Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your New York City shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the New York City offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of New York City at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a New York City? Wrong! If the New York City is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about New York City then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling New York City? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about New York City and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your New York City wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your New York City then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the New York City site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about New York City, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your New York City, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

{{Infobox Settlement|official_name = City of New York|native_name = |nickname = The Big Apple, Gotham, The City that Never Sleeps]|image_map1 =|mapsize1 =|map_caption1 =|image_dot_map =|dot_mapsize =|dot_map_caption =|dot_x = |dot_y =|pushpin_map = |pushpin_label_position = |pushpin_map_caption =|pushpin_mapsize =|subdivision_type = List of countries|subdivision_name = United States|subdivision_name1 = [New York|subdivision_name2 = [The Bronx
Brooklyn
Manhattan
Queens
Staten Island|leader_name = [Michael Bloomberg (Independent (politician)) "Bloomberg Leaving GOP". WCBS-TV. Accessed 19 June 2007.|leader_title1 = | =|leader_title2 =|leader_name2 =|established_title = New Amsterdam|established_date = 1624|established_title2 = |established_date2 =|established_title3 = |established_date3 = 1898|area_magnitude = 1 E9|unit_pref = |area_footnotes =|area_total_km2 = 1214.4|area_land_km2 = 785.6|area_water_km2 = 428.8|area_total_sq_mi = 468.9|area_land_sq_mi = 303.3|area_water_sq_mi = 165.6|area_water_percent =|area_urban_km2 = 8683.2|area_urban_sq_mi = 3352.6|area_metro_km2 = 17405|area_metro_sq_mi = 6720|area_blank1_title =|area_blank1_km2 =|area_blank1_sq_mi =|population_as_of = 2006|population_footnotes = |population_note =|population_total = 8214426 (List of cities by population)|population_density_km2 = 10456|population_density_sq_mi = 27083|population_metro = 18818536|population_density_metro_km2 =|population_density_metro_sq_mi =|population_urban = 18498000|population_density_urban_km2 =|population_density_urban_sq_mi =|population_blank1_title = Demonym|utc_offset = -5|timezone_DST = [Eastern Time Zone (North America)|utc_offset_DST = -4| latd=40 | latm=43 | lats= | latNS=N| longd=74 | longm=00 | longs= | longEW=W|elevation_footnotes = |elevation_m = 10|elevation_ft = 33|postal_code_type = |postal_code =|area_code =|blank_name =|blank_info =|blank1_name =|blank1_info =|website = www.nyc.gov|footnotes =-->New York or New York City (officially The City of New York) is an global city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the List of United States cities by population in the United States and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which, with a population of nearly 19 million, ranks among the World's largest cities in the world. For more than a century, it has been one of the world's leading business, financial and cultural centers and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, sports, Mass media, fashion and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the major global cities. As the home of the United Nations, the city is a hub for international diplomacy. Residents of the city are known as New Yorkers.

New York City comprises five boroughs, each of which is wikt:Coterminous with a county: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. With over 8.2 million residents within an area of 322 square miles (830 km²), New York City is the second most densely populated city in the United States, behind satellite town Union City, New Jersey.For major cities, with population greater than 100,000. Source:

The city has many neighborhoods and landmarks known around the world. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of Immigration to the United States as they came to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at Ellis Island. Wall Street, in Lower Manhattan, has been a dominant global financial center since World War II and is home to the New York Stock Exchange. The city has been home to several of the Skyscraper#History of tallest skyscrapers, including the Empire State Building and the former twin towers of the World Trade Center, which were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The city is the birthplace of many American cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art, abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School) in painting, and Hip hop culture, punk Rock{{Cite web|url=http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/american.html|accessdate=2007-10-06|title=A timeline of the USA|first=Piero|last=Scaruffi--> and Tin Pan Alley in music. In 2005, nearly 170 languages were spoken in the city and 36 percent of its population was born outside the United States. New York is often called the "Big Apple," since it's the largest "bite of the apple" that performers as well as professionals in the United States seek to claim ("bite of the apple" is colloquial American English for "opportunity"). New York is also known as "The City that Never Sleeps," not least because its subway system operates around the clock and because many neighborhoods are busy at all hours. This nickname was popularized by Frank Sinatra's song Theme from New York, New York

History . North is to the right., circa 1900., New York City, from Rockefeller Center, 1932., Ellis Island, Empire State Building, and World Trade Center, July 2001.

The region was inhabited by about 5,000 Lenape Native Americans in the United States at the time of its European discovery in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer in the service of the French crown, who called it "Nouvelle Angoulême" (New Angoulême). European settlement began with the founding of a Netherlands fur trade settlement, later called "Nieuw Amsterdam" (New Amsterdam), on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614. Dutch (ethnic group) colonial Director-General Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626 (legend, now disproved, says that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads). In 1664, the English conquered the city and renamed it "New York" after the James II of England. At the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War the Dutch gained control of Run (island) (a much more valuable asset at the time) in exchange for the English controlling New Amsterdam (New York) in North America. By 1700, the Lenape population was diminished to 200. "Gotham Center for New York City History" Timeline 1700-1800

New York City grew in importance as a trading port while under British Empire. In 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by George II of Great Britain as King's College in Lower Manhattan. The city emerged as the theater for a series of major battles known as the New York and New Jersey campaign during the American Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress met in New York City and in 1789 the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated at Federal Hall on Wall Street. New York City was the capital of the United States until 1790.

In the 19th century, the city was transformed by immigration and development. A visionary development proposal, the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, expanded the city street grid to encompass all of Manhattan, and the 1819 opening of the Erie Canal connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the North American interior.{{cite book] as the largest city in the United States. Local politics fell under the domination of Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish immigrants. Public-minded members of the old merchant aristocracy lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which became the first landscaped park in an American city in 1857. A significant free-black population also existed in Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn. Slaves had been held in New York through 1827, but during the 1830s New York became the center of interracial abolitionist activism in the North.

Anger at military conscription during the American Civil War (1861–1865) led to the New York Draft Riots, one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history. In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then an independent city), Manhattan and municipalities in the other boroughs. The 100 Year Anniversary of the Consolidation of the 5 Boroughs into New York City, New York City. Accessed June 29, 2007. The opening of the New York City Subway in 1904 helped bind the new city together. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication. However, this development did not come without a price. In 1904, the steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people on board. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, took the lives of 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.

In the 1920s, New York City was a major destination for African Americans during the Great Migration (African American) from the American South. By 1916, New York City was home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America. The Harlem Renaissance flourished during the era of Prohibition in the United States, coincident with a larger economic boom that saw the skyline develop with the construction of competing skyscrapers. New York City became the most populous city in the world in 1948, overtaking London, which had reigned for over a century. The difficult years of the Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello H. LaGuardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.

Returning World War II veterans and Immigration from Europe created a postwar economic boom and the development of huge housing tracts in eastern Queens. New York emerged from the war unscathed and the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's ascendance as the world's dominant economic power, the United Nations headquarters (built in 1952) emphasizing New York's political influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitating New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world. In the 1960s, New York suffered from economic problems, rising crime rates and racial tension, which reached a peak in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, a resurgence in the financial industry improved the city's fiscal health. By the 1990s, racial tensions had calmed, crime rates dropped dramatically, and waves of new immigrants arrived from Asia and Latin America. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the city's economy and New York's population reached an all-time high in the United States Census, 2000.

