Out Here In The World

I was really excited when GMon'y picked New York City for this week's topic. It's the birthplace of myself and my brother, the first place my parents lived after they got married, the place I went to college, the place where I had my first job and apartment, and the place I became the fully realized Girl Friday I am today. Whenever I see images of New York on TV, I feel instantly homesick. I simply love the place. Yet lately, I have been telling all of my close friends and family that I would never live there again. Initially I thought I would write this entry to explain that although I love New York dearly, there are so many reasons I need to leave it behind. But after reading posts by my fellow blogettes, I feel the need to revisit a few of the many reasons I do heart New York.

As Girl Wednesday mentioned, there are a lot of jobs available in New York. This is largely because most professional industries are based in New York. This situation lends itself to a cutthroat attitude that some may find off-putting, but I like that "in it to win it" quality. I have lived in many different parts part of the country; I can tell you that the New York workplace has a sense of urgency that is unrivaled. Now, it's not nice when people are jerks, of course; and many New Yorkers probably take it too far. But I like being held responsible for my performance, for feeling I have no choice but to be the best. Because the moment I don't, there is a young, eager college grad waiting right behind me. I haven't felt that way the other cities I've worked in, and I have missed it.

Another thing I love about New York that I have to say, I don't think about very often, is its history. One can't even begin to list all of the important things that have happened on that tiny island. And when you live there, you are a part of it. Walking by landmarks, sitting on benches, even eating at restaurants, you are experiencing the past, every single day. In that sense, there's not really another American city like it. Right or wrong, you feel incredibly significant in New York, because you are around so much that is significant.

Which brings me to my last point. One day, when I was 17 or 18, I was walking down the street in lower Manhattan. There was a young boy who looked to be about seven years old, vigorously pushing a stroller with a baby in it down the street. His mother was running alongside him, attempting to rein him in. He didn't want to give up the stroller. He exclaimed, "You never let me push it!" His mother said, calmly, "You've pushed it lots of times." He grew frustrated and replied, "Ugh-- that was just the lobby. I mean, out here in the world." I really enjoyed witnessing this encounter. I knew exactly what he meant. Among the bustle of people and things on Fifth Avenue, you really feel like you are out in the world. Have you ever felt restless? Like you were missing something? In New York, you don't. And there are some people who really like that feeling. For others, they like it for a certain time in their lives, as I did in my early adulthood. Daily life can be tough and it isn't always pretty, but there is still something undeniably great about living in New York. I'm usually not a fan of any philosophy that dictates that you need to have experienced a situation firsthand to appreciate it, but I think that is the case with New York City. It's easy to see that it can be dirty, unsafe, crowded and hectic. Its magic is harder to articulate. 

NYC

We are all writing about NYC this week. And, although I know many of my fellow blogettes are from the Big Apple and have fond memories and experiences, I have to say that I align my view more with GTuesday and perhaps my views extend even further. Although visiting New York City has been and can be a lot of fun I remember being completely shocked last year when I visited NYC for the first time since I was a child.

When you don’t live on the East Coast, typically the TV images you see of NYC usually involve New Years, TRL, Macy’s Parade, Sex in the City, etc. Sometimes you might see a movie that is based in New York or has a scene or two in the city. Things that come to mind are streets full of taxis, big crowds swarming across intersections, and very distinct areas of the city.

Last year I visited New York for the first time in over fifteen years. I was really quite shocked at my visit. One of the things that stuck out vividly was all the trash on the streets and the strange smell of the city. I had a hard time getting past this. Do people have such little regard for their city that they see trash everywhere and don’t do anything about it? Or worse yet, are the trash-throwing culprits? I also would have a very hard time living in New York and not help but struggle knowing you were only a number among the millions of people who live there.

