30 and 1st to B-way
Human Caucasian Upper Class Residential Zone.
Union Square (The Village): E14-17 and 4th to University Pl
Major Entertainment District. predominently Human Caucasian.
Stuyvesant Town Condoplex (Stuyvesant): E14-20 and C to 1st
Caucasian and Black Changeling and Gnome Metavariant Luxury Housing.
Gashouse District (Stuyvesant): E14-23 and C to 1st
Caucasian Human Luxury Housing Condoplex.
Meatpacking District (Southside): Gansevoort to W15th and Hudson to the river.
Human Caucasian Residential/Business Zone. Strong Elven Minority. No longer used for packing meat, but rather turned into something uniquely Metahuman by the residents, and by Elven and Dwarven artists. Turf of the Ancients.
Little Germany (former) (Lower East Side): E7-10 and A to B
Residential Troll Slum.
Alphabet City Luxury Condoplex: Houston to E23rd (14th) and FDR to A
Caucasian Human Luxury Housing Condoplex.
East Village (Downtown, Lower East Side): Houston to E14th and the river to Bowery
Predominantly Elven Population. Upper-Middle Class Businesses/Residences, changing to Slums the closer you get to the East River.
Greenwich Village, the Village (The Village, Southside): Houston to W14th and B-way to the river
Predominently Human Population. Major Counter-culture/Changeling/Metavariant Population.
NoHo (The Village): Houston to Astor and Bowery to B-way
Large gay/lesbian Troll population.
The Bowery (Downtown, Lower Eastside, the Village): Canal to E4 and Allen to Bowery
Human Caucasian Ethnic Retail/Entertainment Zone,
West Village (Southside): Canal to W14th and 6th to the river
Large Dwarf, Ork and Troll Minority Groups. Metahuman dock worker ghetto.
Lower East Side: Canal to Houston and the river to Bowery
Squatter Ghetto. Mostly Human Caucasian. SINless Corporate Housing Projects.
SoHo (Southside, SoHo, Lower Eastside): Canal to Houston and Lafayette to Varick
Major Caucasian Elf Community. Counter-Culture Entertainment Zone.
NoLIta (SoHo): Broome to Houston and Bowery to Lafayette
Major Entertainment District. Caucasian Human predominantly.
Little Italy (SoHo): Canal to Broome and Mulberry
Italian Commercial Zone. Major Italian Elf population.
Chinatown (Chinatown, Lower Eastside, SoHo, Southside): Chambers to Delancey and E B-way to B-way
Asian Commercial Zone. Very congested, crowded streets. 99% Manderin, Cantonese, Henanese, Manchu, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Beijing
Hainan, Ningxia, Taiwanese, Yunnan, Gansu, Provincial, Guangxi, Shandong population. Residents from the Sprawls of Hong Kong, Beijing, and Macao also. Mostly Human, some Metahuman.
Lower Manhattan, Financial District (City Center, FuchiTown, and Battery City): below Chambers
Mostly Human Caucasian. World-reknown Business/Commercial District. Battery City is a Lower Class Residential Housing enclave for Wage Slaves. Wall Street. City Hall. Financial District. Broklyn Bridge. Manhattan Bridge.
Five Points (former)(Chinatown): Worth & Baxter
Congested Residential/Commercial Lower Class Zone. Large population of Trolls from the Chinese States.
Cooperative Village (SoHo, Lower East Side): Frankfort to Grand and FDR to E B-way
Corporate Housing for Corporaste Wage Slaves. Mostly Caucasian Human residents.
Two Bridges: Brooklyn Bridge to Montgomery, St. James Pl to the river
Low-Income Corporate Housing. Mostlu Human Caucasian Corporate Wage-Slave residents.
TriBeCa (SoHo, Southside): Park Pl to Canal and B-way to the river
Upper Class Residential brownstones. Predominently Human Caucasian residents.
Civic Center (Southside, Fuchi Town): Vessy to Chambers and the river to B-way
Major Business District. Tight Security. Surrounded by NeoNET Towers.
Radio Row (former) (Now: FuchiTown): Cortlandt to Dey and Greenwich St (WTC)
Major Megacorporate Enclave. Owned by NeoNET Corporation.
South Street Seaport Historical District (Battery City): east of Fulton and FDR
Major Tourist Attraction. Surrounded by Low-Income Housing Towers: Battery City
Battery City: west of West Street
Low-Income Wage Slave Housing. Huge Black/Hispanic Population. Mostly Human.
42nd St: Times Square and Neon City (AAA, AA-A)
#N, #R, #Q, #S, #W, #1, #2, #3, #7, and #9 to 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue. Or #B, #D, #F, and #V to 42nd Street and 6th Ave
Though its western side holds few attractions, east of Eighth Avenue 42nd Street is home to some of the city's most distinctive buildings, ranging from great Beaux Arts palaces like Grand Central Station in Midtown, to white elephants like the New United Nations Building at the street's eastern end on the Eastside. In between lie gems such as that definitive New York icon, the Chrysler-Nissan Building. Surrounded by superb architecture and breathtaking views down such great avenues as Fifth, Madison, Lexington and Third, this section of New York is one of the most distinctive parts of the city.
Times Square is where those who have the nuyen go for a dose of high culture. Manhattan's old theater district got crammed in here during the Rebuilding. Now, at least 6 full-size theaters and about 12 smaller venues are found here. All are AR-capable. Tens of thousands of corporations, retailers, and businesses have shops here. And they all advertize. Advertising for anything can be found on every available surface in Times Square. What's more, many surfaces were created simply to add more advertizing space. Everything from simple billboards and print spots to animated graphics, holographic images, catchy jingles in every language, commlink-propogated word-of-mouth campaigns, and targeted odors are everywhere here blazing the night away. These ads are tailored to each person's radio frequency ID (RFID) tags, and the information is broadcast by each person's commlink. By doing this, each advertizer in Times Square can tailor ads to each person's preferenceson the fly and beam them to each person's PAN from all angles. For this reason, most people in Times Square have thier RFID tags set to Stealth Mode.
Neon City is a series of interconnected, mall-like structures. Whereas Times Square is the AR and VR Tourist Mecca, this is the Augmented Reality and Virtual Relaity Playground. But let's discuss physical spance, shall we? The buildings are linked by glass-enclosed crosswalks that rise high above the traffic. There are many open-air spaces, some several floors above the street, where people can meet and look out at the marvelous views of the city.
Neon City also harbors a deep and dark criminal element. But the perps here are professionals, they know better than to look like the perps they are. The area is heavily patrolled, obvious as well as undercover, and the criminals have adapted to that reality.