The city was one of the sites of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people died in the destruction of the World Trade Center. The Freedom Tower will be built on the site and is scheduled for completion in 2012.

Geography

New York City is located in the Northeastern United States, in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston, Massachusetts.Washington, D.C. is driving distance from New York City, and Boston is driving distance from New York. - Google Maps The location at the mouth of the Hudson River, which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into the Atlantic Ocean, has helped the city grow in significance as a trading city. Much of New York is built on the three islands of Manhattan, Staten Island, and Long Island, making land scarce and encouraging a high population density.

The Hudson River flows through the Hudson Valley into New York Bay. Between New York City and Troy, New York, the river is an estuary. Information about the Hudson River estuary The Hudson separates the city from New Jersey. The East River, actually a tidal strait, flows from Long Island Sound and separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson Rivers, separates Manhattan from the Bronx.

The city's land has been altered considerably by human intervention, with substantial land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial times. Reclamation is most notable in Lower Manhattan, with developments such as Battery Park City, Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the natural variations in topography have been evened out, particularly in Manhattan.

The city's land area is 322 sq mi (831.4 km²). New York City's total area is . of this is water and is land. The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which at 409.8 ft (124.9 m) above sea level is the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard south of Maine. The summit of the ridge is largely covered in woodlands as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.

Climate .

Although located at about the same latitude as the much warmer European cities of Naples and Madrid, New York has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification) resulting from prevailing wind patterns that bring cool air from the interior of the North American continent. New York City has cold winters but the city's coastal position keeps temperatures slightly warmer than inland regions, helping to moderate the amount of snow which averages 25 to 35 inches (63.5 to 88.9 cm) each year. New York City has a frost-free period lasting an average of 199 days between seasonal freezes. Spring and Autumn in New York City are erratic, and can range from cold and snowy to hot and humid, although they can also be cold or cool and rainy. Summer in New York City is warm and humid, with temperatures of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher recorded on average 18 to 25 days each summer. Though not usually associated with Tropical cyclone, New York City is susceptible to them, notably the 1821 Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane which flooded southern Manhattan, and New England Hurricane of 1938, which affected New York and killed more than 700 people, most of them in New England. The city's long-term climate patterns have been affected by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a 70-year long warming and cooling cycle in the Atlantic that influences the frequency and severity of hurricanes and coastal storms in the region. Scientists believe, however, that global warming will change this pattern.Romm, Joseph J., Hell and High Water: Global Warming — the Solution and the Politics, pp. 44, 47 (2006) William Morrow & Co. ISBN 0-06117-212-X citing MIT's and Kerry Emanuel's research as showing that the AMO has now been supplanted by global warming as the "dominant force" in the Atlantic climate. The record low temperature for New York City is -18 F, and the record high temperature is 106 F.

Environment South, with the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in background.

Environmental concerns in the city involve managing the city's extraordinary population density. Mass transit use is the highest in the nation and gasoline consumption in the city is at the rate the national average was in the 1920s. New York City's dense population and low automobile dependence help make New York among the most energy efficient in the United States. The city's greenhouse gas emission levels are relatively low when measured per capita, at 7.1 metric tons per person, below San Francisco, California, at 11.2 metric tons, and the national average, at 24.5. New Yorkers are collectively responsible for one percent of the nation's total greenhouse gas emissions, though comprise 2.7% of the nation's population. The average New Yorker consumes less than half the electricity used by a resident of San Francisco and nearly one-quarter the electricity consumed by a resident of Dallas, Texas.

Large amounts of concentrated pollution in New York City lead to high incidence of asthma and other respiratory conditions among the city's residents. In recent years the city has focused on reducing its environmental impact. The city government is required to purchase only the most energy-efficient equipment for use in city offices and public housing. New York has the largest clean air diesel-hybrid vehicle and compressed natural gas bus fleet in the country, and some of the first hybrid taxis. See also The city is also a leader in the construction of energy-efficient green building, including the Hearst Tower (New York City) among others.

New York City is supplied with drinking water by the protected Catskill Mountains Drainage basin. As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration process, New York is one of only five major cities in the United States with drinking water pure enough not to require purification by water treatment plants.; A new environmental friendly building called One Bryant Park will be built to clean up the air in New York City.

Cityscape has one of the world's most recognizable skylines..

Architecture is the architectural style most associated with New York City.

The building form most closely associated with New York City is the skyscraper that saw New York buildings shift from the low-scale European tradition to the vertical rise of business districts. Surrounded mostly by water, the city's residential density and high real estate values in commercial districts saw the city amass the largest collection of individual, free-standing office and tower block in the world.

New York has architecturally significant buildings in a wide range of styles. These include the Woolworth Building (1913), an early Gothic Revival architecture skyscraper built with massively scaled gothic detailing able to be read from street level several hundred feet below. The 1916 Zoning Resolution required Setback (architecture) in new buildings, and restricted towers to a percentage of the lot size, to allow sunlight to reach the streets below. The Art Deco design of the Chrysler Building (1930), with its tapered top and steel spire, reflected the zoning requirements. The building is considered by many historians and architects to be New York's finest building, with its distinctive ornamentation such as replicas at the corners of the 61st floor of the 1928 Chrysler eagle hood ornaments and V-shaped lighting inserts capped by a steel spire at the tower's crown. A highly influential example of the international style (architecture) in the United States is the Seagram Building (1957), distinctive for its facade using visible bronze-toned I-beams to evoke the building's structure. The Condé Nast Building (2000) is an important example of Sustainable design in American skyscrapers.

The character of New York's large residential districts is often defined by the elegant brownstone Terraced houses, townhouses, and shabby Apartment buildings that were built during a period of rapid expansion from 1870 to 1930. Stone and brick became the city's building materials of choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was limited in the aftermath of the Great Fire of New York (1835).Lankevich (1998), pp. 82–83; Unlike Paris, which for centuries was built from its own limestone bedrock, New York has always drawn its building stone from a far-flung network of quarries and its stone buildings have a variety of textures and hues. See also A distinctive feature of many of the city's buildings is the presence of wooden roof-mounted water towers. In the 1800s, the city required their installation on buildings higher than six stories to prevent the need for excessively high water pressures at lower elevations, which could burst municipal water pipes. Garden city movements became popular during the 1920s in outlying areas, including Jackson Heights, Queens in Queens, which became more accessible with expansion of the subway.

Boroughs New York City is comprised of five Borough (New York City), an unusual form of government used to administer the five constituent counties that make up the city. Throughout the boroughs there are hundreds of distinct :Category:Neighborhoods in New York City, many with a definable history and character to call their own. If the boroughs were each independent cities, four of the boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx) would be among the ten most populous cities in the United States.

