NYC Trivia

Population-New York City proper:
 7,380,900. Metropolitan New York
(including the Tri-State area): 19,938,492.

Area of City-Manhattan is 23 sq mi/59 sq km. The total area of all five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island) is 301 sq mi/780 sq km.

County-New York City is not located in one county; the five boroughs serve as counties.

Weather-Hot summers and cold winters; mild springs and pleasant, crisp falls. Clear skies 29% of the time; partly cloudy skies 34%; cloudy skies 37%. Annual rainfall: 40 in; heaviest rain in July and August.

Annual snowfall: 29 in. Average temperatures: Jan 24-37 Fahrenheit/-4-3 Celsius; Feb 24-38 F/-4-3 C; Mar 30-45 F/-1-7 C; Apr 42-57 F/6-14 C; May 53-68 F/12-20 C; Jun 66-82 F/19-28 C; Jul 66-82 F/19-28 C; Aug 66-80 F/19-27 C; Sep 60-79 F/16-26 C; Oct 49-69 F/9-21 C; Nov 37-51 F/3-11 C; Dec 29-41 F/-2-5 C.

City Holidays-1999: 31 May, Memorial Day; 4 Jul, Independence Day; 6 Sep, Labor Day; 11 Oct, Columbus Day; 11 Nov, Veterans Day; 25 Nov, Thanksgiving; 25 Dec, Christmas. 2000: 1 Jan, New Year’s; 17 Jan, Martin Luther King Day; 21 Feb, Presidents’ Day; 29 May, Memorial Day; 4 Jul, Independence Day; 4 Sep, Labor Day; 9 Oct, Columbus Day; 11 Nov, Veterans Day; 23 Nov, Thanksgiving; 25 Dec, Christmas.

Sales or Use Tax-Sales tax is 8.25%. (Some weeks are tax-free, when clothing and shoes are not taxed. Call the Department of Finance, phone 212-669-4855, for dates.) You will pay an additional 5% tax plus US$2 a night for your hotel room.

Crime-During the day the streets and subways are bustling, so walking or riding the subway alone poses no particular threat, other than from the occasional pickpocket. Naturally, you should be cautious—your purse zipped and held close or your wallet tucked in your front (not back) pocket. Avoid wearing expensive or expensive-looking jewelry. At night, darkness and decreased activity make walking and riding the subway a riskier business; know your destination and stay alert. As a rule, cabs are safer than the subway at night. If you do take the subway at night, wait for the train in the designated off-hours waiting area and board a car that has plenty of other passengers.

Never walk through Central Park after dark. Exercise caution in Hell’s Kitchen (just west of the Theater District), Harlem and the Bowery at night. Trust your instincts: Do not walk down any block that looks particularly desolate (shuttered, abandoned and dark) or sinister (people standing on corners). Cars parked on the street are likely to be broken into and have their radios stolen, so take a deep breath and pay the huge fee for parking in a garage.

Be wary of pickpockets and con games in tourist areas, especially around the theaters of Times Square (if it’s too good to be true, it’s a con). Occasionally scam artists will volunteer to help travelers with their bags, only to demand outrageous payments afterward. Keep in mind that no one but the dealer ever wins at three-card monte, and that genuine Rolexes and Coach bags are never displayed on cardboard boxes. Nearly every square block has its share of panhandlers; expect frequent requests for money on the subway as well.

But remember, despite all of the above, New York is not the most dangerous of the large U.S. cities, and using common sense should keep you out of trouble.

Emergency Numbers-Dial 911 for police and medical emergencies. Dial 212-577-7777 for the Crime Victims Hotline; Victim Services provides assistance to victims of rape and robbery and helps visitors find a way home if their money has been stolen.

Telephone Codes-Manhattan: area code 212; a second area code, 646, is in the process of being introduced. The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island: 718.

Time/Weather-Time: 212-976-6000. Weather: 212-976-1122.

Time Zone-Eastern Standard Time, five hours behind Greenwich Mean Time. Daylight Saving Time is observed from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October.

Business Attire/Practices-As you might expect, business attire in New York is both formal and fashionable. Professionals tend to conduct meetings and working lunches with an emphasis on efficiency, and the short shrift given to niceties is often interpreted as rudeness by visitors used to a more leisurely style of business. Punctuality is expected, but New Yorkers will understand if, for instance, your subway was held up in Times Square for 30 minutes because of a track fire in Brooklyn. (It happens.)

Compiled From the NYCWeb

The Dutch bought Manhattan Island from the Indians in 1626; and at that time the area which we know as Greenwich Village was primarily a woodland in which deer, elk, woodchuck and other creatures roamed. The Village soon became known as the best tobacco plantation in the colony, and under the direction of the Dutch West India Company, tobacco plantations flourished.

After the British captured Nieuw Amsterdam in 1664, a commander of the fleet of English warships named Sir Peter Warren in 1731 purchased a large portion of the Village plantation, where he lived with his family in a beautiful mansion overlooking the Hudson River where Perry and West 4th now meet. He named this farm Greenwich. In the 1750's and 60's the verdant "Greenwich" area attracted well-to-do families who built grand country-style homes.

During the smallpox and yellow fever epidemics which ravaged the population of New York City (still miles south of Greenwich Village borders) in 1822, families fled north to the Village, settling this country village which is now Greenwich Village. Businesses and banks quickly were built. By 1850 the Washington Square area in the Village became the place successful merchants built their grand townhouses. This gentrification changed the area from a small country village into a thriving town unto itself.

By the end of the nineteenth century however, the wealthier residents began moving uptown to more "fashionable" areas, while at the same time residential buildings in the Village were left to run down by some absentee landlords. Eventually the rents for this dilapidated housing came down, attracting artists, radical and intellectual rebels who saw The Village as an adjunct to Paris.

In the early decades of the 20th century the word got around that The Village was the place to live "the free life" as it was then called. During the First World War the Village became a symbol of the repudiation of traditional values.

The 1940's, 1950's and 1960's in the Village is now seen as the tail-end of Bohemian life. In the 1950's Beat poets and coffee house existentialists intermingled with a new breed of intellectually oriented rebel actors who studied the "Method" with Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio.

The counter-culture of off-off Broadway and angry coffee house poetry continued in The Village and elsewhere into the 1970's, but in that decade the furor was labled a "sexual revolution". Out of this emerged women's liberation as well as gay liberation.

Many artists, writers and actors who could indulge in free experiences and artistic experimentation from the 1900's through the 1970's could, by the 1980's, no longer afford to live in the city because of escalating real estate costs and the Yuppie invasion of the 1980's. Many moved into the East Village and Alphabet City. In the East Village a storefront gallery movement in the 1980's seemed to nurture new artists. In the 1990's, some of the original Bohemian atmosphere and youth-culture that was so inherent in Village life shifted eastward with the rock-clubs like the Pyramid, the Continental and C.B.G.B.'s and including East Village style oddball shops like Little Ricky's and Atomic Passion. Small bookstores, inexpensive thrift shops and restaurants also thrive in the East Village. Meanwhile the West Village has become more stylish with jazz clubs and sparkling new coffee shop emporiums opening all the time.