Photos of NYC

Photos of NYC Hi, I’m Arik! Here’s some photos of New York City. Everywhere you turn in the Big Apple 🍎, there's beauty worth pausing to take in. We’re on IG.

Go to LINKTR.EE/arikbjorn to follow me elsewhere on social media.

Had lunch down at the World Trade Center today and took a stroll.
05/12/2026

Had lunch down at the World Trade Center today and took a stroll.

Someone once asked me what I studied in college, and I replied, “Archaeology and ancient languages.”They replied, “So yo...
05/05/2026

Someone once asked me what I studied in college, and I replied, “Archaeology and ancient languages.”

They replied, “So you love dinosaurs!” 🦕

I replied, “Yes, I do. But that’s paleontology.”

Dinosaur bones 🦖 ≠ archaeology🏺

Archaeology studies human cultures — artifacts, ruins, writing, the stuff people left behind. If it’s older than humanity and has no human connection, it’s not archaeology.

Paleontology studies ancient life through fossils — dinosaurs, trilobites, prehistoric plants. No humans required.

Spent the afternoon at the American Museum of Natural History basking in the dinosaur love of my childhood.

Indiana Jones was an archaeologist. He would have nothing to do here.

🦕 ≠ 🏺

I think of my ancestors who beheld this Great Lady 130 years ago—what thoughts must have passed through their minds as t...
04/29/2026

I think of my ancestors who beheld this Great Lady 130 years ago—what thoughts must have passed through their minds as they completed their journey from Norway 🇳🇴 to forge a new life, of which I am the grateful beneficiary.

The final still shot is of Lady Liberty from the dock at Ellis Island, a view my great grandparents surely took in with joy.

////

THE NEW COLOSSUS
by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

////

Subway SWAT Sunday Funday. Holy s**t! What’s down there?The CEASE FIRE irony is not lost on me.
04/26/2026

Subway SWAT Sunday Funday. Holy s**t! What’s down there?

The CEASE FIRE irony is not lost on me.

04/18/2026

IMAGINATION!

This is one of my favorite videos ever. Just happened today. Kid slayed me.

Completed in 1930, the Chrysler Building held the title of world’s tallest for exactly 11 months before the Empire State...
04/15/2026

Completed in 1930, the Chrysler Building held the title of world’s tallest for exactly 11 months before the Empire State Building stole the crown (pun intended).

Walter Chrysler embedded his automobile empire into every detail — eagle gargoyles modeled on hood ornaments, hubcap friezes, radiator cap eagles jutting from the 61st floor.

The stainless steel sunburst crown was assembled in secret inside the building, then hoisted through the roof in 90 minutes to surprise rival architects.

Walter Chrysler never sold his namesake building — he considered it a personal achievement, not a corporate asset. He’s buried in a tomb inside.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Please note: if you visit the lobby, the security guards are extremely unpleasant.

Most people call it “Grand Central Station” — that’s actually a post office a block away. Grand Central Terminal opened ...
04/15/2026

Most people call it “Grand Central Station” — that’s actually a post office a block away.

Grand Central Terminal opened in 1913, and its Beaux-Arts Main Concourse stretches 125 feet overhead, painted celestial turquoise with 2,500 stars of the winter sky — rendered backward, legend has it, because the original painter was working from a medieval manuscript depicting the heavens from God’s point of view.

The Terminal survived a 1970s demolition threat thanks largely to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Today, 750,000 people pass through daily — all underneath those upside-down stars.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

There’s a place in northern Manhattan where the Middle Ages didn’t end.The Met Cloisters sits atop Fort Tryon Park like ...
04/07/2026

There’s a place in northern Manhattan where the Middle Ages didn’t end.

The Met Cloisters sits atop Fort Tryon Park like a dream someone smuggled across the Atlantic.

Built in the 1930s, it incorporates actual stone elements from five medieval French monasteries — reassembled, piece by piece, on a rocky bluff above the Hudson River. John D. Rockefeller Jr. funded it, donated the land, and then — in one of history’s more remarkable acts of aesthetic generosity — bought the Palisades cliffs across the river so no one could ever build on them and wreck the view.

The crown jewels are the Unicorn Tapestries — seven breathtaking woven panels from around 1500, depicting the hunt and captivity of a . Standing before them, you forget what century you’re in.

As a rare books buff, I couldn’t stop staring at an illuminated manuscript open to Psalm 127: “Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, frustra laboraverunt qui aedificant eam.”

Eight centuries old. Still legible. The illustration is a mini-masterpiece.

The last photo is my favorite.

Hudson Yards is a city within the city—built on top of trains that never stopped running.You’ll find this fortress of ar...
04/05/2026

Hudson Yards is a city within the city—built on top of trains that never stopped running.

You’ll find this fortress of architectural high-rise crystals on the far West Side, from about 30th to 34th Street along 10th to 12th Avenue. It’s air rights, steel and $30 billion poured into the sky.

The old West Side rail yards are still down there, moving freight like they always did.

Above it? Billion-dollar glass, sunlight and the illusion it’s always been here.

And then—because the Big Apple always does this—you catch a crosswalk screaming “MESSIAH IS HERE!” But no one seems to hear.

Just another Manhattan Monday.

No Kings! 👑 Well, except this one. King Kong! 🦍 I’ll take the King of 🍌 any day over King 🍊.(You can find this tribute s...
03/31/2026

No Kings! 👑

Well, except this one. King Kong! 🦍

I’ll take the King of 🍌 any day over King 🍊.

(You can find this tribute sculpture at the corner of Park & 34th.)

Behold, Rikers Island!There are many NYC photography pages, but few photographers can lay claim to one of the country’s ...
03/29/2026

Behold, Rikers Island!

There are many NYC photography pages, but few photographers can lay claim to one of the country’s most feared prisons, and former home to such “celebrity convicts” as Harvey Weinstein, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Lil Wayne.

Rikers Island is abstract for many people. It’s nestled between the Bronx and Queens, behind LaGuardia Airport, with only one bridge entrance from Astoria, Queens.

I had the opportunity to spend an hour talking with the prison pharmacist, a kind, older Indian woman. She’s almost frail, but she has an incredible inner strength.

“I’ve been here 36 years,” she told me.

“So,” I hung onto my words, “You’re basically serving a life sentence.”

She laughed.

Name an infamous Rikers convict, and she worked directly with them.

“To me, they’re innocent. They haven’t been convicted yet. They’re just people with needs. And that’s my job, to help them.”

Rikers Island was founded in 1932, and NYC has recently announced that it plans to close the facility within the decade to make way for general benefit for the city, such as green infrastructure.

Over time, it’s housed more than 100,000 prisoners, and has long loomed over the Big Apple 🍎 as the one place you don’t want to end up.

Thankfully, they let me go home.

Address

Rikers Island, NY
10034

Website

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