• The Bronx (pop. 1,364,566) is New York City's northernmost borough. The site of Yankee Stadium, home of the New York Yankees, and home to the largest Housing cooperative complex in the United States, Co-op City, Bronx. Except for a small piece of Manhattan known as Marble Hill, Manhattan, the Bronx is the only section of the city that is part of the United States mainland. It is home to the Bronx Zoo, the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States, which spans 265 acres (107.2 hectares) and is home to over 6,000 animals. The Bronx is the birthplace of Rapping and hip hop culture.
• Brooklyn (pop. 2,511,408) These figures were adopted by the U.S. Census Bureau in September 2006. is the city's most populous borough and was an independent city until 1898. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, List of Brooklyn, New York neighborhoods and a unique architectural heritage. It is also the only borough outside of Manhattan with a distinct downtown area. The borough features a long beachfront and Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the country.
• Manhattan (pop. 1,593,200) is the most densely populated borough and home to most of the city's skyscrapers, as well as Central Park. The borough is the financial center of the city and contains the headquarters of many major corporations, the United Nations, as well as a number of important universities, and many cultural attractions, including numerous museums, the Broadway theatre district, Greenwich Village, and Madison Square Garden. Manhattan is loosely divided into Lower Manhattan, Midtown Manhattan, and Upper Manhattan regions. Uptown Manhattan is divided by Central Park into the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, and above the park is Harlem.
• Queens (pop. 2,256,576) is geographically the largest borough and the most ethnically diverse county in the United States, and may overtake Brooklyn as the city's most populous borough due to its growth. Historically a collection of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch, today the borough is largely residential and middle class. It is the only large county in the United States where the median income among blacks, approximately $52,000 a year, is higher than that of whites. Queens is the site of Shea Stadium, the home of the New York Mets, and annually hosts the U.S. Open (tennis) tennis tournament. It is also the home to New York City's two major airports, LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport.
• Staten Island (pop. 475,014) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs. It is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and to Manhattan via the free Staten Island Ferry. Until 2001, the borough was home to the Fresh Kills Landfill, formerly the largest landfill in the world, which is now being reconstructed as a large urban park. Staten Island has almost half of New York City's protected land, one third of the borough is parkland or under protected wetland status, comprising 13,000 acres+ and growing.

Culture is one of the largest museums in the world..

"Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather," the writer Tom Wolfe has said of New York City. Numerous major American cultural movements began in the city, such as the Harlem Renaissance, which established the African-American literary canon in the United States. The city was the epicenter of jazz in the 1940s, abstract expressionism in the 1950s, and the birthplace of Hip hop culture in the 1970s. The city's Punk subculture and Hardcore punk scenes were influential in the 1970s and 1980s, and the city has long had a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature. Prominent indie rock bands coming out of New York in recent years include The Strokes, Interpol (band), The Bravery, Scissor Sisters, and They Might Be Giants. The city is also important in the American film industry. Manhatta (1920), the nation's first avant-garde film, was filmed in the city. Today, New York City is the second largest center for the film industry in the United States.The city has more than 2,000 arts and cultural organizations and more than 500 art galleries of all sizes. The city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts. Wealthy industrialists in the 19th century built a network of major cultural institutions, such as the famed Carnegie Hall and Metropolitan Museum of Art, that would become internationally established. The advent of electric lighting led to elaborate theatre productions, and in the 1880s New York City theaters on Broadway (New York City) and along 42nd Street began showcasing a new stage form that came to be known as the musical theatre.

Strongly influenced by the city's immigrants, productions such as those of Edward Harrigan, George M. Cohan and others used song in narratives that often reflected themes of hope and ambition. Today these productions are a mainstay of the New York theatre scene. The city's 39 largest theatres (with more than 500 seats) are collectively known as "Broadway theatre", after the Broadway (New York City) that crosses the Times Square theatre district.

The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which includes Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet, the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, The Juilliard School and Alice Tully Hall, is the largest performing arts center in the United States. Central Park SummerStage presents performances of free plays and music in Central Park and 1,200 free concerts, dance, and theater events across all five boroughs in the summer months.

Tourism in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

About 40 million foreign and American tourists visit New York City each year. Major destinations include the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, Broadway theatre productions, museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other tourist attractions including Central Park, Washington Square Park, New York, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Bronx Zoo, New York Botanical Garden, luxury shopping along Fifth Avenue (Manhattan) and Madison Avenue (Manhattan)s, and events such as the New York's Village Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, the Tribeca Film Festival, and free performances in Central Park at Summerstage. The Statue of Liberty is a major tourist attraction and one of the most recognizable icons of the United States. Many of the city's ethnic enclaves, such as Jackson Heights, Queens, Flushing, Queens, and Brighton Beach are major shopping destinations for first and second generation Americans up and down the East Coast.



New York City has over 28,000 acres (113 km²) of parkland and 14 miles (22 km) of public beaches.; Manhattan's Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, is the most visited city park in the United States. Prospect Park (Brooklyn) in Brooklyn, also designed by Olmsted and Vaux, has a 90 acre (36 hectare) meadow. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, the city's third largest, was the setting for the 1939 New York World's Fair and 1964 New York World's Fair.

New York's food culture, influenced by the city's immigrants and large number of dining patrons, is diverse. Jewish American and Italian American immigrants made the city famous for bagels, cheesecake and New York-style pizza. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many Immigration-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafels and kebabs standbys of contemporary New York street food, although hot dogs and pretzels are still the main street fare. The city is also home to many of the finest haute cuisine restaurants in the United States.

Media gives the city a large newspaper readership base.

New York is a global center for the television, advertising, music, newspaper and book publishing industries and is also the largest media market in North America (followed by Los Angeles, California, Chicago, and Toronto). Some of the city's media conglomerates include Time Warner, the News Corporation, the Hearst Corporation, and Viacom. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks are headquartered in New York. Top 10 Consolidated Agency Networs: Ranked by 2006 Worldwide Network Revenue, Advertising Age Agency Report 2007 Index (April 25, 2007). Retrieved on June 8, 2007. Three of the "Music market" record labels are also based in the city, as well as in Los Angeles. One-third of all American independent films are produced in New York. More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city and book-publishing industry employs about 25,000 people.

Two of the three national daily newspapers in the United States are New York papers, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Major tabloid newspapers in the city include New York Daily News and New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton. The city also has a major ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines published in more than 40 languages. El Diario La Prensa is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation. The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent African-American newspaper. The Village Voice is the largest alternative newspaper.

The television industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The four major American broadcast networks, American Broadcasting Company, CBS, Fox Broadcasting Company and NBC, are all headquartered in New York. Many cable channels are based in the city as well, including MTV, Fox News Channel, HBO and Comedy Central. In 2005, there were more than 100 television shows taped in New York City.

New York is also a major center for non-commercial media. The oldest public-access television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971. Community Celebrates Public Access TV's 35th Anniversary, Manhattan Neighborhood Network press release dated August 6, 2006. Accessed April 28, 2007. "Public access TV was created in the 1970s to allow ordinary members of the public to make and air their own TV shows—and thereby exercise their free speech. It was first launched in the U.S. in Manhattan July 1st 1971, on the Teleprompter and Sterling Cable systems, now Time Warner Cable." WNET is the city's major public television station and a primary provider of national Public Broadcasting Service programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States. The City of New York operates a public broadcast service, nyctv, that produces several original Emmy Award-winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods, as well as city government.

