This is a dangerous and lawless part of town. A neighborhood where time stops for no one, tumbleweeds cross your path at every opportunity, and photographers roam free – shooting pictures of seemingly everything. As you can imagine the stakes are high, and nothing less than your presumed privacy is at risk. At least, this is the story I've invented in my head for some of the security guards here on 11th Avenue.

Yes, once again I was approached by overly-ambitious private security personnel and told I wasn't allowed to shoot photos of the outside of their building. I really didn't feel like getting into a whole thing with him, especially since I had many more photos to shoot around here, but I did try my best to explain why he was wrong in his assumption (without coming off as being too much of a pain in the ass) and he seemed to give up – which is the best I could hope for I guess.

I'm not trying to come off as a jerk when complaining about these instances, honest...but there really is something incredibly frustrating about being fed misinformation about my own rights in public, especially from someone who assumes they have jurisdiction over a public space. Plus, this isn't even about individual privacy...most of what I capture are buildings, streets and sidewalks! I rarely take photos which include people and when I do, even though there's no reasonable expectation of privacy when you're out in public, I try to be sensitive to the issue. But I digress...

These blocks really are rather barren. You know you're getting to the edge of the city when you start to see so many car washes and dealerships. The tall and lumbering buildings that dot the landscape here are rather nice with ornate detailing (even if it is several stories up), and grand entrances. The remaining buildings all stay pretty close to the ground - serving either as warehouses or storefronts. 

So come on down to 11th Avenue, where there's not much to see and you too can be hassled for attempting a completely benign activity.

Feeling both desolate and crowded at the same time, this segment of 10th Avenue is pretty typical of the west side. With equal parts industry (hello massive, imposing AT&T building) and residential (classic, low-rise apartment buildings line most of the eastern side of the street), this part of town is right in the middle of nowhere – Times Square is safely to the south east, Lincoln Center is about 8 blocks north, and the waterfront is a good two to three blocks away.

With the exception of the aforementioned AT&T building, most of the area keeps pretty low to the ground; allowing for some great vistas of midtown. There's definitely a sense of community of belonging here. As it is, I would bet that most of the people you see on the street live within a few blocks of here.

What do you get when you take one part school, one part apartment, one part church and mix it all together? If you said "Sesame Street", you're right. If you also said "This stretch of 50th Street", you're also right. Containing just about everything you would need to foster a self-contained community, this block is fairly low key – at least on weekends when there's no classes to be had. 

Dominating the northern side of the street, the Park West High School has a series of really great mosaic murals that grace several walls on the front of the building. Across the street, a series of (mostly older) apartment buildings sit in a row. There was one brand new building that stuck out like a sore thumb amongst its brick-faced neighbors. 

Holy contrasting redvelopments Batman! What starts off as pretty typical upper west side block quickly devolves into pandemonium as you approach the dueling redevelopments that dominate the center of the block. While the building on the north side of the street is still under construction, it seems infinitely more interesting than the building of similar size across the street. It's really a study in modern architectural contrasts.

While I wasn't able to figure out the name of the glass-faceted building still under construction, Midwest Court (its doppelganger to the south) was pretty easy to remember. I can't comment on the quality of the apartments within, but with prices starting near $3000/month I would expect a little bit more from the front of the building. It reminds me of college dorms (in every bad way).

Further down the block, once you escape the gravitational pull of these apartments, you'll come to a school and the studio in which Wendy Williams films. I could have sworn that having Wendy Williams that close to an institution of learning would be some zoning code violation, but apparently I was mistaken.

Finally, at the end of the street, with the school's open yard to your left, the skyline is absolutely filled with the parallel lines of AT&T's monolithic building on 10th Avenue. Overall, a very interesting place to walk around. I'll be especially interested to see how it looks in a year or so.

With the well-recieved Hearst Tower sitting on the corner to start this block off, there's no mistaking that you're in midtown...But after just a few steps, things quickly calm down. Whereas 8th Avenue has many characteristics of a midtown street, 9th Avenue is decidedly quieter. The buildings get shorter, the sidewalks less crowded, and everything just feels slower – all in the span of one block.

There are some rather interesting residential buildings mixed in with the businesses on the street. An open-air court sits about 1/3rd down the block with benches and a passthrough to 57th. The Parc Vendome condominium takes up a good part of the north side of the street, butting up against some public space on 9th Avenue (which is currently under construction). Overall, not a terrible place to walk around – if it weren't for the gray cloud that is midtown, I could easily mistake this for a street that's much further north (or even south as the case may be). 

While redevelopment and condos shoot upward on 11th Avenue, these blocks are completely dominated by the massive IRT Powerhouse. Taking up the entire block between 11th Ave and the West Side Highway, it's a formidable structure. With beautiful Beaux-Arts style, the building looks like it could be a concert hall rather than a steam generation plant. It's currently run by Con-Ed, but since it's not (yet) a landmark, the building isn't entire safe from redevelopment.

The rest of this street is very typical for this area. Several new condos are all in different stages of construction– which stand in stark contrast to the IRT plant. I would think the rich people who will eventually be living here would appreciate a beautiful building like this sitting right next door.  But people can be surprising sometimes.