New Yorker

Well, while I wait for Wedel to send me photos of our time in Providence [I brilliantly left my camera in NYC], I will share with my beloved readers a little bit about my slow conversion to becoming a New Yorker.

I have been up here just over two months and I have been quite surprised with the speed at which I have begun to assymilate into the routine and lifestyle of New York. One thing that really opened my eyes to this fact is a recent dinner I had with a very distant relative who lives in Jersey City, NJ. We had been making plans for several weeks to have dinner, and finally last I made the laborious trek on the exhausted PATH train to Jersey City. Having never been to Jersey, I was quite surprised at how extremely different it was from Manhattan/New York. I remember in my second year of architecture school I read LeCorbusier's book, Towards a New Architecture in which he talked of modern cities that would have 'towers in the park' where pedestrians would congregate and automobile traffic arteries would line the edges. Of course, nowadays this notion of urban planning has been completely discredited, except in Jersey City. Upon arrival I walked out of the PATH station and was greeted by very tall skyscrapers, a few cars, and a line of pedestrians filing into residential apartment complexes in the sky, ending their 30 minute commute from bustling Manhattan. I was shocked at how empty and lifeless the city felt in comparison to Manhattan. Nowhere were there street vendors, tourists, stores with people bustling in and out, or cabs barreling down the streets. It was dead, and I was shocked as to why anyone would want to live in this sterile enviornment. Sure, the view was nice from the apartment, but even that would soon be gone due to an impeding development of parking garages.

After gathering my senses back, I made my way to the apartment where I was greeted by elevators that were out of service because of an in-progress fire alarm. I took the stairs. I arrived at the appointed, hotel-style door and entered to meet my 'long-lost' relative and her two roommates, where I was quizzed on my background and how I found city life. All three of the roommates worked in Jersey and from what I gathered rarely made it into the city, something that completely shocked me. If you were going to live in the metro area, what other reason would you live there than to work and be in the city? My only reason for moving to the tri-state area was to live and work in NYC and I had never even thought about moving here to work in the suburbs. They all drove their cars to work, which seemed crazy to me. And of course, they thought it was crazy that I lived and worked in such a hectic place. There really are two types of people who live up here.

Anyways, another thing that I have noticed in my assymilation was when I was returning from my visit to Providence. As soon as the bus entered NYC I could feel a dramatic difference in the way that I felt. Sure, it was great to get up to P.town and visit my friend and I really enjoyed the city, but as soon as we hit the pavement of northern Manhattan I could feel the excitement level turned up a couple of notches. There was a buzz and an energy that just couldn't be rivaled by most any other city. All of the people on the streets, tourists snapping photos, children playing football, WASPS coming out of Gucci with their arms full of shopping bags, hipsters smoking cigarettes. It truly was an electric feeling, one which jumpstarted my soul. New York is alive, like no other city.