⁴ᴷ⁶⁰ Walking NYC (Narrated) : Chinatown & Little Italy, Manhattan

today is May 20th 2019 86 degrees Fahrenheit I just spot off a downtown six local trains at the Canal Street Station I'll be doing a walking video of Chinatown today I know it's a little bit noisy but that's how your kids I've walked through the station numerous times including doing a narrated video of Canal Street being an ugly subway station yeah why not what's up alright so I'm getting off at Canal and Lafayette Street this is the eastern end mill the western end of Chinatown looks like there's a ambulance coming down New York Presbyterian this is the western end of Chinatown if you're interested I also did a narrated walk of Canal Street throughout its entire length going from east to west but today I'll be focusing on Chinatown specifically so I'll be heading into old Chinatown which is the first developed area of Chinatown kanau Street is especially popular with tourists because many merchants here sell their wares and accessories on the streets so the first immigrant who arrived to Chinatown the first Chinese person was a Ken he's claims to have arrived in the area in the 1850s and he founded a cigar store on Park Row which is south of here south and east of here you can see we're in Chinatown here there's no denying if all the Chinese restaurants and dumpling places here's a Vietnamese sandwich like I said all these vendors are selling their wares it's a good place to get souvenirs if you're visiting New York but I can arrived around 1858 selling cigars so what happened was he inspired other Chinese immigrants to arrive in the area and they actually started a monopoly in the cigar business centering around Mott Street and Mott Street was the area of the first Chinese immigrants many of the Chinese settled along Mott Street and Aachen and his friends would rent out bunk beds to immigrants arriving into the United States Manhattan's Chinatown is one of the oldest China towns in the developed world if not the oldest but a lot of the Chinese immigrants immigrated to Chinatown from the West due to increase increasing discrimination and laws against the Chinese such as the Chinese discrimination acts many of these Chinese immigrants were unskilled or uneducated so they ended up doing a lot of service businesses such as hand laundries and restaurants and and stores here's something I recommend everyone try once in their life that's if it's not against your religion or anything is right here the roast pork and the roast chicken there's a musician playing on the street here you can get a lot of vegetables and other groceries for relatively cheap prices compared to the brick-and-mortar stores like Whole Foods Market and your local supermarkets around New York City there was a article I read that said that don't be don't be wary of the low prices of the Chinese merchants vegetables because they actually come direct from the farms so they're not of any less quality than the groceries that you'll find in the supermarkets and I think I can attest to that because I've had many of these vegetables that come from the streets here and they're delicious this fruit here is very fragrant so I'll tell you that much so Canal Street actually has a canal underneath it he used to be a sewer you can find out more about that on my Canal Street walk but I'm just about to but I'm just about to walk onto Mott Street which is one of the main streets of Chinatown along with Canal Street East Broadway and Bowery Canal she also was the first diamond district in New York City now the diamond district settled on 47th Street in Midtown the traffic isn't too bad right now usually it's more crowded at this time of day because of the cars traveling to and from the Manhattan Bridge as well as the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey right now it's about 4:30 p.m. so I'm making a right onto Mott Street and I'll talk about Mott Street when I get on so the early days of Chinatown were dominated by gangs the gangs were actually popularized in a lot of movies such as the gangs of New York and the Godfather and the Chinese gangs were very strong around this area most notably the hip sing tongs and the on long tongs the on long tongs controlled most of Mott Street and the surrounding area and the hip sing tongs controlled most of the area north of here so you can see a wide variety of different businesses here selling goods restaurants different types of cuisines well many people think of Chinese food they don't think of different types of cuisines but but there's many different types of Chinese food there's northern Chinese southern Chinese there's feu from western China there's even like Asian blends so if you have to try them all to understand but March 3 was originally originally populated by Chinese from the Cantonese area of Chinatown which included Hong Kong and Guangdong and Guangzhou Guangzhou area that's why you may hear a lot of Cantonese around this part of Chinatown and actually one of the earliest settlers of Chinatown along Mott Street came from the city of Tai Shan which is a southern city in the Guangdong Province of China looks like they're doing some road work here Mont Street traditionally is very bad for traffic because of how now it is and actually in general so even though there's a lot of Cantonese speakers here and some some Tai Shan dialects many of the Chinese who are newly immigrating