When I first got here my peers at work made me a list of places in our neighborhood. This restaurant was one of them and it's now one of my favorite local spots. This Italian restaurant has never disappointed me so far.

Like Barbapapa’s house with a beautiful garden.

A not-for-profit community museum and civic organization located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The museum traces the history of New York City's five boroughs with its exhibitions of cultural ephemera and relics.

At first, this park felt too arranged and perfect for me but somehow it became my safe place. Going here always picks me up. The piers have a breathtaking view of the downtown Manhattan skyline, The Statue of Liberty, and The Brooklyn Bridge. Undeniably magical. The piers host picnic spots, soccer fields, roller skating, basketball, outdoor gyms, tennis walls, grills for barbeque, and more. I also appreciate how they designed the plantations with so much care and it’s just a lovely space overall for anyone to enjoy.

In 1963, the Italian-born sculptor Costantino Nivola filled a playground that covers an entire city block with avant-garde abstractions. In the middle of an Upper Manhattan housing project, there are cuboid cutouts sculpted in cement, a fountain made with two diamond-shaped boulders, concrete play horses, and a sand-casted relief carved high into a wall. In the northeast corner, a matriarchal figure known as “The Nanny” rises from the ground. The artist’s sculptures were built in an era when urban development incorporated art in its effort to uplift communities and express democratic ideals. “A work designed for a public space is less a work of art than a civic act,” Nivola once said. “It concerns the ways in which we live together, and in which we influence each other.”