Bryant Park and the New York Public Library (AAA-AA)
#7, #B, #D, #F or #V to 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.
Located in Midtown, one block east of Times Square, Bryant Park, Sixth Avenue between 40th and 42nd streets, is a lush grassy square block filled with slender trees and inviting green chairs. As well as free synthjazz in summer months and several outdoor eateries, there's also a rather aggressive happy hour singles scene at the Bryant Park Café. All corporate. Just across from the park, at 40 W. 40th St, the New Radiator Building, designed in 2024 a replica of the original American Radiator Company, commands attention for its neo-Gothic tower and polished black-granite facade.
Chrysler-Nissan Building (AAA-AA)
#7, #4, #5, #6 or #S train to Grand Central Station.
Occupying the block between Lexington and Third avenues, the Chrysler Building has been extensively refurbished and reconstructed after the Quake. It dates from an era (1930, though renovated in 2000 by Philip Johnson, and again in 2013 by Vincenzo Driesbach) when architects carried off prestige with grace and style. The building has easily become easily Manhattan's best loved. Its car-motif friezes, a spire resembling a car radiator grill and hood-ornament gargoyles jutting from the setbacks all recall the golden age of motoring ... a favorite among many a corporate rigger in New York. The lobby, once a car showroom, has opulently inlaid turbolifts, walls covered in African marble and on the ceiling a realistic, if rather faded, study showing airplanes, machines and the anthroforms that worked on the tower, which, unfortunately, is not open to the public.
East of the Chrysler-Nissan Building (AAA-AA)
Flanking Lexington Avenue on the south side of 42nd Street are two more buildings that repay consideration. The Aleff Building on the west side is another Art Deco monument, cut with terra-cotta carvings of leaves, tendrils and sea creatures. More interestingly, the design on the outside of the weighty Mobil Building across the street is deliberately folded in such a manner that it can be cleaned automatically by the movement of the wind.
East of here is the somber yet elegant former Daily News Building, whose stone facade fronts a surprising Deco interior. The most impressive remnant of the original 1923 decor is a large globe encased in a lighted circular frame (with updated geography), made famous by the Superman sims, in which the Daily News Building housed the Daily Planet.
Further east still, 42nd Street grows more tranquil. Between Second and First avenues, the Ford Foundation Building provides one of the most peaceful spaces of all. Built in 1967, and rebuilt in 2020, this was the first of the atriums that are now commonplace across Manhattan, and it is certainly the most lush. It's got a giant Japanese-style greenhouse, with two walls of offices visible through the armored-glass windows. 42nd Street is no more than a murmur outside.
At the east end of 42nd Street, steps lead up to the 1925 ensemble of Tudor City, which rises behind a tree-filled parklet. With its coats of arms, armored glass and neat neighborhood shops, it is the very picture of self-contained residential respectability, and an official historic district. Trip down the steps from here and you're facing the new United Nations building.
Grand Central Station
#7, #4, #5, #6 or #S train to Grand Central Station.
A masterful piece of urban planning, the 1903 Grand Central Station (rebuilt in 2027), between Madison and Lexington avenues, mainly serves commuters speeding out no further than Connecticut or Westchester County. A Beaux Arts monument to the power of the mag-lev railways, Grand Central was the symbolic gateway in the nineteenth century to an undiscovered continent. Today, the most spectacular aspect of the building is its size. Its main concourse is one of the world's finest and most imposing open spaces, the barrel-vaulted ceiling speckled like a Baroque church with a painted representation of the winter night sky. Stand in the middle and you realize Grand Central represents a time when stations were humbling preludes to great cities.
Active commlinks can display realtime train schedules for Metro North and the LIRR ... you have to get yourself to Penn Station for the LIRR, though! RFID tags alert the traveler of transit deals offered by the MTA.
For those -gasp!- without a commlink or RFID tags, Grand Central has patented WallSpace AR technology that allows travellers to access virtual timetables and GeoSpace Maps to display routes, timetables, and fare costs. You can even use the WallSpace displayes to pay for tickets. Purchased tickets are downloaded to your commlink or your RFID tag (you must have either on you for proof of purchase), the guard scanns your commlink or tag on the train just before departure.
TriBeCa (B-A)
Citigroup's Global Corporate and Investment Bank has its headquarters in TriBeCa.TriBeCa is a middle class residential and commercial neighborhood in downtown Manhattan. The name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street." It runs roughly from Canal Street south to Park Place, and from the Hudson River east to Broadway; just north of FuchiTown.
TriBeCa is part of Southside, a combo of businesses and residences, but mostly business. There are few skyscrapers here, and there is an industrial district, dominated by warehouse structures, that in the last decade has undergone a major revitalization. Many warehouses have been converted to livable residential lofts and new businesses which emerged make the neighborhood much more like a community than an industrial district. Residents like the neighborhood for its vibrancy, as well as for the solitude and harmony achieved by mixed zoning.
TriBeCa is a fashionable residential neighborhood with an affluent population. Many of the streets are lined with boutique shops and high-end restaurants such as Nobu, Chanterelle and Bouley. TriBeCa is also home to the TriBeCa Simsense Festival. The neighborhood is a frequent filming location for movies, including the 1984 hit movie Ghostbusters, which took place in a TriBeCa firehouse. The sim remake took place in the same area after The Awakening with all the wild magic, and a second sim sequel of Ghostbusters took place during the Year of the Comet with the Shedim outbreaks all over the city. Made for great entertainment, and the Sim was a box office hit, but I felt it came a little too close to reality.
Many celebrities reside in TriBeCa: Lew Allenby, Darkvine, Deirdre, Enoch Ian Keys, Maria Mercurial, Eddie Mwabe, Orxanne, Teddy X, and Melody Tyger. Others include: Doug Z of Chip Truth, Warren Cartwright, Andrea Frost, Rancois Nyanze, Moira Thornton of Concrete Dreams, Tony Li of Eight Immortals, Johnny Bale and Chantell Taylor of Plastosapiens, Sheena M and Jay Keith of Shield Wall, Sandra Willowfall of Til Es Hault has a summer penthouse condo here, and Zir Zemo of Zazz. A host of Simsense celebrities have residences here, too: Emmett Riegle, Rhona and Kathleen McGuire, Sha Coxey, Ervin Hannagan, Sarita Meyn, Ted Lechman, Margarita Bialczyk, Sean Habersham, Adrienne Ramirez, and Guillermo Lybarger just to name a few.
After the April 12, 2005 earthquake, TriBeCa initially suffered financially. However, government grants and incentives provided an infusion of capital and the area rebounded. Amidst the real estate boom of the mid 2040s Tribeca housing prices outpaced even that of the red-hot Manhattan market. Forbes Magazine ranked the 10013 zip code in TriBeCa as the 12th most expensive zip code in the United Canadian and American States in 2070.