to Chinatown are speaking Mandarin Mandarin is the official dialect of China in fact it's very rare you'll find a taition taishanese speaker right now most of the gangs and tongs now call themselves associations these associations are more business oriented now they organize as a group maybe in groups of like a hundred or 200 families and they'll own a property that's why gentrification has been so slow in Chinatown and for those of you who don't know gentrification is when an area becomes developed and it pushes out the lower-income residents and arguably its culture as well but because these associations hold so much property here and like tens of families hundreds of families owned may own property it's very hard to get to get them to sell to anyone else so this is Pell Street and dower Street and what I'm about to take you is the bloodiest street in American history this is Doyle Street otherwise known as the bloody angle it's here that many gangs wage war and underneath my feet are many dead bodies although now today it's you won't find any record of the violent history of Doya Street but it's here this is where the hip sings and the on longs wage war against each other in classic gang warfare and it's called the bloody angle because of that 90-degree angle around the corner famously gangs would hide around the corner and hatchet anyone walking past which is bloody to describe but here is um nah moitie parlor it's the first dim sum parlor in Chinatown and has been here since 1920 so joyous tree also has an underground I'm not exactly sure where the underground entrance is located but many of the gangs would use the underground to smuggle supplies and hide from authorities and everything and back then these gangs and tongs were so strong that even the city wart was afraid to crack down on them because they had so much power but this short segment Street Doya Street is almost finished now they had a very violent past there was even gang warfare in the early 80s it wasn't until the late 80s early 90s that violence in Chinatown finally came to an end due to many of the leaders growing old and the younger generation being a little bit more wise but it also has to do with the changing economic culture of the city so this is Bowery which becomes Chatham square Chatham square is the I would say the gateway to Chinatown because seven streets intersect here I believe they are Bowery Wharf Street Division Street East Broadway there's Oliver Street there but you had too many streets but the center of Chatham square is in that direction however I'll be covering that a little bit later now I'm turning my camera to the right those stairs descend down to the Doya Street tunnel which I was talking about earlier I went to the gangs oh my goodness this is not a good sight to see that man is completely out but I'm sure he'll get the help he needs I don't like to see people in that state it's just horrible to see but it's important to help out the less fortunate and donate when you can and help out society as you wish the city would do more to help out homeless but here's the end of March Street now I'm at Wharf Street which is the southern border of Chinatown Chinatown is bordered by the Civic Center on the south to the west is bordered by Tribeca which is an acronym for a neighborhood that stands for the triangle below Canal Street Little Italy to the north although he could say that Chinatown also is within Little Italy or a Little Italy is within Chinatown that's how big Chinatown is to the east it's bordered by the Lower East Side and to the north it's also boarded by Soho Soho and no leader and to the southeast is bordered by a two bridges so now I'm making a right onto Mulberry Street and I just tripped on the sidewalk the city should do a better job maintaining these sidewalks here's Mulberry Street it's famous for the numerous funeral homes on this block well I should say in this section because there's more funeral homes up ahead to the left of me is Columbus Park historically or is the the center of the Five Points neighborhood five points was a very very dangerous neighborhood back in the day run by gangs and it was very dirty and unsanitary this is Moscow Street formerly known as Park Street it was also one of the earliest streets settled by the Chinese and I'm going to point my camera up here is a greater Chinatown Community Association and this is a fried dumpling spot which I highly recommend you can get five pieces for a dollar fifty it's also been online and many papers and recommendations but I'm about to walk into Columbus Park so I can show you what it looks like what a recreational space in Chinatown looks like here's the Columbus Park playground there's a lot of people playing basketball right now a very good day to do so because of how warm it is this building I believe a recreational facility they're doing a lot of work on it which is why they're all it's all fenced off so right across the street from me over here is the Civic Center neighborhood this section of the Civic Center is infamous for its many prisons prisons and courts okay this is what I would consider the main section of Columbus Park this area is a popular gathering gathering spot for many of the elderly and a lot of the Chinese locals who have been here for a very long time it's very popular to see people playing cards here and gambling and doing other kinds of things to pass