New York Guide
Midtown West
Between West 30th and 59th streets and west of Sixth Avenue, much of midtown Manhattan is enthralling, noisy, and garish, packed with attractions meant to entertain the legions of tourists staying in the area's many hotels. The heart of Midtown West is Times Square, where jostling crowds and huge neon signs assault the senses at all times of the day. It's here that the east side's more sedate approach to capitalism finally overflows its bounds and New York City reaches its commercial zenith.
South of Times Square is the bustling, business-oriented Garment District, home to Madison Square Garden and Macy's department store, while just north of the once "naughty, bawdy 42nd Street" is the Theater District, which offers the most impressive concentration of live theater in the world.
For glimpses of vintage seediness, head west beyond Eighth Avenue to Hell's Kitchen – though keep in mind that the buzzing forces of gentrification are hard at work in this part of town, and shiny open-air eateries are far more common than peep-show pavilions these days. There aren't many tourist attractions per se in this direction, though if you hike all the way over to the Hudson River, you'll come upon the massive Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, which is housed in a retired aircraft carrier. Back over in the center of the island, Sixth Avenue, its architecture melding cultural and corporate New York, is good for a stroll, while 57th Street has some of the city's most distinctive shops and steadfast clusters of galleries, many of which display some of the world's greatest works of art.