Greenwich Village (A)
Greenwich Village (pronounced "Grennich" Village; also called simply the Village) is a largely residential area on the west side of downtown (southern) Manhattan in New York City. Thios is one of the most wizzer locales in the City where the hip go to meet the too-hip-to-be-real. There is more than enough faux culture to gag on. The area is full of art galleries, book-nooks, poetry spots, loft apartments at insane prices, and crowds of moody-looking, leather-clad children of the night. The nightly parties sport scads of Van Cliber-clad women and guys in Actioneer stylish wear.
Location
The neighborhood is roughly bounded by Broadway and Bowery on the east, the 6th Avenue and Greenwich Avenue on the west, Houston Street on the south, and 14th Street on the north. The neighborhoods surrounding it are SoHo to the south, and Downtown to the north and east. Downtown is also home to the East Village neighborhood. The East Village, which was formerly known as the Bowery or north Lower East Side, is occasionally referred to as part of Greenwich Village, but is more properly considered its own neighborhood.
Layout
As Greenwich Village was once a rural hamlet, entirely separate from New York, its street layout does not coincide with most of Manhattan's more formal grid plan (based on the Commissioners' Plan of 1811). Greenwich Village was allowed to keep its street pattern when the plan was implemented, which has resulted in a neighborhood whose streets are dramatically different, in layout, from the ordered structure of other parts of town. Many of the neighborhood's streets are narrow and some curve at odd angles. Additionally, unlike most of Manhattan, streets in the Village typically are named rather than numbered. While there are some numbered streets in the Village, even they do not always conform to the usual grid pattern when they enter the neighborhood. For example, West 4th Street, which runs east-west outside of the Village, turns and runs north, crossing West 12th Street.
Currently, artists and local historians bemoan the fact that the bohemian days of Greenwich Village are long gone, because of the extraordinarily high housing costs in the neighborhood. Many artists have fled to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Long Island City, and New Jersey. Nevertheless, residents of Greenwich Village still possess a strong community identity and are proud of their neighborhood's unique history and fame, and its well-known liberal live-and-let-live attitudes. Indeed, its cultural uniqueness and apartness are felt so strongly, and so many of its residents' lives are so locally focused, that it is sometimes said thereabouts that "upstate" New York is anywhere north of 14th Street.
Greenwich Village includes the primary campus for New York University (NYU), The New School, and Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Cooper Union is located in neighboring East Village.
The historic Washington Square Park is the center and heart of the neighborhood, but the Village has several other, smaller parks: Father Fagan, Minetta Triangle, Petrosino Square, Little Red Square, and Time Landscape. There are also city playgrounds, including Desalvio, Minetta, Thompson Street, Bleecker Street, Downing Street, Mercer Street, and William Passannante Ballfield. Perhaps the most famous, though, is "The Cage", officially known as the West 4th Street Courts. Sitting on top of the West 4th Street subway station at 6th Avenue that serves the A-B-C-D-E-F-V trains, the courts are easily accessible to basketball and American handball players from all over New York. The Cage has become one of the most important tournament sites for the city-wide "Streetball" amateur basketball tournament.
The Village also has a bustling performing arts scene. It is home to many Off-Broadway theaters; for instance, Greet Troll Group has taken up residence in the Astor Place Theater. The Village Vanguard hosts some of the biggest names in jazz on a regular basis. Comedy clubs dot the Village as well, including The Boston and Comedy Cellar, where many American stand-up comedians got their start.
Each year on October 31, it is home to New York's Village Halloween Parade, a mile-long ad hoc pageant of masqueraders, mummers, drag queens, exhibitionists, chipheads, gangers, drunkards, druggies, puppets and pets that draws an audience of two million from throughout the region, the largest Halloween event in the country. The delighted and high-spirited throngs include everyone from the smallest children dressed in the simplest homemade or store-bought costumes on up to adults bedecked in the most elaborate and ingenious guises and disguises that professional and amateur costume designers and makeup artists can conceive and create with a year's notice. Mages and local Shamans have reported the Background Count spikes quite well around this time of year each year.
Several publications have offices in the Village, most notably the The Village Voice Matrix PLTG.
The 2050 NBS sitcom The Odd Coven takes place in the Village, though it was filmed and produced in Hollywood, Pueblo. The exterior shot of the Friends' apartment building is actually located at Grove Street and Bedford Street in the West Village.
NoHo (A)
NoHo, for North of Houston Street (as contrasted with SoHo, South of Houston) is a small area of The Village, roughly bounded by Houston Street on the south, The Bowery on the east, Astor Place on the north, and Broadway on the west. Lafayette Street is one of the most fashionable streets in New York. The Bowery is Wraithchildes turf. You’ve been warned.
SoHo (B)
SoHo is a neighborhood in Manhattan that is bounded roughly by Houston Street on the north, Mott Street on the east, Worth Street on the south, and Sixth Avenue on the west.
Lots of artist studios and residences here. this is where people wit ha little more style, and sense, tend to be.
After abandonment of the highway scheme the city toyed with while rebuilding after the Levelling, the city was still left with a large number of historic buildings that were unattractive for the kinds of manufacturing and commerce that survived in the Quake. Many of these buildings, especially the upper stories which became lofts, attract artists who value the spaces for their large areas, large windows admitting natural light and dirt-cheap rents. Most of these spaces were also used illegally as living space, being neither zoned nor equipped for residential use, but this was ignored for a long period because the occupants were using space that would probably have been dormant or abandoned in the poor economic conditions of the era.
BTL use is big here, like in The Village, but SoHo is also where people with a little more style (and sense) than their Village counterparts tend to lurk. There are a lot of burned-out mages packed with cyberware on these streets, but you’ll find they are more capable than they normally should be …
Lower East Side (Z, occasional E, rare AAA)
"The Pit" The Lower East Side is a neighborhood of Manhattan, Inc. It has traditionally been an immigrant, working class neighborhood, was gentrified at the turn of the century and was increasingly populated by artists, students and hipsters. Since the Levelling, it fell into steep decline, abandoned by the law enforcement companies and left to the street dogs. Today refers to the urban blight of tenement towers and broken streets of violent gangs, BTL and drugs, and black market services and items. It covers the area south of East 14th Street along the East River, roughly bounded on the west by 1st Avenue and the south by the Brooklyn Bridge.
One of the oldest neighborhoods of the city, the Lower East Side has long been known as a lower-class, working neighborhood and often as an outright slum. The Lower East Side once was, and in a few parts still is, a center for Eastern European Jewish immigrant culture. More recently, it has been settled by immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere.
