I grew up in NYC. I've been here all my life.
This page is from THE PULSE #3 by Bendis and Bagley
The setup is a reporter is going to meet one of her contacts who works in the city morgue. She knows where he's going to be because she knows where he takes his breaks, in a alley behind the building where he works. At one point during the conversation she asks him why does he keep looking at his watch. He just says: "Wait for it..."
Then you get this page.
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I'm not daft. I've lived here all my life and NOPE no superheroes. But NY is a real place and when I was a kid as far as I knew I just wasn't in Manhattan enough to see THE AVENGERS or SPIDER-MAN. On the other hand, Metropolis and Gotham might as well have been Narnia. They werent real places and as silly as this sounds? It created a bit of a disconnect for me for a long while as a kid. (I got over it).
I used to work not too far from the building where the Quinjet crash landed in the first AVENGERS movie. Hell, one of those huge beasts from the movie nearly sideswipes the building I used to work in on Park Avenue.
My point is for some of us? This is where these heroes were created. Hell, I used to LIVE in Forest Hills where Peter Parker is from. They a part of NY as much as Grand Central or Yankee Stadium or Madison Square Garden. I get that it's not the same for everyone, especially if you don't live stateside or even in NY. Just needed to put this POV out there. A romanticized POV admittedly but a POV nonetheless.