My idea of a great quality of life is spending time with my family when I get home from work, not having to battle traffic for hours or take long commutes to get home. My primary focus in life isn’t my career but rather making an impact and difference with the people whom I love most. I would rather give up a career move to improve the relationships with my family. I don’t care much about celebrity gossip or seeing famous people strolling about; I would rather focus my time and energy on the people who matter the most to me. I love the fact that we didn’t have to lock our doors when we were growing up and my parents felt safe when I would ride my bike around my neighborhoods. I enjoy fishing, hiking, camping, watching the stars from your backyard at night – none of this would be possible if you lived in the city. I have a hard time imagining I could really enjoy raising a family in a large city.

I don’t mean to be critical of other people’s decision to live in NYC, it is just not the lifestyle I would love to live. With all this being said, my impression is simply that – an impression. I am sure that if I had grown up in NYC my experiences would be completely different than the limited number of impressions I have had to the city. Reading GWednesday’s blog reminded of all the fantastic cultural experiences I didn’t have growing up in a small town. My interests and experiences align much closer to outdoor activities than cultural ones. So for now, I will leave the city life for others. I am happy and content being a 'country girl'. :)

They Say the Neon Lights Are Bright

I heard this guy on his cell phone, on the M5 bus tonight:  

"You know how when you get home you just want to chill?  Well I get home and my mom is like, 'He been here all day.'  I'm like, 'That motha-fucking nigga, he got to learn responsibility.'  He been crashing here and crashing there since 1997 word up!"

Ahhh..  Inhale.  Exhale.  I was on my way home from yoga.  The bus swerved.  An old man wearing an ascot, leaning on a titanium walker tripped sideways.  The loud-talking bus rider went on,

"Bro, I don't know if it's genetics or what, but I don't let no one sleep in my bed.  I'm muscular you know so I take up most the space!  But when I sleep with shorty yo, we fit just fine--HAAAA MARCUS BRO!!!  No but for real bro I got to get this cock sucker out of my apartment."

The very old lady behind me was whispering, "Shut the fuck up" over and over.

I'm not sure if this kind of thing (you know, these typical "real," New Yorkey moments that Robert DeNiro's always alluding to in interviews and American Express commercials) is a good thing or a bad thing.  You can't go on with your life sheltered from all grit, can you?  Admittedly, I could have done without this lyrical gangster's discourse.  

But then again, I could do without most things.  

I could do without coming home and knowing that if my neighbor went away and didn't take her garbage out then I probably have one of those sick, six-inch roaches with twitchy antennas waiting for me.  (Those things, I swear they stare right back at me and a mini-tumbleweed rolls between us).  I could do without smelling cigarette smoke and curry chicken whenever the person upstairs has a craving.  

Everyone on my floor can hear my toilet flush.  

Oh, and I could do without the constant subway delays and the even worse- ambiguous "earlier incident" announcements that purport to explain it.  On rainy days the subway tracks get too wet; in the summer they spark and start fires.  On foggy days the buses never show up.  

And then they hike the fares and raise your rent and ask you to work without benefits.  And soon you've been hand-to-mouth for as long as you can remember.  

So you take a big-girl breath and try to walk wherever you need to go.  On the way you pass a discarded mattress on the sidewalk, wrapped in plastic with duct tape and a sign that reads "BED BUGS."  So you cross the street, but before you get to the other side you are ankle-deep in sludge.  Bye-bye new suede shoes.

And then you see a teenager getting arrested before 10AM.

And you get the wind knocked out of you when the crowd around the Rockefeller Christmas tree gets too thick to pass through.

And then you see a woman who's fallen, lying on the ground and among the crowd around her is a passerby who's stretching to take her picture with his camera phone.  And that is not the first time I've seen that happen, by the way.

Want to do something in NYC?  Allot 45 minutes, minimum.  Doesn't matter where you're going.  Grocery shopping?  The simple act so simple it's practically a God-given right-- of purchasing food for the intent of survival?  Good luck.  My neighborhood grocery store is a ground zero of guerrilla warfare.  I do not know where these old Upper West-Side ditties learned their dirty-fighting tricks.  They will use anything as a weapon- a sharp-edged crate of clementines can get you to the front of the miserable 8-items-or-less lane.  Yup, you gotta be quick in the Big Apple.

