Possibly the City's Number One Fan

There is the loveliest story in the NY Times today about Yuki Endo, a young man who lives on the Upper Side and how he loves the city so much. The article, in fact, is titled, "He Loves New York, and It Loves Him Right Back," as Endo has befriended pretty much everyone in his neighborhood, from firefighters to security guards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from classmates to people he meets on the subway, as he lives the city. Endo is disabled, born without chromosome 18, which "makes it hard for him to speak clearly." Even still, for living in the city for 10 years, Endo might know the city better than most New Yorkers.

Yuki is fascinated with the tiniest of the city's intricacies: the toll-free number (#3333) dialed at subway pay phones to hear automated service information and changes; the elevator at the Met that people often confuse for a gallery room when the doors are open because of its wood paneling and display case; the long-forgotten news that earlier this month southbound F trains were operating on the D line from West Fourth Street to Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue, an announcement of which Yuki carried in his backpack.

Photograph from Robert Caplin for the NY Times