After much hemming and hawing on the corner of 47th and 8th, I finally made the bold decision to walk towards Times Square. Anyone who lives in the city knows that making such a choice usually involves either a chore of necessity or some sort of masochistic death wish. Either way, before long I found myself willfully walking towards the most aggravating place in all of New York.

With a handful of Broadway theaters lining the block, this part of the street is mostly dead in the morning (when I visited), but it's safe to assume it's nothing but madness come showtime. The W Hotel near Broadway has an interesting facade, but it stands in stark contrast to some of the more classic buildings in the area. I guess that's the nature of this always-evolving neighborhood, though. The saving grace of taking 47th Street across to 7th Ave is that you're near the northern end of Times Square which isn't nearly as crowded as the middle of southern parts can be. 

Having lived here for several years and walked through this part of town more times than I wish to remember, the spectacle of the billboards and lights numbed me long ago. However, if I step back I can sometimes, for a brief moment, remember the sheer joy the first time I noticed that Hershey's had a gigantic store just for candy.

Looking like any number of other blocks in the neighborhood, this segment of 59th Street feels lost amonsgt all the noise. With a mixture of high-rise buildings creating an inescapable shadow, the block is dark and lonely. It features a rare mid-block Duane Reade store which sits across from an interesting-looking Off-Off-Broadway theater.

Park Avenue is a nice breath of fresh air as you finally get to see daylight again. These short midtown blocks feel so restrictive. Thanks to their small footprint they rarely feature any notable architecture. However the buildings that do get constructed try so hard to maximize their space they end up blocking out all the life on the sidewalk below.

For most of its entire length, 66th Street runs as a westbound thoroughfare – the exception being right here. For reasons unknown (to me, at least) this one block is wider, has two lanes for driving westbound and east bound, an extra lane for parking, and a large median right in the middle. The center sidewalk is lined with as many parking meters as trees. The Parks Department marks this otherwise-vacant stretch as part of the Greenstreets program.

It would almost make more sense to treat these as two separate streets. The southern half is lined with a massive high-rise complex complete with balconies and white brick. Meanwhile, the northern side is far more classic and architecturally conservative with its 5-story apartment buildings nestled up next to each other. Of course, that dichotomy goes straight to hell at the end of the block when a second, this time glass-sheathed, high-rise takes over the quaint buildings on the northern side.