“How far is it from midtown and how late is it open?” (existential New York question)

American actor, writer, director, comedian and playwright Woody Allen wrote in “Examining Psychic Phenomena” (The New Yorker magazine on October 7, 1972, reprinted in the 1975 bookWithout Feathers):
 
“There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?”
 
“How far is it from midtown and how late is it open?” has been described as a typical New York-centric saying.
 
     
Wikipedia: Woody Allen
Heywood “Woody” Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an American actor, writer, director, comedian and playwright, whose career spans more than 50 years.
 
The New Yorker
Fiction OCTOBER 7, 1972 ISSUE
Examining Psychic Phenomena
BY WOODY ALLEN
There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Without feathers
Author: Woody Allen
Publisher: New York : Warner Books, ©1975.
Contents:
(...)
Examining psychic phenomena
   
Google Books
The Insanity Defense:
The Complete Prose
By Woody Allen
New York, NY: Random House Trade Paperbacks
2007
Pg. 119:
Examining Psychic Phenomena
There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?
 
Google Books
American Culture:
An Anthology
Edited by Anders Breidlid, Fredrik Chr. Brøgger, Oyvind T. Gulliksen and Torbjorn Sirevag
New York, NY: Routledge
2008
Pg. 205:
Let me begin by telling you the most New York joke that I know. It comes, of course, from the pen of Woody Allen, and it concerns the hereafter. There are really only two questions bout the hereafter, Woody Allen suggests: How long does it stay open? And can you get there by cab from midtown Manhattan?
 
Google Books
Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist:
How to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore
By Peter L. Berger
Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books
2011
Pg. ?:
I am reminded of that most New York statement by Woody Allen: “The question about the hereafter is not whether it exists. The question is how long it stays open, and whether one could get there by cab from midtown Manhattan.”
   
The Wall Street Journal
The Belief System of ‘Magic in the Moonlight’
The stars of Woody Allen’s new film talk about his faith—or lack of it
By DON STEINBERG
July 15, 2014 3:56 p.m. ET
“There is no question that there is an unseen world,” Woody Allen wrote in a 1972 New Yorker humor piece called “Examining Psychic Phenomena.” “The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?”