In what is now the East Village, a pre-existing population of Poles and Ukrainians has been significantly replenished with newer immigrants, and the arrival of large numbers of Japanese metahumans over the last fifteen years or so has led to the proliferation of Japanese restaurants and specialty food markets. There is also a notable population of Bangladeshi metahumans and other Elf, Dwarf, Ork, Changeling, and Troll immigrants from Muslim countries, many of whom are congregants of the Madina Masjid (Mosque), located on First Avenue and 11th Street.
This diverse neighborhood also contains many synagogues and a great variety of churches, both in terms of denomination and ethnic and linguistic makeup. In addition, there is a major Hare Krishna temple and Buddhist houses of worship.
The Bowery, a largely destroyed place, remains the location of the famous Bowery Mission, serving the down-and-out since 1879. Another notable landmark on the Bowery is CBGB, a nightclub that has been presenting live music – including some of the most famous figures in rock 'n roll – since 1973. A bit further north and east is McSorley's Old Ale House, a famous Irish bar that opened its doors in 1854. Both of which were refurbished after the ’05 quake.
East Village was once Lower East Side's northwest corner alongside Greenwich Village; it received that name from real estate developers in the 1980s trying to dissociate the area from the Lower East Side's reputation. The name stuck and the term "Lower East Side" now refers specifically to the portion of the neighborhood lying south of 14th Street and East Village has become its own separate neighborhood.
In the early 2000s, the gentrification of the East Village spread to the Lower East Side, briefly making it one of the trendiest neighborhoods in Manhattan. Clinton Street and Orchard Street were lined with upscale restaurants and boutiques, although Orchard Street is still dominated by discount clothing stores.
In late 2004, a boutique hotel, The Hotel on Rivington, or THOR, opened on Rivington Street. The glass-walled, 50-storied hotel towers over the neighborhood and provided a sharp contrast to the surrounding low-rise brick tenements.
All this ended in 2005. Since the Levelling, the random riots and looting were coordinated into organized attacks on law enforcement and the military. So many lives were lost that all law enforcement personnel were pulled out of the area and the immigrants who lived here were left to fight the street gangs on their own, without the help from NYPD, Inc., Winter Systems, Knight-Errant, or Lone Star.
The neighborhood has historically been a home for counterculture, Jewish, leftist, and revolutionary elements. Emma Goldman, Leon Trotsky, Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman; and more recently, Rico Whittet, Rudolf Breeman, Felton Brin, Anibal Galleno, Leonora Lohmiller, Ollie Spinelli, Harry Mengarelli, and Jolie Mohmand have all made it their home at one time or another. For the past hundred years various radical groups, such as Humanis, Ork Rights Committee, the Manhattan Astral Preservation Society, Stonecutters Guild, Mothers of Metahumans, Young Elven Technologists, Ghoul Liberation League, and Renelle ke’Tesrae just to name a few have had their headquarters in the area. Many still do. One of the most notorious was the Universal Brotherhood. When the true horror of that mysterious cult became obvious, The Pit was cordoned off by the authorities and several Citimasters were placed around the perimeter. After the Chicago debackle in August of 2055, the authorities in New York planned a different tactic, similar to the one used by a team in the Seattle Metroplex to whipe out what they found underneath a secret location in the Ft. Lewis District.
Oddly, one of the benefactors behind the "liberators" has seemed to replace the Brotherhood here. Anyone hear of the DIMR? Or the New York City Astral Preservation Society? Or, even the Manhattan Group for Ethical Magical Research? Why the frag would these slots be so interested in the Lower East Side? Who knows? They've been here ever since 2055.
Also, in that year, after the Chicago Incident, SWAT teams and other troops moved into the area after several Universal Brotherhood chapter houses were closed down. When that happened, the worst terror New York City could have ever imagined: swarms of insect spirits erupted from the buildings and beneath these streets! It took the NYPD Inc., Knight-Errant, FedPol, and Winter Systems sent in hundreds of snipers, combat mages, ritual teams, nature spirits and elementals to contain the swarms. "I'll be damned if we're going to be another Chicago!" proclaimed the Mayor, and the hives, nests and swarms were neutralized within several months. We all knew the UB was a front for some such drek, but nobody knew how bad...lots of people in the subways lost their lives (and their heads) to the mandibles of man-sized roaches and beetles, man-sized wasps snatched people from the upper floors of the housing projects, and two-meter-tall flies attacked and killed several homeless on the streets.
Since then, these ordinary New Yorkers have been memorialized for their bravery, their daring and their sheer heroism.
Prominent anarchists Yoko Sultanburg and Tyler Anaar published the Mother Earth PLTG, founded in 2066, out of a busted tenement at what might be 210 E. 13th St., where she is honored with a plaque today.
The neighborhood has become a popular late night destination with go-gangers, street gangers, and other street drek. Also, it’s a popular slumming spot for people averse to weapons checks. Clinton Street and Ludlow Street between Rivington Street and Stanton Street become especially packed at night with lots of shadowbiz to be had, and the resulting noise is a cause of tension between bar owners, the gutterpunks and gangers, and longtime residents.
Also, the Pit is home to many live music venues. Up and coming alternative rage rock bands play at Bowery Ballroom on Delancey Street and Mercury Lounge on East Houston Street, while lesser known bands play at Pan's on Norforlk Street and Galipo on Suffolk Street. There are also bars that offer performance space, such as Screech and the Lyte Rooms on Ludlow Street.
Chinatown (B-C)
The Chinatown neighborhood is an ethnic enclave with a large population of Chinese immigrants, similar to other Chinatown districts in UCAS, CAS, and California cities.
By the 1980s, it had surpassed San Francisco's Chinatown to become the largest enclave of Chinese immigrants in the Western hemisphere, but in the last few years it too has been outgrown by the lesser-known but larger New York City Chinatown community in nearby Flushing, Queens.
Chinatown is dominated by Chinese "tongs" (now sometimes rendered neutrally as "associations," or Triads), which are a mixture of clan associations, landsman's associations, political alliances (Kuomintang vs Communist Party of China) and (more secretly) crime syndicates. The associations started to give protection from harassment due to anti-Chinese racism. Each of these associations was aligned with a street gang. The associations are a source of assistance to new immigrants - giving out loans, aiding in starting business, and so forth.
The associations form a governing body named the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. Though this body was meant to foster relations between the Tongs, open warfare periodically flares between the On Leong and Hip Sing tongs. Much of the Chinese gang warfare takes place on Doyers street. Gangs like the Ghost Shadows and Flying Dragons are prevalent.