Accent The New York City area has a distinctive regional speech pattern called the New York dialect, alternatively known as Brooklynese or New Yorkese. It is often considered to be one of the most recognizable accents within American English.Newman, Michael (2005) "New York Talk" in American Voices Walt Wolfram and Ben Ward (eds). p.82-87 Blackwell ISBN 1-4051-2109-2 The classic version of this dialect is centered on middle and working class people of European American descent, and the influx of non-European immigrants in recent decades has led to changes in this distinctive dialect.

One of the more notable features of this dialect is its "r-lessness". The traditional New York–area accent is rhotic and non-rhotic accents, so that the sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant; hence the pronunciation of the city as "New Yawk". There is no in words like park (with vowel raised due to the low-back chain shift), butter , or here . In another feature called the low back chain shift, the vowel sound of words like talk, law, cross, and coffee and the often homophonous in core and more are tensed and usually raised more than in General American.

In the most old-fashioned and extreme versions of the New York dialect, the vowel sounds of words like girl and of words like oil both become a diphthong . This is often misperceived by speakers of other accents as a "reversal" of the "er" and "oy" sounds, so that girl is pronounced "goil" and oil is pronounced "erl"; this leads to the caricature of New Yorkers saying things like "Joizey" (Jersey), "Toidy-Toid Street' (33rd St.) and "terlet" (toilet). The character Archie Bunker from the 1970s show All in the Family was a good example of a speaker who had this feature. This particular speech pattern is no longer very prevalent. Deborah. http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00611F73F5C0C778DDDAB0894DB494D81 "Oy Gevalt! New Yawkese An Endangered Dialect?", [The New York Times, February 14, 1993. Accessed July 8, 2007.

Sports .

New York City has teams in the four major North American professional sports leagues, each of which also has its headquarters in the city.

Baseball is the city's most closely followed sport. There have been fourteen World Series championship series between New York City teams, in matchups called Subway Series. New York is one of only five metro areas (Chicago, Washington-Baltimore, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area being the others) to have two baseball teams. The city's two current Major League Baseball teams are the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, who enjoy a rivalry arguably as fierce as that between the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. The Yankees have enjoyed 26 world titles, while the Mets have taken the Series twice. The city also was once home to the New York Baseball Giants (now the San Francisco Giants) and the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers). Both teams moved to California in 1958. There are also two minor league baseball teams in the city, the Staten Island Yankees and Brooklyn Cyclones.

The city is represented in the National Football League by the New York Jets and New York Giants (officially the New York Football Giants), although both teams play their home games in Giants Stadium in nearby New Jersey.

The New York Rangers and the New York Islanders represent the city in the National Hockey League.

In Football (soccer), New York is represented by the Major League Soccer side, Red Bull New York. The "Red Bulls" also play their home games at the Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

is the largest marathon in the world.

The city's National Basketball Association team is the New York Knicks and the city's Women's National Basketball Association team is the New York Liberty. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city. Rucker Park in Harlem is a celebrated court where many professional athletes play in the summer league.

As a global city, New York supports many events outside these sports. Queens is host of the U.S. Open (tennis), one of the four Grand Slam (tennis) tournaments. The New York City Marathon is the world's largest, and the 2004-2006 runnings hold the top three places in the marathons with the largest number of finishers, including 37,866 finishers in 2006. World's Largest Marathons, Association of International Marathons and Distance Races. Accessed June 28, 2007. The Millrose Games is an annual track and field meet whose featured event is the Wanamaker Mile. Boxing is also a very prominent part of the city's sporting scene, with events like the Amateur Boxing Golden Gloves being held at Madison Square Garden each year.

Many sports are associated with New York's immigrant communities. Stickball, a street version of baseball, was popularized by youths in working class Italian, German, and Irish neighborhoods in the 1930s. In recent years several amateur cricket leagues have emerged with the arrival of immigrants from South Asia and the Caribbean.

Economy , and the New York Stock Exchange., in the Financial District, Manhattan.New York City is a global hub of international business and commerce and is one of three "command centers" for the world economy (along with London and Tokyo). The city is a major center for finance, insurance, real estate, media and the arts in the United States. The New York metropolitan area had an estimated gross metropolitan product of $952.6 billion in 2005, the largest regional economy in the United States. The city's economy accounts for the majority of the economic activity in the states of New York and New Jersey. Many major corporations are headquartered in New York City, including 44 Fortune 500 companies. New York is also unique among American cities for its large number of foreign corporations. One out of ten private sector jobs in the city is with a foreign company.

New York City is home to some of the nation's—and world's—most valuable real estate. 450 Park Avenue (Manhattan) was sold on July 2 2007 for $510 million, about $1,589 per square foot ($17,104/m²), breaking the barely month-old record for an American office building of $1,476 per square foot ($15,887/m²) set in the June 2007 sale of 660 Madison Avenue.Quirk, James. "Bergen offices have plenty of space", The Record (Bergen County), July 5 2007. Accessed July 5 2007. "On Monday, a 26-year-old, 33-story office building at 450 Park Ave. sold for a stunning $1,589 per square foot, or about $510 million. The price is believed to be the most ever paid for a U.S. office building on a per-square-foot basis. That broke the previous record—set four weeks earlier—when 660 Madison Ave. sold for $1,476 a square foot."

The New York Stock Exchange, located on Wall Street, and the NASDAQ are the world's first and second largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured by average daily trading volume and overall market capitalization. Financial services account for more than 35 percent of the city's employment income. Real estate is a major force in the city's economy, as the total value of all New York City property was $802.4 billion in 2006. The Time Warner Center is the property with the highest-listed market value in the city, at $1.1 billion in 2006.

The city's television and film industry is the second largest in the country after Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Creative industries such as new media, advertising, fashion, design and architecture account for a growing share of employment, with New York City possessing a strong competitive advantage in these industries. High-tech industries like bioscience, software development, game design, and Internet services are also growing, bolstered by the city's position at the terminus of several transatlantic telephone cable. Other important sectors include medical research and technology, non-profit institutions, and universities.

Manufacturing accounts for a large but declining share of employment. Garments, chemicals, metal products, processed foods, and furniture are some of the principal products. The food-processing industry is the most stable major manufacturing sector in the city. Food making is a $5 billion industry that employs more than 19,000 residents, many of them immigrants who speak little English. Chocolate is New York City's leading specialty-food export, with $234 million worth of exports each year.

