When you're alone and life is making you lonely

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You can always go downtown.

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city. Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty.

Btw.. the lights ARE much brighter there …..

Or if you have a garden to focus on you can always go outside and get your hands dirty ? And refocus your mind ?

Do all American cities have a "down town" or is it just New York?

To be fair we call going into the city centre "Gan Doon the toon" or going down the town. It's where shops and bars and restaurants are.

For some of the smaller places, “downtown” (if it can be called that) is little more that a crossroads with a pub, a market, a church, a filling station, and a cluster of houses. At the other extreme, “downtown” covers an area of several square kilometers.

I smile every time I hear Petula Clark sing. She will be 90 years old this November.

You could feel even lonelier when your loneliness is emphasized by the cheerful surroundings that you are not a part of, although going to public places does keep you in touch with reality.

It is common with the larger cities and outside of those it varies with the size of the city/town and with the region; and very much so as you get in to the smaller to smallest cities.

Our little midwestern county seat farm burg of less than 10 thousand population has a downtown area along Main Street which is about 1/2 mile, 2/3km, long, plus a couple side streets, which have a couple buildings dating back to the 1840s.
Most of the downtown buildings along Main Street are the classic Victorian era brick and iron storefront style.
Some have obvious 1950s and 1960s remodeled fronts.

Even small midwestern towns of population less than 5,000, especially when seat of county government, will have identifiable downtowns, usually centered on the county courthouse.
Such as this one a county or two away from where I live,
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Carro ... 7981?hl=en

Some of the older to oldest small towns in the northeastern states, especially in region called New England, have a very different look without what the same style of 'downtown' as even a lot of the oldest towns in our midwestern region do.

Something it might be informational to do if the time and inclination are there, is get on Google maps for the US, and go around selecting different sizes of town and cities to zoom in on, select Satellite view, and then zoom in further and look around if Street View is available.

Landscape/region, population size, and city's age, can make dramatic differences in configuration of the smaller cities and towns.

Where I live downtown is as boring as white bread with nothing on it and the traffic is awful. Just like the rest of this so-called "city".

& if we don't have a downtown, we can watch the MTV cartoon called Downtown that was on in the end of the 90s

I remember being five years old and singing this with my mom when we were on our way to do some shopping downtown.

New York has at least four definite “downtowns”

1. Lower Manhattan

2. Midtown Manhattan

3. Downtown Brooklyn

4. Downtown Flushing, Queens

I live in the middle of downtown.

One thing that occurred to me is downtown isn't the same as it used to be. I remember as a small boy it being more colorful and exciting. Lots of interesting window displays. Street vendors. An organ grinder with a monkey. It had more of a Main St Disneyland feel. I caught the tail end of that. It subsided in the late 60s. Based on historic photos of where I live now, downtown used to be a lot different than it is now.

Saw the downtown change early as I grew up ..some real nice theatres they were very ornate . It was fun to window shop . There was even a army surplus store there at the very end of the nicer shops. Even a couple of jewelry store .
Fascinating place . Watched it die ….. neighbourhood dropped off stores closed in favour of second hand stores .. the one theatre closed the next turn into an Adult theater ..it was sad . New Ford Car dealer ship closed moved away.
Fond memories . Very bright at night on the weekends brilliant theatre marquee. New car lot was always very brightly illuminated .