Driving through Manhattan

After I picked up our rental in downtown Manhattan, I had to drive back up to E. 101st Street to our great bed-and-breakfast to pick up the family before driving down to Richmond. Having my trusty Sony RX100 with me, I put it up on the steering wheel as if I were driving through Russia's traffic-crazy roads.
Except that I wasn't really expecting to have to defend myself in court with video evidence of another driver's offensive maneuvers. I just wanted to take some shots of New York life before we left the metropolis.
Below is a fairly typical scene - or at least I think it is: a doorman holding a cab door for a hotel guest without really communicating with him.

The next shot shows a beautiful fire-escape next to a building with new balconies and different fire-escapes. Surprisingly, the architecture didn't really fascinate me quite as much as I had expected.

As I climbed up 1st Avenue, the wealth seemed to be left by the wayside and signs like this one popped into my eye.

Then the most outrageous thing happened! I hadn't expected to have the entire avenue taken from me by a bus, but this one waited until I stopped for a red light (what was I thinking, right?) and then pulled through the intersection from my right side all the way over to the far left lane!

Think that's bad? His buddy in the next bus came up on my left and left me no room to escape. I was just waiting for Matt Damon to crash through the two buses in an old Renault 4 with the Soviet police force in pursuit!

As might be expected, nothing of the sort happened. I got up to Spanish Harlem and down to Richmond within a mere 8 hours!