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The giant Manhattan television studios where Toscanini's NBC Symphony once played now sit empty most of the time, while sitcoms cloned and canned in Hollywood, and the Johnny Carson show live, preempt the airways from California. Tin Pan Alley has moved to Nashville and Hollywood. Vegas casinos routinely pay heavy sums to singers and entertainers whom no nightspot in Manhattan can afford to hire. In sports, the bigger superdomes, the more exciting teams, the most enthusiastic fans, are often found elsewhere.
曾是托斯卡尼尼全国广播公司交响乐团演出场所的巨人般的曼哈顿电视演播厅，现在经常是空无一人，而好莱坞大量生产出的情景喜剧和约翰尼·卡森节目的实况转播却占满了加利福尼亚的广播电视发送频道。美国流行歌曲创作发行中心从纽约的廷潘胡同转移到了纳什维尔和好莱坞。拉斯韦加斯的赌场经常出高薪聘请曼哈顿没有哪一家夜总会请得起的歌手和艺员。而体育运动方面，那些规模较大的体育馆、比较激动人心的球队以及热情最高的球迷们，往往都出现在纽约以外的地方。
New York was never a good convention city - being regarded as unfriendly, unsafe, overcrowded, and expensive - but it is making something of a comeback as a tourist attraction. Even so, most Americans would probably rate New Orleans, San Francisco, Washington, or Disneyland higher. A dozen other cities, including my hometown of Seattle, are widely considered better cities to live in.
纽约从来都不是召集会议的好场所--因为那儿少友情.不安全，人口拥挤，消费高昂--但现在它似乎正在一定程度上争回其作为旅游胜地的地位。即便如此，大多数美国人对新奥尔良、旧金山、华盛顿或迪斯尼乐园等地的评价可能还是高于纽约。人们普遍认为，还有十几座其他城市，包括我的家乡西雅图，都比纽约更适于居住。
Why, then, do many Europeans call New York their favorite city? They take more readily than do most Americans to its cosmopolitan complexities, its surviving, aloof, European standards, its alien mixtures.
那么，为什么有许多欧洲人称纽约是他们最喜爱的城市呢?他们比大多数美国人更欣赏纽约这个国际大都市的五彩缤纷的生活，它那残存的、独此一家的欧洲社会准则以及它那众多外来民族混杂而居的社会。
