New York City

If it's been a while since you taxied from JFK to the island of Manhattan, bridging toward that dramatic Batman skyline, you may find yourself feeling as disoriented as a hubcap wobbling down the street in every wrong direction.

In the last decade, the city that always (and somehow never) changes has shuffled itself all around. Notorious urban tundras are now upscale shopping zones. Areas that were once synonymous with exclusivity have given ground to mass-market chains.

The Bowery—formerly a desolation boulevard of men's shelters, graffiti-spattered music clubs and restaurant suppliers—is now home to some of the city's haute-est hotels, cafes and designer outposts. CBGB has become a John Varvatos boutique. The scenic, circa-1830s New York Marble Cemetery—its decrepit walls etched with names of prominent citizens of yore—is now abutted by the four-year-old Bowery Hotel's shab-ulous lounge. The Meatpacking District—for years awash in the stench of slaughterhouses—has become the new SoHo. Where once were subterranean sex clubs, there's La Perla and Alexander McQueen. If Lou Reed's night crawlers walked the "wild side" today, they'd be hauled away faster than those new Intermix and AllSaints Spitalfields outposts sprang up.

In Midtown, "Ratso" ("I'm wawkin' heah!") Rizzo wouldn't have to worry about being clipped by a cab, thanks to Mayor Bloomberg's bike-path-happy administration: Times Square is now a pedestrian-friendly rest station aglow with jumbo LED screens, the Great White Way's new marquees. Harlem has cockadoodled to Red Rooster, one of the best and most abuzz restaurants in the entire metropolis. And not so quietly, Brooklyn has become the gastronauts' port of call (Prime Meats, Roberta's, Vinegar Hill House).

Even Wall Street, where the site of the beloved Twin Towers is being reimagined, has taken an unexpected turn—instead of wall-to-wall banks and electronics shops, it's home to luxury high-rises, leafy squares, specialty shops and boutique inns.

Sure, the city's too clean, too green, too smoke-free, for some native tastes. It's more expensive than ever to live here, but there's a reason—make that many—that those little town blues are melting away. Again.

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