The only park in Chinatown, Columbus Park, was built on what was once the center of the infamous Five Points neighborhood of New York. This is the most dangerous slum area of immigrant New York.
Much of Chinatown works in an underground economy, where wages are below the mandated minimum wage and transactions are done in cash to avoid paying taxes. This underground economy is responsible for employment of large numbers of new immigrants who lacked the language skills to seek better jobs. This system attracted the garment industry to use large-scale sweatshops in the Chinatown area. Tourism and restaurants are also major industries.
Chinese green groceries and fish mongers are clustered around Mulberry Street, Canal Street (by Baxter Street) and all along East Broadway (especially by Catherine Street). Many of these fish and produce products are gengineered for maximum storage capacity, taste, and profit and the expense of safety.
The Chinese jewelry shop district is on Canal Street between Mott and Bowery. Due to the high savings rate among Chinese, there are many Asian and American banks in the neighborhood. Canal Street, west of Broadway (especially on the North side), is filled with Chinese street vendors selling commlinks and PANs, matrix games and sim chips, programs, upgrade services, cyberware, and all kinds of magic foci and fetishes … mostly from China and east Asia, imitation perfumes, bootleg RFID tags and passcodes, watches, bioware and nanoware, and hand-bags. This section of Canal Street is the home of warehouse stores selling surplus/salvage electronics and hardware.
A gigantic federally subsidized housing project, named Confucius Plaza was completed on the corner of Bowery and Division streets in 2037. This 236-story residential tower block gave much needed new housing stock to thousands of residents, several shopping malls, and a theme park. The building also houses a new public grade school. Since new housing is normally non-existent in Chinatown, many apartments in the building were acquired by Triad-linked wealthy individuals through under-the-table dealings, even though the building was built as affordable housing.
In the 2050s, Chinese people began to move into some parts of the western Lower East Side, which over 100 years earlier was populated by Eastern European Jews and 80 years earlier was occupied by Hispanics. There are today only a few remnants of Jewish heritage left on the Lower East Side, such as the famous Katz's Deli and a number of synagogues and other old religious establishments.
Currently, the approximate borders of Chinatown are: Canal Street in the North (bordering the Pit and SoHo sections of NYC) The Bowery in the East, Nassau in the West (encroaching the TriBeCa sections of NYC) Meade Street in the South (encroaching the City Hall area).
Unlike most of other urban Chinatowns, Manhattan's Chinatown is both a residential area as well as commercial area. Most population estimates are in the range of 806,237 to 1,343,728 residents (some estimates go as high as 1,881,219 residents). It is difficult to get an exact count due to low participation of the UCAS Census (due to language barriers as well as large scale illegal immigration). Besides the obvious 1,000 (some estimates go as high as 1,500) Chinese restaurants in the area for employment, there are still some sweat shops. The proximity of the fashion industry has kept some garment work in the local area though most of the garment industry has moved to China. The local garment industry now concentrates on quick production in small volumes and piece-work (paid by the piece) which is generally done at the worker's home. Much of the population growth is due to immigration. As previous generations of immigrants gain language and education skills, they tend to move to better housing and job prospects that are available in The Counties, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, and Jersey.
The housing stock of Chinatown is still mostly composed of decrepit and cramped tenement buildings, some of which are over 160 years old. It is still common in such buildings to have bathrooms in the hallways which are shared among multiple apartments.
For much of Chinatown's history, there were not many unique architectural features to announce that you had arrived into the neighborhood (other than the language of the holovid shop signs). In 2023, at Chatham Square the Kam Lau memorial archway was rebuilt in memorial of the Chinese who died in the Republic Civil War as Communist hardliners solidified their power in Henan and withdrew it from the Republic, and the Provinces between the Yellow River and the Canton Confederation splintered into microstates. This memorial, which bears calligraphy by the great Chieu Dao-zi (1940—2025), is mostly ignored by the residents due to its poor location on a busy car thoroughfare with little pedestrian traffic. A statue of Xiao Zhang, a Fuzhou-based Chinese official who opposed the opium trade, is also located at the square; it faces uptown along East Broadway, now home to the bustling Fuzhou neighborhood and known locally as Fuzhou Street. In the 2030s, New York Telecomm, then the local phone company started capping the street phone booths with pagoda-like decorations. In 2037, the statue of Confucius in front of Confucius Plaza became a common meeting place. In the 2040s, banks which opened new branches and others which were renovating started to use Chinese traditional styles for their building facades.
Chinatown was greatly affected by the quake of April 12, 2005. After the rebuilding, tourism and business has been very quick to return to the area, thanks to the locals. Part of the reason was the NYPD, Inc., Winter Systems, and Knight-Errant closure of Park Row - one of two major roads linking the Financial Center with Chinatown. A lawsuit is pending before the State Superior Court regarding this action.
Currently, approximately 1,612,474 people live in Manhattan's Chinatown.
Until the 2020s, the bulk of the population was Toisan and Cantonese speaking, coming from a small area of Guangdong province and Hong Kong with a small minority of Hakka also represented. Mandarin was rarely spoken by natives even well into the 2040s.
More recently, most new immigrants speak Putonghua (Mandarin), coming from Mainland China, with large numbers from Fuzhou who also speak the Fuzhou dialect.
Other New York City area Chinese communities have been settled over the years, including that of Upper-Middle Class Flushing (Security Rating AA) in Queens, which in recent years has actually surpassed the community in Lower Manhattan. It is said by some that the best Chinese cuisine in New York is now found here as well. Another community is located in Sunset Park (Security Rating AA), an upper class area in Brooklyn, particularly along 8th Avenue from 40th to 65th Streets. Sunset Park is much the same as Flushing, where visitors can walk safely at night unarmed. New York's newest Chinatown has recently sprung up on Avenue U in the Homecrest section of Brooklyn (Security Rating B), a middle class commercial area. Outside of Manhattan or The Counties, a growing suburban Chinatown is developing in Edison, New Jersey (Security Ratings AA-B), which lies across the Hudson and 4 klicks to the southwest.
Little Italy (B)
Little Italy is a neighborhood in lower Manhattan, New York City, once known for its large population of Italian immigrants.
Historically, Little Italy extended as far south as Bayard St, as far north as Bleecker, as far west as Lafayette, and as far east as the Bowery. As Italian-Americans left Manhattan for other boroughs, neighborhoods (with intergration) and the suburbs in the middle of the Twentieth Century, the neighborhood recognizable as Little Italy gradually shrank. Large portions of the neighborhood were absorbed by Chinatown, as immigrants from China and other East Asian countries moved to the area. The northern reaches of Little Italy, near Houston Street, also ceased to be recognizably Italian, and eventually became the neighborhood known today as NoLIta, an abbreviation for North of Little Italy. Today, the section of Broadway between Broome and White Streets, lined with Italian restaurants popular with tourists, remains distinctly recognizable as Little Italy.