Demographics

{| style="float: right; margin-left: 5em; width: 35%; font-size: 75%;" cellspacing="3" class="wikitable"|+New York City Compared|-! United States Census, 2000! abbr="City" | NY City! abbr="State" | NY State! abbr="Country" | U.S.|-!Total population|8,213,839||18,976,457||281,421,906|-!Population, percent change, 1990 to 2000| +9.4%||+5.5%||+13.1%|-!Population density|26,403/sq mi||402/sq mi||80/sq mi|-!Median household income (1999)|$38,293||$43,393||$41,994| {{Infobox Settlement|official_name = City of New York|native_name = |nickname = The Big Apple, Gotham, The City that Never Sleeps]|image_map1 =|mapsize1 =|map_caption1 =|image_dot_map =|dot_mapsize =|dot_map_caption =|dot_x = |dot_y =|pushpin_map = |pushpin_label_position = |pushpin_map_caption =|pushpin_mapsize =|subdivision_type = List of countries|subdivision_name = United States|subdivision_name1 = [New York|subdivision_name2 = [The Bronx
Brooklyn
Manhattan
Queens
Staten Island|leader_name = [Michael Bloomberg (Independent (politician)) "Bloomberg Leaving GOP". WCBS-TV. Accessed 19 June 2007.|leader_title1 = | =|leader_title2 =|leader_name2 =|established_title = New Amsterdam|established_date = 1624|established_title2 = |established_date2 =|established_title3 = |established_date3 = 1898|area_magnitude = 1 E9|unit_pref = |area_footnotes =|area_total_km2 = 1214.4|area_land_km2 = 785.6|area_water_km2 = 428.8|area_total_sq_mi = 468.9|area_land_sq_mi = 303.3|area_water_sq_mi = 165.6|area_water_percent =|area_urban_km2 = 8683.2|area_urban_sq_mi = 3352.6|area_metro_km2 = 17405|area_metro_sq_mi = 6720|area_blank1_title =|area_blank1_km2 =|area_blank1_sq_mi =|population_as_of = 2006|population_footnotes = |population_note =|population_total = 8214426 (List of cities by population)|population_density_km2 = 10456|population_density_sq_mi = 27083|population_metro = 18818536|population_density_metro_km2 =|population_density_metro_sq_mi =|population_urban = 18498000|population_density_urban_km2 =|population_density_urban_sq_mi =|population_blank1_title = Demonym|utc_offset = -5|timezone_DST = [Eastern Time Zone (North America)|utc_offset_DST = -4| latd=40 | latm=43 | lats= | latNS=N| longd=74 | longm=00 | longs= | longEW=W|elevation_footnotes = |elevation_m = 10|elevation_ft = 33|postal_code_type = |postal_code =|area_code =|blank_name =|blank_info =|blank1_name =|blank1_info =|website = www.nyc.gov|footnotes =-->New York or New York City (officially The City of New York) is an global city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the List of United States cities by population in the United States and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which, with a population of nearly 19 million, ranks among the World's largest cities in the world. For more than a century, it has been one of the world's leading business, financial and cultural centers and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, sports, Mass media, fashion and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the major global cities. As the home of the United Nations, the city is a hub for international diplomacy. Residents of the city are known as New Yorkers.

New York City comprises five boroughs, each of which is wikt:Coterminous with a county: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. With over 8.2 million residents within an area of 322 square miles (830 km²), New York City is the second most densely populated city in the United States, behind satellite town Union City, New Jersey.For major cities, with population greater than 100,000. Source:

The city has many neighborhoods and landmarks known around the world. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of Immigration to the United States as they came to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at Ellis Island. Wall Street, in Lower Manhattan, has been a dominant global financial center since World War II and is home to the New York Stock Exchange. The city has been home to several of the Skyscraper#History of tallest skyscrapers, including the Empire State Building and the former twin towers of the World Trade Center, which were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The city is the birthplace of many American cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art, abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School) in painting, and Hip hop culture, punk Rock{{Cite web|url=http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/american.html|accessdate=2007-10-06|title=A timeline of the USA|first=Piero|last=Scaruffi--> and Tin Pan Alley in music. In 2005, nearly 170 languages were spoken in the city and 36 percent of its population was born outside the United States. New York is often called the "Big Apple," since it's the largest "bite of the apple" that performers as well as professionals in the United States seek to claim ("bite of the apple" is colloquial American English for "opportunity"). New York is also known as "The City that Never Sleeps," not least because its subway system operates around the clock and because many neighborhoods are busy at all hours. This nickname was popularized by Frank Sinatra's song Theme from New York, New York

History . North is to the right., circa 1900., New York City, from Rockefeller Center, 1932., Ellis Island, Empire State Building, and World Trade Center, July 2001.

The region was inhabited by about 5,000 Lenape Native Americans in the United States at the time of its European discovery in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer in the service of the French crown, who called it "Nouvelle Angoulême" (New Angoulême). European settlement began with the founding of a Netherlands fur trade settlement, later called "Nieuw Amsterdam" (New Amsterdam), on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614. Dutch (ethnic group) colonial Director-General Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626 (legend, now disproved, says that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads). In 1664, the English conquered the city and renamed it "New York" after the James II of England. At the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War the Dutch gained control of Run (island) (a much more valuable asset at the time) in exchange for the English controlling New Amsterdam (New York) in North America. By 1700, the Lenape population was diminished to 200. "Gotham Center for New York City History" Timeline 1700-1800

New York City grew in importance as a trading port while under British Empire. In 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by George II of Great Britain as King's College in Lower Manhattan. The city emerged as the theater for a series of major battles known as the New York and New Jersey campaign during the American Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress met in New York City and in 1789 the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated at Federal Hall on Wall Street. New York City was the capital of the United States until 1790.

In the 19th century, the city was transformed by immigration and development. A visionary development proposal, the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, expanded the city street grid to encompass all of Manhattan, and the 1819 opening of the Erie Canal connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the North American interior.{{cite book] as the largest city in the United States. Local politics fell under the domination of Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish immigrants. Public-minded members of the old merchant aristocracy lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which became the first landscaped park in an American city in 1857. A significant free-black population also existed in Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn. Slaves had been held in New York through 1827, but during the 1830s New York became the center of interracial abolitionist activism in the North.

Anger at military conscription during the American Civil War (1861–1865) led to the New York Draft Riots, one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history. In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then an independent city), Manhattan and municipalities in the other boroughs. The 100 Year Anniversary of the Consolidation of the 5 Boroughs into New York City, New York City. Accessed June 29, 2007. The opening of the New York City Subway in 1904 helped bind the new city together. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication. However, this development did not come without a price. In 1904, the steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people on board. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, took the lives of 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.

In the 1920s, New York City was a major destination for African Americans during the Great Migration (African American) from the American South. By 1916, New York City was home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America. The Harlem Renaissance flourished during the era of Prohibition in the United States, coincident with a larger economic boom that saw the skyline develop with the construction of competing skyscrapers. New York City became the most populous city in the world in 1948, overtaking London, which had reigned for over a century. The difficult years of the Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello H. LaGuardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.

Returning World War II veterans and Immigration from Europe created a postwar economic boom and the development of huge housing tracts in eastern Queens. New York emerged from the war unscathed and the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's ascendance as the world's dominant economic power, the United Nations headquarters (built in 1952) emphasizing New York's political influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitating New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world. In the 1960s, New York suffered from economic problems, rising crime rates and racial tension, which reached a peak in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, a resurgence in the financial industry improved the city's fiscal health. By the 1990s, racial tensions had calmed, crime rates dropped dramatically, and waves of new immigrants arrived from Asia and Latin America. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the city's economy and New York's population reached an all-time high in the United States Census, 2000.

