Great description! As a born-and-bred New Yorker (well, Long Islander, but close enough to Queens that I could take the subway into the city) I know very well how NY is the center of the universe. I don't think I'll ever get over that. Even though I've lived in North Carolina for more than a decade, I still think of myself as living approximately 500 miles south of NY. My brother lives in Miami, so he's about 1300 miles south of NY. And so on. If I don't get up there to visit at least once a year, I get really antsy.

I miss the smells! Not the bad ones so much (urine in the subway! eck!) but the classic New York smells--the exhaust, the pretzels and hotdogs, the way downtown smells different from uptown, all the different ethnic foods. Did you know that you can't get a knish down here?

Oh, and my love for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler knows no bounds. One of the reasons why I loved The Royal Tenenbaums was the shoutout to that book.