The Feast of San Gennaro is a large street fair, lasting 11 days, that takes place every September along Broadway between Houston Street and Canal Street.
Other Italian American neighborhoods in New York City include the luxury Little Italy neighborhood of the Bronx (Arthur Avenue) (Security Rating AAA), Bensonhurst, Brooklyn (Security Rating E) which qualifies as a slum, the lower class residential area of Ozone Park, Queens (Security Rating C), and the upper class bedroom community of Staten Island (Security Rating AA), where 40% of the population is of Italian ancestry. Contrary to popular opinion, these communitiesare not Mafia-controlled. If there is a center of power here, it's the megacorps, like anywhere else in New York.
Tompkins Square Park Tompkins Square Park is a 42,000 m² public park in the Alphabet City (Security Rating D) section of the Lower East Side neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is square in shape, and is bounded on the north by East 10th Street, on the east by Avenue B, on the south by East 7th Street, and on the west by Avenue A. St. Marks Place abuts the park to the west.
The "Square" is a large training ground for the New York Marauders World Combat Cyclists League, the New York Slashers Urban Brawl Team. The “Square�? is also used for drilling the New York National Guard. During training and drilling, the occasional gutterpunk from the surrounding blight may get in the way, but them’s the cost of life in the ‘hood.
Tompkins Square Park is also, for many New Yorkers, synonymous with the city's increased social problems. The park is a high-crime area that contains encampments of squatters, and is a center for illegal drug and chip dealing, and heroin use.
In February 2050, a police riot erupted in the park when police attempted to clear the park of homeless people; 230 people were injured. Bystanders as well as homeless people and political activists got caught up in the police action that took place on the night of February 6 and the early morning of February 7, after a large number of police surrounded the park and charged at the hemmed-in crowd while other police ordered all pedestrians not to walk on streets neighboring the park. Much of the violence was recorded and clips were shown on local trid news reports (notably including one by a man who sat on his stoop across the street from the park whose cybercam continued to record while a police officer beat him up), but ultimately, although at least one case went to trial, no police officers were punished.
Increasing gentrification in the northern blocks of the Pit during the 2050s and 2060s, as well as enforcement of a park curfew and the eviction of homeless people, have changed the character of Tompkins Square Park. The park was closed and refurbished in the early 2050s and today, is walled-off, home to the NYC WCCL and Urban Brawl teams.
When the WCCL and Urban Brawl Franchises aren’t practicing here, the outdoor drag festival Wigstock, held in the park, is now part of the Howl Festival. That summertime festival also features one day of the two days of the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, a musical tribute to a famous former resident of Avenue B. There is also an annual "Riot Reunion" concert every summer that features the neighborhood punk-rock band 3V Shard.
There is a monument on the north side of the park commemorating the General Slocum boating disaster on June 15th 1904. This was the greatest single loss of life in New York City prior to 9/11/2001. 1300 people, mainly German immigrant mothers and children, drowned in the East River that day. The area near the park, formerly known as Little Germany, effectively dissolved in grief as shattered German families moved away. This disaster is also memorialized in James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
The park is also the place where Indian Sadhu A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada came to sing and preach in 1965, which began the worldwide Hare Krishna movement. A plaque was established in the park several years ago.
The East Village (Security Rating B)
The East Village is a middle class commercial neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The neighborhood overlaps Downtown and The Lower East Side, and is bounded by 14th Street on the north, the East River on the east, Houston Street on the south, and, roughly, the Bowery and Third Avenue on the west. It lies east of Greenwich Village and NoHo, south of Stuyvesant Town (AAA), and north of the Lower East Side. The East Village includes the area known as Alphabet City (Avenues A - D).
The East Village was — and still is by many — regarded as part of the Lower East Side. In the 2040s, real estate developers began promoting the name East Village to dissociate the neighborhood from the Lower East Side's reputation as a slum district and to try to capture the cachet of Greenwich Village. This has led many to believe that the East Village is part of Greenwich Village. Extensive gentrification during the 2040s around Tompkins Square Park was a contributing factor to several riots (in 2049 and 2056) as police disbanded homeless encampments.
Other than geography, the East Village's most notable commonalities with Greenwich Village are a colorful history, vibrant social and cultural outlets, and street names that often diverge from the norm. The most notable of those steets are the Bowery, a north-south avenue which also lends its name to the somewhat overlapping neighborhood of the Bowery; St. Mark's Place, a crosstown street well-known for countercultural, especially punk, businesses; and Astor Place/Cooper Square, home of the Public Theater and the Cooper Union, one of the world's most prestigious art, architecture, and engineering schools. Nearby New York University (NYU) has dormitories in the neighborhood.
CBGB, the nightclub considered to be the birthplace of punk music, has re-opened during the Rebuilding and is located in the neighborhood on the Bowery. Other important East Village clubs in punk history were the Mudd Club, A7 and the Mercer Arts Center both of which are now closed. Max's Kansas City, another important club, was located just outside the neighborhood. No Wave and New York Hardcore also emerged in the area’s clubs. Among the many important bands and singers who got their start at these clubs were: the Queens of Psalm, New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Arto Lindsay, MasterBasser!, the Ramones, Area 52, Blondie, the Talking Heads, Dark Star, the Plasmatics, Glenn Danzig, Abandoned Children, Sonic Youth, Feedback, Madonna, the Beastie Boys, Anthrax and The Strokes, Brian, Jaded Cynic, Dandelion Frenzy, and Serengetti.
Over the last 170 years, the East Village/Lower East Side neighborhood has been considered one of the strongest contributors to American arts and culture in the UCAS. During the great wave of immigration (Germans, Ukrainians, Polish) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, countless families found their new homes in this area. The East Village has also been the home of cultural icons and movements from the American gangster to the Warhol Superstars, folk music to punk rock, anti-folk to hip-hop, advanced education to organized activism, experimental theater to the Synthbeat Generation. Club 57, on St. Mark's Place, was an important incubator for performance and visual art in the late 2030s and early 2040s, followed by God Bless Zero as, during the 2040s, the East Village art gallery scene helped to galvanize modern art in America, with such artists as Willian Sagala, Vatta Brittingham and Etsuko Levine exhibiting.
Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan (C south of 52nd and west of 7th and Broadway, AA (AAA) north of 52nd)
Hell's Kitchen (also known as Clinton and Midtown West) is a neighborhood of New York City that includes roughly the area between 34th Street and 57th Street, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River.