The city was one of the sites of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people died in the destruction of the World Trade Center. The Freedom Tower will be built on the site and is scheduled for completion in 2012.

Geography

New York City is located in the Northeastern United States, in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston, Massachusetts.Washington, D.C. is driving distance from New York City, and Boston is driving distance from New York. - Google Maps The location at the mouth of the Hudson River, which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into the Atlantic Ocean, has helped the city grow in significance as a trading city. Much of New York is built on the three islands of Manhattan, Staten Island, and Long Island, making land scarce and encouraging a high population density.

The Hudson River flows through the Hudson Valley into New York Bay. Between New York City and Troy, New York, the river is an estuary. Information about the Hudson River estuary The Hudson separates the city from New Jersey. The East River, actually a tidal strait, flows from Long Island Sound and separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson Rivers, separates Manhattan from the Bronx.

The city's land has been altered considerably by human intervention, with substantial land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial times. Reclamation is most notable in Lower Manhattan, with developments such as Battery Park City, Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the natural variations in topography have been evened out, particularly in Manhattan.

The city's land area is 322 sq mi (831.4 km²). New York City's total area is . of this is water and is land. The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which at 409.8 ft (124.9 m) above sea level is the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard south of Maine. The summit of the ridge is largely covered in woodlands as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.

Climate .

Although located at about the same latitude as the much warmer European cities of Naples and Madrid, New York has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification) resulting from prevailing wind patterns that bring cool air from the interior of the North American continent. New York City has cold winters but the city's coastal position keeps temperatures slightly warmer than inland regions, helping to moderate the amount of snow which averages 25 to 35 inches (63.5 to 88.9 cm) each year. New York City has a frost-free period lasting an average of 199 days between seasonal freezes. Spring and Autumn in New York City are erratic, and can range from cold and snowy to hot and humid, although they can also be cold or cool and rainy. Summer in New York City is warm and humid, with temperatures of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher recorded on average 18 to 25 days each summer. Though not usually associated with Tropical cyclone, New York City is susceptible to them, notably the 1821 Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane which flooded southern Manhattan, and New England Hurricane of 1938, which affected New York and killed more than 700 people, most of them in New England. The city's long-term climate patterns have been affected by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a 70-year long warming and cooling cycle in the Atlantic that influences the frequency and severity of hurricanes and coastal storms in the region. Scientists believe, however, that global warming will change this pattern.Romm, Joseph J., Hell and High Water: Global Warming — the Solution and the Politics, pp. 44, 47 (2006) William Morrow & Co. ISBN 0-06117-212-X citing MIT's and Kerry Emanuel's research as showing that the AMO has now been supplanted by global warming as the "dominant force" in the Atlantic climate. The record low temperature for New York City is -18 F, and the record high temperature is 106 F.

Environment South, with the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in background.

Environmental concerns in the city involve managing the city's extraordinary population density. Mass transit use is the highest in the nation and gasoline consumption in the city is at the rate the national average was in the 1920s. New York City's dense population and low automobile dependence help make New York among the most energy efficient in the United States. The city's greenhouse gas emission levels are relatively low when measured per capita, at 7.1 metric tons per person, below San Francisco, California, at 11.2 metric tons, and the national average, at 24.5. New Yorkers are collectively responsible for one percent of the nation's total greenhouse gas emissions, though comprise 2.7% of the nation's population. The average New Yorker consumes less than half the electricity used by a resident of San Francisco and nearly one-quarter the electricity consumed by a resident of Dallas, Texas.

Large amounts of concentrated pollution in New York City lead to high incidence of asthma and other respiratory conditions among the city's residents. In recent years the city has focused on reducing its environmental impact. The city government is required to purchase only the most energy-efficient equipment for use in city offices and public housing. New York has the largest clean air diesel-hybrid vehicle and compressed natural gas bus fleet in the country, and some of the first hybrid taxis. See also The city is also a leader in the construction of energy-efficient green building, including the Hearst Tower (New York City) among others.

New York City is supplied with drinking water by the protected Catskill Mountains Drainage basin. As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration process, New York is one of only five major cities in the United States with drinking water pure enough not to require purification by water treatment plants.; A new environmental friendly building called One Bryant Park will be built to clean up the air in New York City.

Cityscape has one of the world's most recognizable skylines..

Architecture is the architectural style most associated with New York City.

The building form most closely associated with New York City is the skyscraper that saw New York buildings shift from the low-scale European tradition to the vertical rise of business districts. Surrounded mostly by water, the city's residential density and high real estate values in commercial districts saw the city amass the largest collection of individual, free-standing office and tower block in the world.

New York has architecturally significant buildings in a wide range of styles. These include the Woolworth Building (1913), an early Gothic Revival architecture skyscraper built with massively scaled gothic detailing able to be read from street level several hundred feet below. The 1916 Zoning Resolution required Setback (architecture) in new buildings, and restricted towers to a percentage of the lot size, to allow sunlight to reach the streets below. The Art Deco design of the Chrysler Building (1930), with its tapered top and steel spire, reflected the zoning requirements. The building is considered by many historians and architects to be New York's finest building, with its distinctive ornamentation such as replicas at the corners of the 61st floor of the 1928 Chrysler eagle hood ornaments and V-shaped lighting inserts capped by a steel spire at the tower's crown. A highly influential example of the international style (architecture) in the United States is the Seagram Building (1957), distinctive for its facade using visible bronze-toned I-beams to evoke the building's structure. The Condé Nast Building (2000) is an important example of Sustainable design in American skyscrapers.

The character of New York's large residential districts is often defined by the elegant brownstone Terraced houses, townhouses, and shabby Apartment buildings that were built during a period of rapid expansion from 1870 to 1930. Stone and brick became the city's building materials of choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was limited in the aftermath of the Great Fire of New York (1835).Lankevich (1998), pp. 82–83; Unlike Paris, which for centuries was built from its own limestone bedrock, New York has always drawn its building stone from a far-flung network of quarries and its stone buildings have a variety of textures and hues. See also A distinctive feature of many of the city's buildings is the presence of wooden roof-mounted water towers. In the 1800s, the city required their installation on buildings higher than six stories to prevent the need for excessively high water pressures at lower elevations, which could burst municipal water pipes. Garden city movements became popular during the 1920s in outlying areas, including Jackson Heights, Queens in Queens, which became more accessible with expansion of the subway.

Boroughs New York City is comprised of five Borough (New York City), an unusual form of government used to administer the five constituent counties that make up the city. Throughout the boroughs there are hundreds of distinct :Category:Neighborhoods in New York City, many with a definable history and character to call their own. If the boroughs were each independent cities, four of the boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx) would be among the ten most populous cities in the United States.

