"The City."

Last night, Melissa and I were reminiscing about NYC. We were first talking about how we love to travel, and how I love hanging out in any city where the locals usually hang out. But when it comes to NYC, there are a few spots in the city that I just love walking around. And not Times Square, where all the tourists have a field day. These are some areas that just do it for me (in no specific order):

• St. Mark's Place. This is where I did most of my hanging out, whether it was by myself or with Ralph. The best used CD shops here, and a couple of good little clubs were there (Continental, and the now closed Coney Island High).
• Broadway/Lafayette area towards Alphabet City, along Houston Street. The Angelika movie theater, The Mercury Lounge, and a good deli and falafel place were all along here.
• Bleeker Street, in either direction from Broadway. Towards the east side, you hit CBGB. Towards the west side, you hit the original Kim's Music and Video, some cool little places along Bleeker. And if you go up a bit, you hit Christopher Street, and around there is Disc-O-Rama where you could always get new CDs for $9.99 (or $8.99 with a coupon from the free publications that went around).
• Union Square. Even though this is probably the most crowded area on my list, I still love it. The park, University Place, Fish's Eddy. Melissa was lucky that she got to work around here.

There are some areas that I used to hang out a lot or walked by, like 8th Street (where Ralph and I would check out all the t-shirt stores), 6th Ave. (by default, because we'd end up walking from the Village to midtown), Astor Place (only because the N train was there and it was close to St. Mark's).

Then there is 86th Street in Brooklyn. While some of the crappiest stores were along 86th St., it was featured in the beginning of "Saturday Night Fever."

I guess this is the "New York" that I will always remember. Being a tourist and checking out the "sites" like Times Square and the Statue of Liberty are fine, but it's much different when you live there. Those things don't interest you and you start to gravitate towards other places.