The safest day at the Melody is St. Paddy's," adds another Mardi Gras girl. "All the cops are out vomiting at the parade.

Everyone who moves to New York City has a book or movie or song that epitomizes the place for them. For me, it's 'The Cricket in Times Square', written by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams.

Meantime the Newspaper of Record goes around in a little pleated skirt shaking pompoms, leaping in the air with an idiot grin if so much as a cement mixer passes by.

I always have a positive reaction to Times Square - you've got so many people passing through here, so many cultures, and so many people merging into the central community of New York City. This is the hub of America.

I feel New York is too crazy for me, especially when you go to Times Square.

L.A., it's nice, but I think of sunshine and people on rollerblades eating sushi. New York, I think of nighttime, I think of Times Square and Broadway and nightlife and the city that never sleeps.