the time here is a statue of sun yat-sen the founder of the Republic of China as well as a very influential politician some people playing and music on her whose [Applause] [Music] so what I'm actually going to do now is walk east on Bayard Street towards Chatham square again because I want to show you the eastern part of Chinatown which is the newer part just walking down the streets getting me very hungry smelling all this food I'm not particularly keen about smelling cigarette smoke though but that's the way it is so here I am back on Mott Street here is the famous Chinatown ice cream factory I presume it's going to be very busy today because it's so warm out like I said 86 degrees Fahrenheit yup look how full that is across the street is the key how open association many of these association buildings will show themselves very elaborately on the exteriors here's a seafood and odor store here's a bubble tea place the Vivi bubbles he also very popular now because of how warm it is so this is Bowery a little bit north of me one block north is the Manhattan Bridge which connects Chinatown to downtown Brooklyn here's Confucius Plaza home to many many residents of Chinatown it's also called Confucius Plaza because there is a giant statue of Confucius at the end which I'll show you very shortly so here is the statue of Confucius a little bit blocked by the trees tree leaves but he's here the great philosopher Confucius also known by his Chinese name as Kongsi I'm going to walk back down to Chapman Square and I'll show you another prominent statue notoriously people are very frequent to cross the street against the light here so if you're driving be very careful of pedestrians who cross without the right-of-way [Music] [Music] okay it's red light but no traffic here so it's safe to cross so here I am in the center of Chatham square there's a lot of pigeons here being fed this right here is a memorial to people who have lost their lives and various Wars dedicated by the American Legion Post called 91 and here is a let me get behind the Sun here so it's not as bright I hope it's not too bright to see on camera but this is a statue of Lin's su but it's most commonly associated with the Fugees population of China and also was a major contributor against the end of the opium wars so I'm headed east on East Broadway it's called East Broadway because it's east of Broadway and this is the newer part of Chinatown settled by mainly immigrants from the Fujian region and the Fujio city many of them immigrating here from the eighteen 1980s to the 1990s due to the Cantonese population already being settled along Mott Street and the surrounding area but many of these people know how to speak Mandarin in addition to their native dialect from Fujian also they immigrated here because the Fujin EES dialect is unintelligible to the Cantonese dialects from Guangzhou and Blondo so it made it very hard for these immigrants to make a living and especially work for a Cantonese business because of the language barrier and cultural differences so instead they set up their own community here they also face discrimination from the Cantonese population and that a statue of Linton's a shoe that I showed you actually was erected by many of the population here in Chinatown of the from the Fujian East region whoo sorry about that a lot of the local bus companies also operate on East Broadway you see I'm not the only one sneezing around here it's warm out and the allergens are out in full force thankfully I'm not getting them that bad but many people have them a lot worse but the local bus companies here can take you to many destinations along the east coast for a very affordable prices I was able to get a bus ticket to Philadelphia and back for around $10 so that just goes to show you what kind of deals you can get here there's one of the buses now as you have to comment though that you have to be wary even though the prices are very affordable for these buses they may not always be up to these same standards as a more well-known company such as Greyhound or mega bus the last bus Chinatown bus that I took to Philadelphia had no air-conditioning I made a very uncomfortable here I'm walking or about to walk under the Manhattan Bridge and I know it gets very very noisy here which you're about to find out because the whole structure is made of metal there's a lot of these local shops wow that was extremely loud just due to the acoustics in this area underneath the bridge there just vibrate and don't aunt don't end so now I'm going to make my way up north during the Lunar New Year this area gets very lively you'll have parades coming through and a lot of celebrations happening and I will comment that up until the early 1990s firecracker use was very common here people would throw them from their doorsteps due to the tradition of firecrackers scaring away the evil spirits but it was mayor Giuliani who abandoned the practice of firecrackers so not only can you get Cody was here but bottom now this area under the Manhattan Bridge you can get very very affordable produce here in my opinion this is one of the freshest places to get produce in Chinatown here's a new addition to the Chinatown neighborhood this Plaza at the beginning of the Manhattan Bridge is called the Forsyth Street Plaza it's a welcome addition addition and green space for the Chinatown community I'll just walk up the stairs here