The Ryan Report – Episode 205 "When the Bough Breaks"

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So for most people, the classic New York movie is An Affair to Remember or Taxi Driver or Annie Hall or Manhattan or basically anything by Woody Allen. For me though, it's The Godfather 2 – especially those scenes about the young Vito Corleone down on Mulberry Street. It's just the total mix of people, the chaos, the patchwork system of stores, apartments, and carts in those scenes. It's a good reminder of how New York came to be… and how it still is.

If you just switch up the names of the stores and the languages being spoken, nothing's really changed. This city's still a complete mash of cultures shoved into a relatively small piece of land because everyone comes here.

Just take a walk around the city and you'll see burger joints next door to vegetarian restaurants, Indian food next to Ethopian food, Anime stores side by side with cathedrals. It can make for some fun date nights going around trying to sample the strangest cuisines you can find.

What got me thinking about all this was a recent case where Espo and I ended up visiting all these Czech stores. Czech food, Czech clothing, even Czech movies (one place had the Czech version of Ghost playing and their version of Demi Moore was even hotter than ours). It's always fascinating seeing the cultural differences. I mean, the wrapper we were using to track the vic's name came from this Czech lollipop that tastes like soap. Yeah, the thing that my Mom washed my mouth out with when I used bad words is seen as a tasty delight in the Czech Republic. Different strokes for different folks!

And not only is there a weird mish-mosh of different cultures here, but name the niche and they have a place that caters to it. Where else do you have restaurants that only serve doughnuts, cold cereal, or things that have been pickled? If you can dream it up, someone's looking to make it for you.

Me, I have a special fondness for Belgian waffles, especially after midnight. And in classic New York style, there's a stand down on Fulton Street that serves 'em twenty-four hours a day. Now, I'm pretty sure the ancient French dude who works there hate me – he pretends to not ever remember me and I pretend not to notice. But, hey, the fact that I can get a Belgian waffle at 2:00 AM from an angry Frenchman? That's what makes this city great!

Oh, by the way, remember those soap-flavored lollipops? I bet Espo he couldn't go through a whole bag and he's been going through them nonstop. I ended up losing twenty bucks and creating a monster – he's heading back tonight to buy more of them. Lucky that he's in the right town for homicide detectives who find themselves addicted to strange candy from foreign countries and that the Czech grocery on 47th and Ninth is open 24 hours…