And in every afflicted city, the story is the same: luxury condos, mass evictions, hipster invasions, a plague of tourists, the death of small local businesses, and the rise of corporate monoculture.

If New York is to survive with its soul intact, it needs all the cranky people it can get

It’s these two opposite states, alone and connected, that hold me.

One of the great tragedies of my life is I had the misfortune of arriving in New York at the beginning of its end... but we cannot choose our time of place and I hurried to New York as fast as I could.

One of the great tragedies of my life was that I had the misfortune to arrive in New York City at the beginning of its end.

New York would no longer be a free-spirit city. Instead, it would be a free-market city.

The New York character coalesces. It's rough around the edges. Brusque and opinionated, it's also neurotic. Emphatic. It doesn't mince words. It says what it means and means what it says. Sometimes it says, 'Fuck you, you fuckin' fuck.

[Hyper-gentrification] is a man-made virus that grows rhizomatically, creeping into every crack and crevice of Manhattan, reaching ever deeper into the outer boroughs, pushing out whatever stands in its way. It can be defeated. But first we must pull back the curtain and see it clearly for what it is: an act of revenge.

New York is for people who need cities, for those who cannot function outside of one. Open and permissive, insulating you with the sort of anonymity you can't find in a small town or suburb, the city allows us to expand, experiment, and become our truest selves.

It's also a working-class city peopled by men and women who love with a tough love, in thick accents and no time for bullshit.