Photo Journal: Sleepless in New York City

On 10/01/10, I lugged my lineman-sized suitcase off the HK airport carousel, took a long nervous glance around at the blur of strangers around me and tentatively planted my flag into what I was to call home for an undefined period of time.

 

Over the next few years, I experienced life in my new fast-paced surroundings as an outsider in search of stable ground. And while the sights, tastes and smells were all so new, they were all so wondrous (except the time I found an Asian cockroach as big as a underfed rat in my bed). And one by one, they were taken in to form the foundation of my new home. Apart from that blood-curdling scream-worthy moment, I loved, and still love, every second of my detour from the world city that never sleeps.

 

This October I marked my third year abroad, not by exploring HK or another foreign country, but rather by recharging from my home base in New York City. Between my father’s 80th birthday, a friend’s 30th, another’s bridal shower, photo shoots with www.astuteattire.com, concerts, dinners, catch ups and nights out I hardly had any time to sleep during my one-week stay.

 

Having been away so long, I set out to re-ground, re-explore and re-document my home city once more. As a native New Yorker that hustled along for the past two decades, I realized that I never made the time to truly soak in and appreciate the city’s living and breathing nature. The blend of Gothic, Art Deco and modern architecture, the brownstones and townhouses that dutifully lined residential streets and the bright twinkling lights that (almost) always graces the inimitable skyline; I took it all in with renewed energy.

 

With an older wiser mind and eye, it was my sleepless mission to capture the concrete jungle’s streets and scenes I had for so long overlooked. I was a tourist in my own city but I never felt more at home.

 

Hotel:

Dream Downtown
355 West 16th St
New York, NY 10011 US
+1 646 625 4847