New York City has so many nicknames, and I discovered the truth of one of them one evening while I was visiting with a close friend. This particular evening, I had left my apartment in New Jersey to journey over the Hudson and get a piece of New York’s night life. I visited some friends in Chelsea, and after hitting up our favorite food places like Cafeteria and Max Brenner, we decided to take a stroll through Times Square to take in the lights.
The night was beautiful, and the street performers were entertaining. The excitement of the city distracted me from the time, and when I finally checked I was shocked! It was almost 2:00 in the morning, around the time NJTransit stops running my train home. I quickly thanked my friends for the evening, and my traveling partner and I rushed to Penn Station with our fingers crossed. We finally got there—out of breath—to immediately find the high steel gates in our path. “The trains are done for the night!” a janitor yelled to me. We looked at each other in disbelief. It’s now after 2:00 a.m., and the next train wasn’t coming until 5:30 a.m. My city friends were back at their apartments, and I didn’t want to bother them.
The following hours, from two to five in the morning, we found refuge in Times Square. After a long night, we hoped the lights would keep us awake and alert. Being under 21 years of age and all out of spending money, our options for shelter were very limited. McDonald’s worked until we were kicked out side-by-side with New York’s homeless. I may have been tired, but not once was I bored. How could I be? I was sightseeing in NYC after dark! We watched a group of break dancers, a band, a woman get arrested, and a man do karate on the busiest streets and avenues in the world. The flashing lights never stopped and neither did we. We were really in a city that denied sleep, and in turn we didn’t care about sleep either. We may have been exhausted, but we happily got on a train as the sun came up. We returned to our snoring, sleepy towns with bright, flashing memories of New York City—truly a city that never, ever sleeps.
