Never Sleeping ...

Several years ago I interviewed the authors of a book called Nightshift NYC about the city's overnight workers. This was in follow-up to another post I wrote about the romantic allure of NYC in the dead of night. It's such a beautiful idea: the big, crazy, multitudinous city becoming, for several hours, a kind of ghost town -- a calm, mysterious, lightly-populated dreamscape. 

New York City at night ... it's a subculture all its own. Not only was a book written about it but even the great Martin Scorsese himself made a movie about it! 

And speaking of movies, I recently recorded a movie off Turner Classic Movies that aired at four in the morning (having a full-time job and being a full-time dad makes staying up that late to watch a movie rather impossible). But while the movie itself was "eh" I LOVED the intro that TCM played just before it started. The intro even has a its own name: "Open All Night."

This intro perfectly captures what I love about NYC at night: the jazzy, funky, romantic, mellow vibe and mood; the soft visuals, the casual attitude -- everything about it is just right. If you want to know what NYC overnight feels like to me, this perfectly (in an almost cliched way) brings it to life:

Oh, and speaking about NYC at night, recently the Jimmy Kimmel show was taping in Brooklyn, and the always entertaining Howard Stern made a memorable appearance. Late night NYC isn't always so quiet:

NYC at night ... it's always interesting.