Vignettes of the City that Never Sleeps

Hello, and welcome to the first segment of #HiddenSeeds, where I make recommendations of things that I feel a lot of people don’t know about. Today is all about my favorite place in the world: New York City (shocker, right?). 

At the beginning of my freshman year of college, I subscribed to two different newsletters from the New York Times in order to stay on top of the news: one consists of U.S. and international news, the other is based around the happenings of New York City. New York Today focuses on a handful of current news events and shares a story or two of life in New York City. My favorite section is the Metropolitan Diary. 

The Metropolitan Diary are vignettes of life in the five boroughs. While reading them, I often feel like an outsider looking into the life that I want to have as a New Yorker. The stories can range from funny to nostalgic, from heavy to carefree. It definitely humanizes the people of New York. 

My favorite part of the Diary, however, are the illustrations. Drawn by Agnes Lee, they add just a bit of magic to every story. If you want to read a quick five minute essay Lee wrote, click here. I highly encourage it, and now I appreciate the Metropolitan Diary even more. (And who knows, maybe I’ll have a story published in the Diary someday.)

An illustration by Agnes Lee.

To read the Metropolitan Diary every weekday, click here to subscribe to the New York Today newsletter. Scroll down in the News and Politics section and you should see the newsletter. All you have to do is enter your email. Happy reading!