Above the grocery store is a dance studio.  "Five six seven eight!" Da-da-da-da-- tap tap!  It's the beginning bars of "God I Hope I Get It" from "A Chorus Line"!  My heart races for a second-- a play about resumes.  Could anything be more New York?

What kind of city thrives on the delicate and unlikely dreams of so many starry-eyed kids anyway?  I haven't lived here long enough to know the odds of "making it."  But I know they're slim.  And if you leave for a different town, are you giving up on your dreams?   

...The glitter rubs right off and you're nowhere....

Now, I can knock it all I want, but when I do a career search for various cities, I have to say, New York City by far has the most open positions.  At least in my field.  And it's not just that.  It's not just that there are jobs here, it's that everyone wants them.  If you're working, you're doing a job that a dozen other people would die to do.  People here push forward and scratch for more.  Your career is the pulse of your day.  It sends you out into the twists of the transportation system like a little oxygen bubble coursing a vein.  People are doing what they love, or are striving to, because they wouldn't be living in this God-awful, uncomfortable city just to pass time and spend money.  People come here because of work.  Every day on the street, on the trains, in the halls, in the elevators-- everyone is reaching and pushing to move around.  

We're so close to where we want to be, we can taste it. 

...And there are perks.  You can get a manicure at 10PM.  You can grill Korean beef strips and within an hour slurp Vietnamese cow-cartilage soup.  You can walk under the giant snowflake-shaped Christmas lights on Mulberry Street and be serenaded by the maitre d' of the Italian restaurants.  You can sample red-bean cookie shaped desserts in Chinatown (Girl Friday didn't like those so much, but I still dream of it).  

If you go to an amped-up movie premier (i.e., "X-Men") you can wait for hours with hundreds of other crazies and then race into the theater when they swing open the doors so that you and all your friends can sit together-- this might involve running up the down escalator.  

You can walk for hours and never really see a deserted street.  You will see trees and cobblestones and art deco designs on old brownstone fronts.  You could get lost in Central Park or you could see the stunning red, orange and yellow autumn leaves that cover the ground in Washington Square.

And if you get your heel stuck in a subway grate, it's possible an old man will stop walking to grab your ankle and pull you out without even giving it a second thought.

Or if you fall as the city bus takes a sharp turn, an old lady might catch you- rather heroically- and then say, "Now you've got my back."

Or you can kiss a boy on the street and maybe- just maybe- a jolly, red-faced young man might come up and wrap his arms around you both and proclaim:  "This is love!  I know it when I see it!" 

Have I seen a roach on a subway car?  Yes.  Was my NYU friends' favorite past-time called "Jump Rat Alley," which involved going to a street in Chinatown where hundreds of rats were known to scurry between a dumpster and a pile of garbage bags all night long and trying to jump over the vile creatures without any of them touching their feet?  Shamefully, yes.  Have I gotten stuck on the subway, in between stops for longer than two hours while sweat from the forehead of the man next to me dripped on me?  Yes, it's all true.

BUT.  Have I seen Britney Spears in my neighborhood Sephora testing mascaras?  Yes!  

Maybe one of my favorite movies of all time, "Working Girl," left such a huge impression on me as a child.  The idea that a dopey girl from Staten Island with a bad perm can make it if she worked hard enough-- only in New York.  

Or maybe I've been permanently charmed by:  "Citizen Kane" or "Annie Hall" or "Miracle on 34th Street" or "Rear Window" or "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or "Funny Girl" or "Midnight Cowboy" or "The French Connection" or "The Way We Were" or "Three Days of the Condor" or "Saturday Night Fever" or "All That Jazz" or "Fame" or "Escape from New York" or "Trading Places" or "Ghostbusters" or "Wall Street" or "Big" or "Bright Lights, Big City" or "Green Card" or "Goodfellas" or "Six Degrees of Separation" or "The Family Man" or "Someone Like You" or "American Gangster" or "Reign Over Me."  