• The Bronx (pop. 1,364,566) is New York City's northernmost borough. The site of Yankee Stadium, home of the New York Yankees, and home to the largest Housing cooperative complex in the United States, Co-op City, Bronx. Except for a small piece of Manhattan known as Marble Hill, Manhattan, the Bronx is the only section of the city that is part of the United States mainland. It is home to the Bronx Zoo, the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States, which spans 265 acres (107.2 hectares) and is home to over 6,000 animals. The Bronx is the birthplace of Rapping and hip hop culture.
• Brooklyn (pop. 2,511,408) These figures were adopted by the U.S. Census Bureau in September 2006. is the city's most populous borough and was an independent city until 1898. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, List of Brooklyn, New York neighborhoods and a unique architectural heritage. It is also the only borough outside of Manhattan with a distinct downtown area. The borough features a long beachfront and Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the country.
• Manhattan (pop. 1,593,200) is the most densely populated borough and home to most of the city's skyscrapers, as well as Central Park. The borough is the financial center of the city and contains the headquarters of many major corporations, the United Nations, as well as a number of important universities, and many cultural attractions, including numerous museums, the Broadway theatre district, Greenwich Village, and Madison Square Garden. Manhattan is loosely divided into Lower Manhattan, Midtown Manhattan, and Upper Manhattan regions. Uptown Manhattan is divided by Central Park into the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, and above the park is Harlem.
• Queens (pop. 2,256,576) is geographically the largest borough and the most ethnically diverse county in the United States, and may overtake Brooklyn as the city's most populous borough due to its growth. Historically a collection of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch, today the borough is largely residential and middle class. It is the only large county in the United States where the median income among blacks, approximately $52,000 a year, is higher than that of whites. Queens is the site of Shea Stadium, the home of the New York Mets, and annually hosts the U.S. Open (tennis) tennis tournament. It is also the home to New York City's two major airports, LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport.
• Staten Island (pop. 475,014) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs. It is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and to Manhattan via the free Staten Island Ferry. Until 2001, the borough was home to the Fresh Kills Landfill, formerly the largest landfill in the world, which is now being reconstructed as a large urban park. Staten Island has almost half of New York City's protected land, one third of the borough is parkland or under protected wetland status, comprising 13,000 acres+ and growing.

Culture is one of the largest museums in the world..

"Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather," the writer Tom Wolfe has said of New York City. Numerous major American cultural movements began in the city, such as the Harlem Renaissance, which established the African-American literary canon in the United States. The city was the epicenter of jazz in the 1940s, abstract expressionism in the 1950s, and the birthplace of Hip hop culture in the 1970s. The city's Punk subculture and Hardcore punk scenes were influential in the 1970s and 1980s, and the city has long had a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature. Prominent indie rock bands coming out of New York in recent years include The Strokes, Interpol (band), The Bravery, Scissor Sisters, and They Might Be Giants. The city is also important in the American film industry. Manhatta (1920), the nation's first avant-garde film, was filmed in the city. Today, New York City is the second largest center for the film industry in the United States.The city has more than 2,000 arts and cultural organizations and more than 500 art galleries of all sizes. The city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts. Wealthy industrialists in the 19th century built a network of major cultural institutions, such as the famed Carnegie Hall and Metropolitan Museum of Art, that would become internationally established. The advent of electric lighting led to elaborate theatre productions, and in the 1880s New York City theaters on Broadway (New York City) and along 42nd Street began showcasing a new stage form that came to be known as the musical theatre.

Strongly influenced by the city's immigrants, productions such as those of Edward Harrigan, George M. Cohan and others used song in narratives that often reflected themes of hope and ambition. Today these productions are a mainstay of the New York theatre scene. The city's 39 largest theatres (with more than 500 seats) are collectively known as "Broadway theatre", after the Broadway (New York City) that crosses the Times Square theatre district.

The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which includes Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet, the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, The Juilliard School and Alice Tully Hall, is the largest performing arts center in the United States. Central Park SummerStage presents performances of free plays and music in Central Park and 1,200 free concerts, dance, and theater events across all five boroughs in the summer months.

Tourism in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

About 40 million foreign and American tourists visit New York City each year. Major destinations include the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, Broadway theatre productions, museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other tourist attractions including Central Park, Washington Square Park, New York, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Bronx Zoo, New York Botanical Garden, luxury shopping along Fifth Avenue (Manhattan) and Madison Avenue (Manhattan)s, and events such as the New York's Village Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, the Tribeca Film Festival, and free performances in Central Park at Summerstage. The Statue of Liberty is a major tourist attraction and one of the most recognizable icons of the United States. Many of the city's ethnic enclaves, such as Jackson Heights, Queens, Flushing, Queens, and Brighton Beach are major shopping destinations for first and second generation Americans up and down the East Coast.



New York City has over 28,000 acres (113 km²) of parkland and 14 miles (22 km) of public beaches.; Manhattan's Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, is the most visited city park in the United States. Prospect Park (Brooklyn) in Brooklyn, also designed by Olmsted and Vaux, has a 90 acre (36 hectare) meadow. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, the city's third largest, was the setting for the 1939 New York World's Fair and 1964 New York World's Fair.

New York's food culture, influenced by the city's immigrants and large number of dining patrons, is diverse. Jewish American and Italian American immigrants made the city famous for bagels, cheesecake and New York-style pizza. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many Immigration-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafels and kebabs standbys of contemporary New York street food, although hot dogs and pretzels are still the main street fare. The city is also home to many of the finest haute cuisine restaurants in the United States.

Media gives the city a large newspaper readership base.

New York is a global center for the television, advertising, music, newspaper and book publishing industries and is also the largest media market in North America (followed by Los Angeles, California, Chicago, and Toronto). Some of the city's media conglomerates include Time Warner, the News Corporation, the Hearst Corporation, and Viacom. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks are headquartered in New York. Top 10 Consolidated Agency Networs: Ranked by 2006 Worldwide Network Revenue, Advertising Age Agency Report 2007 Index (April 25, 2007). Retrieved on June 8, 2007. Three of the "Music market" record labels are also based in the city, as well as in Los Angeles. One-third of all American independent films are produced in New York. More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city and book-publishing industry employs about 25,000 people.

Two of the three national daily newspapers in the United States are New York papers, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Major tabloid newspapers in the city include New York Daily News and New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton. The city also has a major ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines published in more than 40 languages. El Diario La Prensa is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation. The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent African-American newspaper. The Village Voice is the largest alternative newspaper.

The television industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The four major American broadcast networks, American Broadcasting Company, CBS, Fox Broadcasting Company and NBC, are all headquartered in New York. Many cable channels are based in the city as well, including MTV, Fox News Channel, HBO and Comedy Central. In 2005, there were more than 100 television shows taped in New York City.

New York is also a major center for non-commercial media. The oldest public-access television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971. Community Celebrates Public Access TV's 35th Anniversary, Manhattan Neighborhood Network press release dated August 6, 2006. Accessed April 28, 2007. "Public access TV was created in the 1970s to allow ordinary members of the public to make and air their own TV shows—and thereby exercise their free speech. It was first launched in the U.S. in Manhattan July 1st 1971, on the Teleprompter and Sterling Cable systems, now Time Warner Cable." WNET is the city's major public television station and a primary provider of national Public Broadcasting Service programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States. The City of New York operates a public broadcast service, nyctv, that produces several original Emmy Award-winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods, as well as city government.

