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| April 1976: Nathan's Famous restaurant in Coney Island. (Getty Images) |
The internet didn't create The Listicle, the Best Of List, or even the Let's Place A Random Number In This Headline List. That was all print. And in 1976 The New York Times printed a list titled 101 Things To Love About New York City.
1. Being nostalgic about things in New York that never were so great.
2. Ethnic impurity.
3. Habitually fitting your thumbnail in the V‐cutout of a subway token.
4. Leaving New York.
5. Coming back to New York.
6. The Staten Island Advance.
7. The night they move the jet pattern over another neighborhood.
8. Dialing 873‐0404.
9. Not having defaulted yet.
10. Not writing your Account Number in the box on the Con Edison envelope.
11. Hating Con Edison.
12. It's 10 P.M. Do you know where YOUR children are?
13. Libraries that haven't closed yet.
14. Hospitals that haven't closed yet.
15. Day‐care centers that haven't closed yet.
16. People who haven't left yet.
17. How no one ever takes the top newspaper off the pile.
18. Getting off the Roosevelt Island tramway.
19. Volunteers.
20. Zip 10001.
21. The night sound of a distant fire engine that comes closer and closer, and then passes your street.
22. New York's proximity to Montauk.
23. Its distance from Washington.
24. A broken parking meter.
25. The best water‐supply system in the nation.
26. The worst public image in the nation.
27. Bus herds.
28. Bus drivers who get coffee in midroute, and the restaurant countermen who get them out quick.
29. How everyone else hates New York.
30. Hating New York.
31. Imagining New York without anyone in it.
32. Losing yourself in a crowd.
33. A really good street musician.
34. Alternate side of the street parking suspended.
35. Flipping the change tray in the plastic taxicab divider.
36. Austin Street, Queens.
37. How 9 out of 10 people on the subway platform move back when the train approaches.
38. Thinking that iridescent pigeon necks are beautiful.
39. Hating pigeons.
40. Army‐Navy store windows.
41. The orange highway lights on the Henry Hudson under the George Washington Bridge.
42. The little red lighthouse still under the great gray bridge.
43. Page 1,029 of the Manhattan telephone directory under “Ng.”
44. How no one moves to the back of the bus.
45. Degree days.
46. More movies, plays and ballet than anywhere else, and not going.
47. The coldest wind in the world on 125th Street and 12th Avenue.
48. Intake workers.
49. Standing on the elevated platform and feeling it sway as trains stop down the line.
50. The Parachute Jump in February.
51. Northern Boulevard.
52. Demanding a refund of less than a dollar on Line 25 of the New York City Tax Return (“Amount of $1.00 or less will be refunded only if requested”).
53. Never having been to Grant's Tomb.
54. Manhattan schist.
55. Inwood marble.
56. Fordham gneiss.
57. The personals in The Irish Echo.
58. Pvt. Joseph Merrill, Staten Island ferryboat.
59. Cornelius J. Kolff, Staten Island ferryboat.
60. A winning OTB ticket.
61. The Episcopal Bishop of New York.
62. Hero sandwiches that are called hero sandwiches.
63. The ragweed count.
64. W.P.A. park benches.
65. The background teletype noise on WINS.
66. Bags a beer.
67. Dead Horse Bay.
68. A wino with a theatrical talent for abuse.
69. East Siders on the West Side.
70. N.Y.U.
71. L.T.U.
72. Pace.
73. The Brooklyn Museum serving Nathan's hot dogs.
74. The smell of malathion.
75. Firemen in your supermarket doing a week's shopping for the firehouse kitchen.
76. Looking for a place you know on the dirty restaurant list.
77. Elevator repairmen.
78. People who whistle down cabs using thumb and pinky finger.
79. The exactly even number of seats in the City Hall marriage bureau.
80. Brooklyn Day.
81. “Power Dept.” lettered on city trucks.
82. Cream soda in Van Cortlandt Park.
83. The Sea Beach Express.
84. Thinking what New York could be, if only.
85. The rabbit hanging out near the World of Birds at the Bronx Zoo.
86. Japanese tourists.
87. The day the old snow disappears from Jerome Avenue.
88. The fourth‐floor brontosaurus in the Am. Mus. Nat. Hist.
89. The Fennel Cab Company.
90. Blue and white police‐horse trailers.
91. The apostrophe missing from DONT WALK.
92. Johnny Carson is gone.
93. Chevy Chase isn't.
94. Zeppole vans.
95. Subway cars with public‐address speakers that don't work.
96. American flags on Bay Ridge houses.
97. The rush of relief when you're not mugged after you thought you would be.
98. Tickler Numbers in The City Record.
99. No tornadoes.
100. Strikes that are over.
101. Avisn: La via del tren subterruneo es peligrosa.
(via Gothamist)
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