City Island is a seaside town in the Bronx. Known for its fishing, seafood, and main street it is a self-contained working-class haven. The buildings range from late 1800's houses to 1960's storefronts, and you can smell the ocean everywhere on the island. Restaurants and local pubs dot City Island Ave, and even the few empty storefronts stay vibrant. 

Bill Brand presents an animated movie to passengers on the B and Q subway trains coming into Manhattan from Brooklyn. The project was modeled after the zoetrope, a 19th-century optical toy, which animated images inside a revolving cylinder, so that they appeared to move when viewed through narrow slits. Brand mounted 228 hand-painted panels in self-contained, illuminated units along the three-hundred-foot platform. Hop on a Manhattan-bound B or Q train at the Dekalb Avenue stop (corner of Dekalb Avenue and Flatbush Avenue Extension). Look out any window on the right side of the train.

When I moved to NYC in the summer of 2009, my wife Hannah and I went straight to Central Park and the Belvedere Castle. It was the first time I fully grasped that I lived in New York and it felt euphoric standing on that hill. For me this place is still a romantic symbol and reminder of the spirit and essence of the city and the reasons I live here.

For Adults and Kids a good reason to get the "out of the city feeling" although you are still in the middle of it! Free entrance with NYC ID!

Sculpture by Tom Otterness at the 8th Avenue subway station at 14th street