Caroline Polachek Quotes

You'll see every kind of New Yorker in there. You really feel like you're in the belly of the beast when you're in Union Square.

When I walk down the street in New York, I swear to God, the building constructor, the guy pounding cement and what not, will yell, 'Hey, you hockey puck!'

7 Mile is like an Ave. Back in the days it was poppin' in the summer time.

You can get the true essence of New Yorkers by just hanging out in Central Park.

Musically, New York is a big influence on me. Walk down the street for five minutes and you'll hear homeless punk rockers, people playing Caribbean music and reggae, sacred Islamic music and Latino music, so many different types of music.

I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture.

New Orleans life is such a night life. The thing that comes up very often is that our day essentially doesn't start until midnight or 2 in the morning.

In New York you can just walk out and be among people. You're on the subway among people, you go to cafes, you can talk to people.

I love New York City. The energy, the theatre, the art, the food, the people, the parks and streets. But I could say the same of London or Paris, too.

I have to admit that I get quite emotional listening to the amazing talent that exists in the New York subways.

Any urbanist has to appreciate New York City and the way it works. The public transit is astonishing.

I was always singing but didn't plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn - I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point - and that was it.

In Toronto, I grew up taking a subway, I grew up taking a bus. I spent my formative adult years in New York City, walking the streets, taking the subway. You're connected to the larger whole. L.A. is so spread out, and you're so incubated inside those cars and it's so exhausting to deal with the traffic, without really having the human contact.

I love getting out of the Q train at Union Square. It's such a mix of people, like a party. There's always an errand you can do along there, whether it's picking up contacts or buying poker chips.

I wrote a book of essays about New York called 'The Colossus of New York,' but it's not about - you know, when I'm writing about rush hour or Central Park, it's not a black Central Park, it's just Central Park, and it's not a black rush hour, it's just rush hour.

The truth is there's always a hum of people playing folk music in cities.

I really liked Glasgow. I really liked living there for a year. It's a very fun city, and it has a lot to offer young people who are interested in music and art. It's a very creative city.

That's the first thing you learn when you busk in the New York City subways: you immediately join the ranks of the marginalized, the unhinged prophets, the Christian shouters, the Hare Krishnas, the Jehovah's witnesses, the father-and-daughter kitaro team, the violinists playing for their sickly wives.

I came to New York for the first time with Peter Buck at age 19. We spent a week living out of a van on the street in front of a club in the West 60s called Hurrah. It's where Pylon played. I saw Klaus Nomi play there. And Michael Gira's band before he did Swans-they all wore cowboy boots and were so cool and had great hair. I was so jealous.

I plan on getting out there and mixing with the crowd. I want to show everyone what happens in Times Square not from a distance, but from right there in the crowd.

Streets crowded with people strolling, or sitting at outdoor cafes. And always, talking, gesturing, singing, laughing. I liked Rome immediately.Everybody was a performer.

New York is a city of conversations overheard, of people at the next restaurant table (micrometers away) checking your watch, of people reading the stories in your newspaper on the subway train.

Punk-rock records came out and you bought whatever you could find. But Devo didn't happen for another three years. Sex Pistols didn't tour the States until '78. At that time, for me, it was really about CBGB, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, the Ramones, and Television.

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus! Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

Mid-'80s in New York was fantastic. I remember my first Gay Pride parade in the city. Where I grew up was very sheltered, so when I got to the city, there was this freedom and so much happening. At the same time, there was this pressure of AIDS and everything else. New York is so different today.