What makes New York City unique? Distilling the essence of New York's cultural complexity, summing up its vitality, richness, and energy is a daunting assignment—one that calls for a good deal of hubris, or, in the local parlance, chutzpah. But the New York I experience daily as a folklorist and as a New York resident, a liveable metropolis of discrete neighborhoods and overlapping communities, is rarely the one I see protrayed by the media, read about in novels, or hear spoken of by tourists.