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The essence of the city is its people. By their actions and interactions they determine the shape it assumes, the flow of its daily life, and the aspirations and dreams it has. — location: 137 ^ref-44298

Bronx. An interesting statistic charts their progress. In 1985 New York City had one tortilla store; by 2001 Mexicans owned six tortilla factories, with a combined weekly output of one million tortillas, all produced in the “Tortilla Triangle,” a small slice of Brooklyn between Bushwick and Williamsburg. — location: 599 ^ref-44137

You can hear German music in Glendale; Irish ballads in the Woodlawn section of the Bronx; do the polka in a Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Polish club; and attend a Jewish music festival in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where men and women sit separately, as required by their religious beliefs. What is distinctive about the city is the variety. It’s almost as though you don’t have to travel to another country, because so many cultures are represented in one place. And each of these places welcomes outsiders. — location: 2608 ^ref-14595

No one standing there claimed to know what the altercation was about, but since neither of the combatants seemed to be getting seriously hurt, the crowd simply stood and watched as though it were a prearranged match designed for the pleasure of the local residents. — location: 2651 ^ref-37867

One of the most unusual sports in New York is rooftop pigeon flying. In the past this activity was engaged in primarily by Italians and other white males, hailing mostly from Brooklyn and Queens. Today’s flyers are predominantly African American and Puerto Rican. What’s interesting is that the remaining older white ethnics mingle with the minorities and develop relationships across group boundaries through this activity. All this is chronicled by Colin Jerolmack, who spent three years studying the group in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick neighborhoods.15 — location: 2870 ^ref-38537

Von Briesen was a big supporter of democratic ideals, believing that immigrants would become better citizens if treated fairly, and with that in mind he created the German Legal Aid Society in 1876. This eventually morphed into the famous Legal Aid Society that has lasted until this very day and helps thousands of indigent people in New York City every year. What unites these two activities is a concern for both the unprotected trees and flowers and the indigent. What makes this story relevant for our purposes is that, based on my own observations, the park elevates the social lives of residents and others by providing a beautiful setting for walking and socializing. — location: 2935 ^ref-14683

The crown jewel of what nature has to offer in New York City is Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, which is also a great recreational site. It’s part of the National Park Service and is the only wildlife refuge in the country accessible by subway. In an in-depth New York Times article describing people’s increasing awareness of its ecological importance, Alan Feuer points out that Jamaica Bay is “the city’s largest open space.” He describes the bay as sitting “at the literal and figurative edge where the natural and manmade worlds collide.” — location: 2975 ^ref-19639

Typically they are dressed in flannel shirts and plain pants, wearing windbreakers that may read “Korean War Vet” or “Mets,” and thick, square work shoes. The words on their caps often reflect where they worked, the beers they favored, and the teams they loved, most often the standard white B for Brooklyn Dodgers on their blue, often faded caps. — location: 3009 ^ref-64618