The neighborhood which provides transportation, hospital and warehouse infrastructure support to the Midtown Manhattan business district has a gritty reputation that has resulted in its housing prices being lower than much of the rest of Manhattan. A great number of actors have spent residence time in the neighborhood thanks to its proximity to the Broadway theaters and the Actors Studio training school.
Throughout its history, Hell's Kitchen has figured prominently in the New York City underworld, especially in Irish-American organized crime circles. Gangsters like Owney Madden, bootleggers like Bill Dwyer, and Westies leaders Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone were Hell's Kitchen natives. The rough and tumble days on the West Side figure prominently in Damon Runyon stories. The conflicts between Puerto Ricans and Irish formed the basis of West Side Story.
Hell’s Kitchen is basically synonymous with the Lower Westside and falls quickly from the splendors of Midtown and the Upper Westside, becoming nearly slum down near the walls of Terminal. It is mostly lower-middle class/poor residential full of wage slaves from Midtown and Westside. Several street gangs rule the area, the worst is the Blood Monkeys whose turf runs into Southside and Downtown.
The shores of the Hudson contain port and cargo handling facilities.
Once a bastion of poor and working-class Irish-Americans, in recent years Hell's Kitchen has undergone tremendous gentrification, due to its proximity to Midtown.
Southern boundary: Hell's Kitchen and the Chelsea overlap and are often lumped together as the West Side since they support the Midtown Manhattan business district. The traditional dividing line is 34th Street. The name Chelsea Clinton was used for a newspaper and a restaurant before the famous first daughter last century. The transition area just north of Madison Square Garden and Penn Station includes the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Terminal.
Eastern boundary: The neighborhood overlaps the Times Square theater district to the east at Eighth Avenue. On its southeast border, it overlaps the Garment District alsif you're on a decidedly non-New York budget, you can find the New Yorker Hotel along with the lackluster Manhattan Center Building, both of which had fallen into disrepair when the original owners sold them before the neighborhood went downhill. Included in the transition area on Eighth Avenue are the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street, the Pride of Manhattan Fire Station (from which 15 firefighters died at the World Trade Center in 2002 and The Levelling in 2005). There are also several theaters that remain...including Studio 54, the original home of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi, and the Hearst Tower.
Northern boundary: The neighborhood edges toward the southern boundary of the Upper West Side, and 57th Street is considered by some to be the traditional northern boundary. However the neighborhood often is considered to extend to 59th Street (the southern edge of Central Park) where the avenue names change. Included in the 57th to 59th Street transition area are the old Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, Roosevelt Hospital, where John Lennon died in 1980 after being shot, and John Jay College.
Western boundary: The western boundary is the Hudson River.
Hell's Kitchen has stuck as the name even though real estate developers have offered alternatives of Clinton and Midtown West or even the Mid-West. The Clinton name originated in 1959 in an attempt to link the name to the DeWitt Clinton Park at 52nd and 11th Avenue. Clinton was a former New York governor.
Today Hell's Kitchen is a mixed neighborhood of yuppies, artists, hipsters, longtime Irish, Puerto Rican, and Dominican residents. There is also a large gay community here. Now largely free from street crime, it is, for the most part, removed from the degree of neo-gangsterism which has long characterized the neighborhood.
Special Clinton District-The SCD (C)
Although the neighborhood is immediately west of New York's main business district, development lagged for more than 30 years because of strict zoning rules called the Special Clinton District designed to protect the neighborhood's low rise character.
When the third incarnation of Madison Square Garden at 50th and Eighth Avenue was torn down in 2029 after the riots following the worldwide computer crash, New York developed a master plan calling for 10,750 to 16,125 hotel rooms, 134,373 apartments, 4,095,684 square meters of office space and a new super liner terminal in the neighborhood which it described as "blocks of antiquated and deteriorating structures of every sort." During this time a proposal was made to build the world's tallest building on the Madison Square Garden site and a massive convention center at 44th Street and the Hudson River.
In April, 2035, the Planning Commission approved the establishment of the Special Clinton District and Mayor Al Gregor moved the Jacob Javits Convention Center to 33rd and the Hudson River.
The District severely restricted development in the neighborhood for more than 20 years. The world's tallest building was not to rise and its Madison Square site was to remain a parking lot until 2050.
Provisions of the District:
The SCD was originally split into four areas:
Preservation Area: 43rd to 56th Streets between 8th and 10th Avenues. R-7 density, 6-story height limit on new buildings, suggested average apartment size of two bedrooms. (This was a response to the fact that between 2030 and 2040 developers had torn down 12,362 family-sized units and replaced them with coffin motels.) Perimeter Area: 8th Avenue, 42nd and 57th Streets. Bulkier development permitted to counterbalance the downzoning in the preservation area. Mixed Use Area: 10th and 11th Avenues between 43rd and 50th Streets. Mixed residential and manufacturing. New residential development only permitted in conjunction with manufacturing areas. Other Areas: West of 11th Avenue. Industrial and waterfront uses. The mixed use area and other area are now combined into "Other areas."
Building height in the Preservation Area cannot exceed 20 meters or seven stories, whichever is less.
Special permits are required for all demolition and construction in the SCD, including demolition of "any sound housing in the District" and any rehabilitation that increases the number of dwellings in a structure. New developments, conversions or alterations which create new units or zero bedroom units are required to contain at least 20% two bedroom apartments with a minimum room size of 51 square meters. Alterations which reduce the percentage of two bedroom units are not permitted unless the resulting building meets the 20% two bedroom requirement.
In the original provisions no building could be demolished unless it was found to be unsound.
Lean Times Eighth Avenue used to be lined with sim-porn brothels and bordellos. The stores are mostly gone now but this particular store was highlighted in Phone Booth (pre-sim film) and its re-make: Comm Node. Hell's Kitchen hit on very hard times and was a drug and chip infested neighborhood until the late 2030s when it began to gentrify.
As gentrification pace increased, there were numerous reports of problems between landlords and tenants. The most extreme example was the eight story Windermere complex at the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and 57th Street -- two blocks from Central Park.
Built in 1881 and refurbished in 2034, it is the second-oldest large apartment house in Manhattan. All the major New York newspapers covered the trials that sent the Windermere's managers to jail. According to former tenants and court papers, rooms were ransacked, doors were ripped out, prostitutes were moved in and tenants received death threats in the campaign to empty the building. Its landlord Alan B. Weissman made top billing in the 2046 edition of The Village Voice annual list, "The Dirty Dozen: New York's Worst Landlords." He was never convicted of anything.