    

  

NY, NY

In an effort to shake things up on this blog; we're each addressing different perspectives and commentaries on the same topic each week.With this week's focus on the big apple, I find myself feeling similarto how I do about the city as a whole- intimidated. I do not share the same affection for the city as my friends. I tend to shy away from theglitz and fashion and 4 am last calls in favor of jeans, polo shirts,and on demand movies. I watched last week's premiere of mtv's the city (after all, bad tv is my true weakness), but I still could never envision actually calling manhattan home.

In some ways, I am fascinated by the glitz and glam; but I know thatit is not for me. My own big city seems itself too cold and urban, andwe don't even have sky scrapers. I like going home to tree linedstreets and my view of the neighborhood park. I like being able todrive into the countryside in under 30 minutes, and I like being closeto home. I like running into classmates on the street corner, and I like feeling as though this city of hundreds of thousands is just assmall as my own hometown. I like relatively clean public transportation, and I like that I didn't see any rats until I'd livedhere well over a year.

I am intimidated by rake thin models and the anonymity of the place.The noise and the construction are too much to counter thesurprisingly good tap water. The sheer volume of people and the fact that you can't really hesitate when walking down the sidewalk lest yoube plowed down by the pedestrian onslaught. I

couldn't do it; it is not for me. And the fact that others not only put up with it, but actually embrace it, fascinates me. So I will leave it to my other lovely bloggers to explain the joys ofthe place; I am still too busy on my quest to understand it.

Ben? Or Noel? Or Neither?!

I have a new best gal pal. And if she didn’t exist only in my TV, she would probably accuse me of stalking her. Because I would totally move to New York City just to hang out with her and her friends. They seem like fun. I could be there having Thanksgiving dinner with them, road-tripping across the country, and drinking coffee at Dean and Deluca. They seem to be having a great time and the only thing missing is me! Of course besides selling my house, quitting my job, and packing up my things to head to the land of Yankees (literal and Southernly figurative), I would also have to fire up the time machine. And set it for 1998.

I am completely (and very newly, and therefore sadly) obsessed with the show Felicity. Where the hell was this show when I was in college? Or maybe where the hell was I? It seemed like everyone I knew was watching X-Files or ER or both. The former of which, despite being extremely nerdy in college, I expressed no interest in. What was the deal with the smoking man? And why didn’t Mulder and Scully just get it over with? Seriously. But now, I know what I should have been doing instead of studying and pining for my lab partner. Watching this freakin awesome show.

It’s embarrassing to be closing in on the big 3-0 and be completely mesmerized by the doings of a scrawny, crazy, curly haired college girl. But I totally am. I have the biggest girl crush on Keri Russell. And I am not afraid to say that she should be with Noel. Not Ben. NOEL. And she never should have slept with that art student, although he was pretty hot, and I probably would have….But I do concede that it’s hard to say what should happen being that I am only as far as Season 2, Disc 2. I had to take a break from Netflixing them over the holidays since the family wanted me to get some movies. Movies?! How can they? Don’t they know I’ve been netflixing episodes at a rate of 2 per week for the last month. You have no idea how hard it is to wait three days for a disc (it’s a little remote here and the turnaround time is crap) only to stay up until midnight on a Tuesday watching 8 episodes just so I can return both discs and get two new ones! Sad I know.

Anyway, I had to spend my holidays with the likes of Juno (fab!), Wall-E (fab!fab!), and katherine heigl in the likes of 27 dresses (so not fab, she doesn’t even deserve caps in her name). (Oh, and as a side note, went and saw Rachael Gets Married – got so nauseated with the hand-held camerawork that I had to watch the last hour and half with my eyes closed. MommaMonday thought I was sleeping….not a bad idea…..).

But here I am, back in town, away from the family and my movie obligations, and I’m awaiting Season 2, Discs 2 and 3. They should be here tomorrow, so good thing I’m not GirlTuesday.

Will Julie forgive Felicity for “stealing” Ben? Will Noel sleep with the ditzy blonde on Felicity’s floor? OMG, I LIKE totally can’t wait to find out.

Sadly.