Accent The New York City area has a distinctive regional speech pattern called the New York dialect, alternatively known as Brooklynese or New Yorkese. It is often considered to be one of the most recognizable accents within American English.Newman, Michael (2005) "New York Talk" in American Voices Walt Wolfram and Ben Ward (eds). p.82-87 Blackwell ISBN 1-4051-2109-2 The classic version of this dialect is centered on middle and working class people of European American descent, and the influx of non-European immigrants in recent decades has led to changes in this distinctive dialect.

One of the more notable features of this dialect is its "r-lessness". The traditional New York–area accent is rhotic and non-rhotic accents, so that the sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant; hence the pronunciation of the city as "New Yawk". There is no in words like park (with vowel raised due to the low-back chain shift), butter , or here . In another feature called the low back chain shift, the vowel sound of words like talk, law, cross, and coffee and the often homophonous in core and more are tensed and usually raised more than in General American.

In the most old-fashioned and extreme versions of the New York dialect, the vowel sounds of words like girl and of words like oil both become a diphthong . This is often misperceived by speakers of other accents as a "reversal" of the "er" and "oy" sounds, so that girl is pronounced "goil" and oil is pronounced "erl"; this leads to the caricature of New Yorkers saying things like "Joizey" (Jersey), "Toidy-Toid Street' (33rd St.) and "terlet" (toilet). The character Archie Bunker from the 1970s show All in the Family was a good example of a speaker who had this feature. This particular speech pattern is no longer very prevalent. Deborah. http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00611F73F5C0C778DDDAB0894DB494D81 "Oy Gevalt! New Yawkese An Endangered Dialect?", [The New York Times, February 14, 1993. Accessed July 8, 2007.

Sports .

New York City has teams in the four major North American professional sports leagues, each of which also has its headquarters in the city.

Baseball is the city's most closely followed sport. There have been fourteen World Series championship series between New York City teams, in matchups called Subway Series. New York is one of only five metro areas (Chicago, Washington-Baltimore, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area being the others) to have two baseball teams. The city's two current Major League Baseball teams are the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, who enjoy a rivalry arguably as fierce as that between the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. The Yankees have enjoyed 26 world titles, while the Mets have taken the Series twice. The city also was once home to the New York Baseball Giants (now the San Francisco Giants) and the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers). Both teams moved to California in 1958. There are also two minor league baseball teams in the city, the Staten Island Yankees and Brooklyn Cyclones.

The city is represented in the National Football League by the New York Jets and New York Giants (officially the New York Football Giants), although both teams play their home games in Giants Stadium in nearby New Jersey.

The New York Rangers and the New York Islanders represent the city in the National Hockey League.

In Football (soccer), New York is represented by the Major League Soccer side, Red Bull New York. The "Red Bulls" also play their home games at the Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

is the largest marathon in the world.

The city's National Basketball Association team is the New York Knicks and the city's Women's National Basketball Association team is the New York Liberty. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city. Rucker Park in Harlem is a celebrated court where many professional athletes play in the summer league.

As a global city, New York supports many events outside these sports. Queens is host of the U.S. Open (tennis), one of the four Grand Slam (tennis) tournaments. The New York City Marathon is the world's largest, and the 2004-2006 runnings hold the top three places in the marathons with the largest number of finishers, including 37,866 finishers in 2006. World's Largest Marathons, Association of International Marathons and Distance Races. Accessed June 28, 2007. The Millrose Games is an annual track and field meet whose featured event is the Wanamaker Mile. Boxing is also a very prominent part of the city's sporting scene, with events like the Amateur Boxing Golden Gloves being held at Madison Square Garden each year.

Many sports are associated with New York's immigrant communities. Stickball, a street version of baseball, was popularized by youths in working class Italian, German, and Irish neighborhoods in the 1930s. In recent years several amateur cricket leagues have emerged with the arrival of immigrants from South Asia and the Caribbean.

Economy , and the New York Stock Exchange., in the Financial District, Manhattan.New York City is a global hub of international business and commerce and is one of three "command centers" for the world economy (along with London and Tokyo). The city is a major center for finance, insurance, real estate, media and the arts in the United States. The New York metropolitan area had an estimated gross metropolitan product of $952.6 billion in 2005, the largest regional economy in the United States. The city's economy accounts for the majority of the economic activity in the states of New York and New Jersey. Many major corporations are headquartered in New York City, including 44 Fortune 500 companies. New York is also unique among American cities for its large number of foreign corporations. One out of ten private sector jobs in the city is with a foreign company.

New York City is home to some of the nation's—and world's—most valuable real estate. 450 Park Avenue (Manhattan) was sold on July 2 2007 for $510 million, about $1,589 per square foot ($17,104/m²), breaking the barely month-old record for an American office building of $1,476 per square foot ($15,887/m²) set in the June 2007 sale of 660 Madison Avenue.Quirk, James. "Bergen offices have plenty of space", The Record (Bergen County), July 5 2007. Accessed July 5 2007. "On Monday, a 26-year-old, 33-story office building at 450 Park Ave. sold for a stunning $1,589 per square foot, or about $510 million. The price is believed to be the most ever paid for a U.S. office building on a per-square-foot basis. That broke the previous record—set four weeks earlier—when 660 Madison Ave. sold for $1,476 a square foot."

The New York Stock Exchange, located on Wall Street, and the NASDAQ are the world's first and second largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured by average daily trading volume and overall market capitalization. Financial services account for more than 35 percent of the city's employment income. Real estate is a major force in the city's economy, as the total value of all New York City property was $802.4 billion in 2006. The Time Warner Center is the property with the highest-listed market value in the city, at $1.1 billion in 2006.

The city's television and film industry is the second largest in the country after Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Creative industries such as new media, advertising, fashion, design and architecture account for a growing share of employment, with New York City possessing a strong competitive advantage in these industries. High-tech industries like bioscience, software development, game design, and Internet services are also growing, bolstered by the city's position at the terminus of several transatlantic telephone cable. Other important sectors include medical research and technology, non-profit institutions, and universities.

Manufacturing accounts for a large but declining share of employment. Garments, chemicals, metal products, processed foods, and furniture are some of the principal products. The food-processing industry is the most stable major manufacturing sector in the city. Food making is a $5 billion industry that employs more than 19,000 residents, many of them immigrants who speak little English. Chocolate is New York City's leading specialty-food export, with $234 million worth of exports each year.

Demographics

{| style="float: right; margin-left: 5em; width: 35%; font-size: 75%;" cellspacing="3" class="wikitable"|+New York City Compared|-! United States Census, 2000! abbr="City" | NY City! abbr="State" | NY State! abbr="Country" | U.S.|-!Total population|8,213,839||18,976,457||281,421,906|-!Population, percent change, 1990 to 2000| +9.4%||+5.5%||+13.1%|-!Population density|26,403/sq mi||402/sq mi||80/sq mi|-!Median household income (1999)|$38,293||$43,393||$41,994|

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