Speaking of NYC, I'm about 2 hours from there (but grew up about an hour and 15 by train) and oddly, it's too far to just go in for a couple hours, but not far enough that it's a "vacation" so I don't go in all that much except for shows. I'm going to see Michael Schenker next week, and I have the day, so I thought I'd go see some landmarks in and around Irving PLaza/McSorley's. The old Fillmore is there, CBGBs, the Chelsea Hotel (Leonard Cohen lived there for a while, Nancy Spungeon - Sid Vicious' girlfriend - died there), the loft that Kiss used to use to rehearse, the Record Plant studio, Electric Lady Studios, etc. There's a ton of Bob Dylan shit in the Village, the cover site for Physical Graffit, etc. So I plotted a bunch of things out on Google maps...
...and it turns out I've seen most of them. Well, not the actual landmark, but for example, I had lunch with my family in Madison Square Park... and the Kiss loft was right there. I pissed in a McDonald's right next door. The Fillmore is a bank; I literally took cash out of it's ATM last time I went to McSorley's. CBGBs is a John Varvatos outlet store. The city is like a living skin that cuts, scabs and scars over and what was there is lost to time. It's kind of sad, really.