to give you a look of what it looks like here's the Forsyth Plaza and ahead of me is the Manhattan Bridge bicycle path the Manhattan Bridge bicycle path is infamous in this area because there's a blind corner and many people like to overtake going around the corner and then when someone else does the same thing coming from the other side it ends up being a very bad results so I always proceed with extra caution if I'm ever using my bicycle on the bridge here you got to be very careful because the bicycle traffic is very chaotic that woman just went on to the crosswalk a little bit even though the bicycle lane is facing the other way and you're not supposed to go up that way but it is what it is to the right of me is Sarah Roosevelt Park it's a very big park that stretches from Canal Street all the way to Houston Street it's about eight blocks long I always say so I'm actually not going to take a chance crossing the street here because of how chaotic it is I'm just going to walk up towards the street alongside Sarah Roosevelt Park that cyclists already has a whistle ready I'm sure he knows what's going on up there [Music] so I'm headed up to the northern boundary of Chinatown which is Grand Street looks like someone's having a difficult time cycling many people use the Manhattan Bridge to commute back and forth between Brooklyn and Manhattan maybe there's this pedestrian just walking out into the crosswalk without looking to the right almost causing a collision that pedestrian does not have right away because she's crossing with the up raised hand so I'm going to wait for the light before entering the crosswalk I wouldn't recommend jaywalking here because it's a two-way bicycle lane as well as two lanes of traffic here's kung fu tea a very famous bubble tea spot they have their award on the window they're the second best bubble tea in New York City here's another dumpling house this is a famous roast pork with rice spot it's closed on Mondays though so this is the northern end of Chinatown it's also home to another subway station the Grand Street subway station served by the B and D trains by eating a stallion I'll be making a left onto Grand Street and I'll make my way over to Mulberry Street to show you chinatown in that area along with Little Italy here's a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown over there is the Bowery Savings Bank the bank doesn't exist anymore but it was a very big bank back in the day walk signals on so I'm crossing and this van is stuck in the intersection because the driver didn't read the traffic lights close enough here's a site I don't like to see a bicycle that is locked up that is missing the front no I think the front wheels there but the back wheels missing and most of the parts are sabotage that's a neat looking piece of art inside the herbal tea store so now I'm only one block from Little Italy so the north along Mott Street is our more Italian businesses so the south is more Chinese [Music] so there is deep hollows reporte and mozzarella it's an Italian cheese store yeah now Manhattan's Little Italy isn't the only Little Italy in New York City although it is the most famous there are arguably other Little Italy's around the five boroughs such as Howard Beach in Queens Bay Ridge and Brooklyn Bensonhurst Staten Island has a lot of Italians Arthur Avenue in the Bronx is a very very live under no under known Little Italy one unknown here is Mulberry Street and now I'm on Little Italy here's the Kanoa King welcoming us to Little Italy a short scene on Rachael Ray and Ryan Seacrest's Capri pizzeria and restaurant the bar Christmas and New York little lady this is very very strange khalsa Streeters ill piccolo Buffalo excuse my Italian but I'm trying to practice my Italian I did take some Italian in school here's LAN Anya Ristorante Italiano the highest wave one of the highest-rated restaurants in Little Italy if you want to get another sense of Little Italy I do have another video where I walked Little Italy during the San Gennaro festival we'll get out there's the Ristorante da Gennaro the girls like you can get a lot of souvenirs here and now this is what I mean by Chinatown being with in Little Italy or vice versa because here's a dumpling and noodle house on Mulberry Street I need to sneeze again q sorry about that here's Guana not there here comes another one [Music] Ristorante Luna and now we're at the southern end of Little Italy with Canal Street this gelato looks very good month ago while that concludes it for my walking video of Chinatown and Little Italy hope you enjoy make sure to subscribe if you haven't already leave a comment below like this video and I'll see you next time and there's an intersection that's blocked that's the New York City for you see you later [Music] [Music]

Channel: ActionKid

Views: 140,786

Keywords: walking, manhattan bridge, food, shopping, tourist, fun, adventure, travel, new york, new york city, nyc, east river, lower manhattan, manhattan, chinatown, subway, n train, q train, d train, b train, r train, w train, 6 train, j train, z train, canal street, bowery, mott street, east broadway, chinese food, little fuzhou, explore, grand street, dim sum, jing fong restaurant, narrated, chatham square, doyers street, bloody angle, little italy, mulberry street, worth street

Id: mDMZSQE61Dk

Length: 53min 10sec (3190 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2019