Most of the tenants eventually settled and moved out of the building. However, as of November 2067, 6 tenants remain -- with only one paying rent. Court orders have protected the tenants and the building has been allowed to remain in derelict condition even as the neighborhood had gentrified.
September 11th While almost all fire stations in Manhattan lost fighters in the September 11 terrorist attacks, the hardest hit station was Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion 9 at 48th Street and Eighth Avenue which lost 15 firefighters. Given its proximity to Midtown, the station had specialized in skyscraper fires and rescues and is reputed to be the busiest station of any in all of New York City.
Its patch reads "Pride of Midtown" and "Never Missed a Performance." Memorials dot the station's exterior walls and a granite memorial is in a park to its north.
Developer Larry Silverstein made part of his fortune that eventually earned him the lease for the World Trade Center by building and managing buildings in the neighborhood. Silverstein's architect David Childs who began designing the Freedom Tower designed the Time Warner Center and Worldwide Plaza buildings in the neighborhood. Signature features of those towers are slated for the Freedom Tower.
Boom Times Developers have constantly attempted to chip away at the zoning rules.
The City, under the Late Mayor Michael Bloomberg, relaxed zoning rules all over the city in the wake of the September 11 attacks. This led to a real estate building boom with Hell's Kitchen getting some of the biggest projects in the city including the Hearst Tower at 56th Street at Eighth Avenue and a complex of highrise towers by Larry Silverstein along 42nd Street.
An indication of how fast the neighborhood became hot was a 2004 transaction involving the Howard Johnson's Motel at 52nd and Eighth Avenue. In June Vikram Chatwal’s Hampshire Hotel Group bought the motel and adjoining SIR (Studio Instrument Rental) building for $9 million. In August they sold the property to Elad Properties for about $43 million. Elad which owns Plaza Hotel is in the process of building The Link, a luxury 183-story building.
After the Levelling, however, The Freedom Tower never came to be. Fuchi Industrial Electronics bought up the original World Trade Center Site and began construction of Fuchi Town. Now, the area consists of a triad of black buildings, each 200 stories tall. Each building stands atop a wider, octagonal-shaped 50-story-high structure that acts as its base. Radiating outward are interconnected buildings that contain residences, shopping, and entertainment venues, etc. for Fuchi employees.
The area has undergone one upheval after another during the the dissolve of Fuchi and the takeover of Novatech, and then the take over of NeoNet after the second Crash.
NeoNet owns the entire area, which is provided by an unknown entity. Speculations abound that the Corporate Court Matrix Authority, NeoNet, the UCAS FedPol, and even Celedyr the Welsh Great Dragon that owns the Scottish mega Transys Neuronet. Truth is, Security is AAA and nobody knows who runs it here.
Actors' Neighborhood (C)
Manhattan Plaza performing artist residence and Film Center Cafe on Ninth AvenueHell's Kitchen's gritty reputation has meant that housing prices there tend to be cheaper than elsewhere in Manhattan.
Given the lower costs and its proximity to Broadway theaters, the neighborhood is a haven for aspiring actors. Many famous actors and entertainers have resided there, ranging from Bob Hope and James Dean to Jerry Seinfeld and Madonna; and from Ahmed Corl to Chantay Klarman. This is due in large part to the Actors Studio on West 44th, which rose to prominence under Lee Strasberg and is famed for its method acting style used by such actors as Marlon Brando, Horacio Biederman, Marilyn Monroe, Steve Abetrani, and James Gandolfini.
Manhattan Plaza at 42nd Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues was built in the 1970s to house the artists; rebuilt in the 2040s. It consists of eleven 250-story towers that were slated to revitalize Terminal, but fell into neglect and decay as the different managing co-op companies bickered about one petty issue or another. 70 percent of the apartments are set aside performing artists who are subsidized with federal Section 8 housing grants.
The neighborhood is also home to a number of broadcast and music-recording studios, including the CBC Broadcast Center at 524 West 57th Street (also the home of Black Entertainment Trideo's 106 & Park show), Sony Music Studios at 460 West 54th Street, and Right Track Recording's Studio A509 orchestral recording facility at West 38th Street and 10th Avenue. The syndicated Samuel Hemmings show is also taped locally at the Unitel Studios, 433 W. 53rd Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. AV8 records is housed in the film center building.
Comedy Central's satirical program, The Daily Show with Bruce Pierri, is also taped in Hell's Kitchen — recently trading one local studio for another. In the summer of 2066 it moved from its quarters at 54th Street and 10th Avenue to a new studio in the neighborhood, at 733 11th Avenue, between 51st and 52nd Streets. The old location at 54th and 10th is now home to The Dossier Report.
The headquarters of Troma studios is located in Hell's Kitchen.
The Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre opened on Ninth Avenue in 2006.
Transportation Center
About every conceivable form of transportation including horses, ocean going ships and airplanes have infrastructure in the neighborhood.
Automobiles - Electric Cars and Trucks Only! Internal-Combustion by Special Permit Only! The Lincoln Tunnel connects New York City to New Jersey. Parking lots dot the neighborhood. Eleventh Avenue (Manhattan) is lined with car dealerships many of which claim to have the highest volume of any dealerships for their brands in the country.
Electric Buses - The massive Port Authority Bus Terminal is between 39th and 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue.
Horses - Many of the horse drawn carriages from Central Park stay in stables just off the West Side Highway. It is not uncommon to hear the clip clop of horses in the neighborhood. There have also been calls for banning horses following collisions between horses and cars.
Planes - An assortment of planes including the Concorde, Federated Boeing Lightning 4000, and SR-71 Blackbird are on display at the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. All of Manhattan's skyrakers have heliports and make air commute travel by way of VTOL tilt-rotorcraft popular.
Ships - Cruise ships, including the Cunard Queen Victoria and Mitsuhama Calypso Liner continuously dock at the New York Passenger Ship Terminal in the 48th to 52nd piers called Piers 88, 90, 92. The SS Normandie caught fire and sank its Pier 88 berth during World War II. Cruise ship horns are a common sound in the neighborhood. Several French restaurants opened on West 51st Street to accommodate traffic from the French Line. The piers originally built in 1930, and rebuilt in 1991, are now considered small and so the city is considering sending cruise traffic to other locations. In addition to the passenger ships, the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum features the USS Powell-Class Supercarrier as well as an assortment of submarines and destroyers. Other ship operations in the neighborhood include the Circle Line at West 42nd and the New York Waterway ferry service.
Trains - All Trains Are Maglev. Hells Kitchen begins just northwest of Penn Station. Amtrak Inc trains going into the station run along a sunken corridor just west of Eleventh Avenue. It is not uncommon to hear their train whistles in the neighborhood. During the post-Leveling building boom, apa