GrittyCity is about having fun with New York. We want to spotlight and celebrate the real and minute everyday details of the city, and we want YOU to join us as fellow budding urban anthropologists, sociologists, critics and crackpots as we deconstruct the nitty gritty of the gritty city.

A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.
—E.B. White

New York can be seen as a wonderful, ever-evolving work of art and it should be enjoyed as such. Gritty details like fire hydrants, beat up traffic signs and old weathered storefronts are waiting to be appreciated by the keen eye and open mind.

Life in NY is an unpredictable fantastic play with the most wonderful characters — waiting next to you to cross the street, standing in line with you at the deli, bringing a pizza to your door.

A subway station is a gallery of wildly diverse faces, odd behaviors, fascinating conversations and tiny moments of great stories, all to be discovered in a mass of mysterious bodies.

Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
—Walker Evans

And all this is yours at no charge.

Grittycity should be run by you, the New York City lovers of the world. If you'd like to write for Grittycity, read the Submission Guidelines for Writers. Or start by contributing to our bulletin board, Post Your Bills.

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