TEXT E The magnet for tourists,
the symbol of the city, Manhattan is probably the most deceptive of the boroughs
to outsiders who generally limit themsevles to quick looks at the Theater
District around Times Square (moving gingerly past the seediness of 42nd Street
west of Broadway), the shopping promenade of Fifth Avenue, the munificence of
the temples of finance on and near Wall Street, the eccentricities of bohemian
life in the East Village and Soho, the exotica of Chinatown, or the special
flavours of Little Italy and Harlem. At first glance, Manhattan is only the city
of skyscrapers, glaring lights, and frenzied pace, an island of the strange, the
neurotic, and the avantgarde. Crammed into its 23 square miles (57 square
kilometres) are more than 1,400,000 residents. Its waterfront, formed by the
Harlem, East, and Hudson rivers, is 43 miles (69 Kilometres ) in length, but
only scattered groups of slum children swim in the pollution; and the few
fisherment find only scanty catches. To the residents of the
island, each section is a hometown. Those who live in the West 70s, 80s, and 90s
-- the Upper West Side, though streets run above 200 at the northern tip -- know
their neighbourhoods as a cosmopolitan mixture of languages, occupations, and
income levels. Someone says is the origin of much of the chaos of the party. On
the Upper East Side, east of Central Park, is a different mixture, generally
more affluent. The Chelsea area of the West 20s, with its
tenements, renovated brownstones, and huge cooperatives built by labour unions,
has a more sedate pace than the East Village and Soho (derived from "south of
Houston Street"), comprising much of the old Lower East Side and containing the
city’s major concentration of stuggling writers and artists. Greenwich Village,
the old centre of bohemian life, has become a favourite dwelling place for
affluent professionals and successful authors and artists. Harlem means more
than just tenements, housing projects, and black politics. It means a vibrant
street life ranging from sports to stoop seminars, and it is spiced with luxury
apartment houses with doormen, inhabited almost entirely by blacks. Yorkville,
in the East 80s, retains pockets of Czech, Hungarian, and German cultures in a
clash of old tenements and towering luxury apartment houses. The neighbourhood
taverns of the Irish proliferate through Inwood at the northernmost part of the
island, where the borough of Manhattan spills over the harlem River to encompass
an enclave of a few square blocks within mainland Bronx. In Inwood lie
manhattan’s few remaining forested acres, and on open recreation areas the Irish
keep alive their national sports of hurling and Gaelic football -- much as
courts are maintained for bocciball games in Little Italy many miles to the
south, On Morningside Heights around Columbia University, the civilities of the
academic world overlook the bleak stretches of harlem below and to the east and
north. Even fantastic Lower Manhattan, from the Battery, with
its ferry slips at the island’s tip, to City Halls, has begun taking on the
atmosphere of a neighbourhood. Apartment houses have gone up in the vicinity of
City Hall, and the overwhelming skyscraper jungle around Wall Street, which is
home to hundreds of financial and insurance institutions and some of the
nation’s largest banks, exerts international power. Which of the following in Manhattan is less attractive to visitors here
A.The exotics Chinatown. B.The Theater District around Times Square. C.The shopping promenade of Fifth Avenue. D.The scattered groups of slum children swimming in the pollution.