I did that long ride up and down the Hudson again yesterday. And, I have determined, with apologies to Bob Dylan, that the answer is not blowin' in the wind, but rather that the answer is bike shorts.
At least certain parts of my anatomy hope so.
It really is a long ride. From my house, up to the George Washington Bridge, down to the Battery, and back up to my apartment is about twenty miles. It's nice down at the Battery, at least if you get there early enough, before the crowds of tourists descend and turn it into a seething mass of sweaty humanity; you can look out at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty in peace and feel hokey and patriotic. Proud to be an American and all that. Land of the free, home of the brave; the great melting pot.
Actually, the immigrant experience is more like the great tossed salad than the great melting pot, at least for the first generation or so.
What's also interesting, at least in New York, is that immigrant neighborhoods have a habit of staying immigrant neighborhoods; it's just that the immigrants themselves change. Perhaps the best example is how Chinatown has grown to engulf Little Italy and the formerly Jewish neighborhoods of the Lower East Side.