Broadway Between 49th St and 51st St

With the echos of Times Square still very clear, things start to calm down a bit up around here. The relentless big-name stores and restaurants start to make way for smaller, local places even as the massive billboards and flashy signs remain. Of course, this area still has many of the hallmarks of Times Square: Ruby Foo's, Mars 2112, Stardust - all places where you can buy food for 400x it's actual value.

When I visited here a few weeks ago, work was well under way at converting broadway into a pedestrian utopia, with construction sitting smack dab in the middle of the street. Since then, the temporary car-free broadway setup has been introduced, as further work is needed to finalize it's implementation.