New York, NY: It's a hell. of a town.
Feb. 26th, 2007 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfieldWhen I was looking for a job right out of college, I eventually narrowed my search to two large east coast cities: New York, NY and Washington, D.C. It seems fortunate now that I wound up in the nation's capital, because I've always felt uncomfortable in New York City in a way that I've been unable to articulate until now.
Let me preface this by saying that there is a lot to love about New York[1]. It provides endless opportunity for employment, entertainment, education and good-spirited mayhem. I have many friends and family members who either live or have lived in the city and maintain a strong sense of loyalty to it. For its attitude and aspirations it stands as a worldwide symbol of everything that is awesome about America.
Unfortunately, it is also a worldwide symbol of everything that sucks about America. Toughness turning to frigidity; confidence stiffening to arrogance, commerce bending to avarice -- name a deadly sin and New York can put a jingle to it.
I can handle these large abstractions, because that is what is required of all Americans. But the city affects me on a personal level. In the city that never sleeps, I feel suffocated by all that consciousness.
Walking down any street in Manhattan makes me feel assessed, judged, evaluated constantly. I feel like every time I enter a restaurant, every time I leave a store, with each glance from a passing local, people are determining whether I am "cool" or not.
It is, basically, like high school.
Don't get me wrong. Washington has its share of elitists, too. But the D.C. elitism is intellectual and ideological. New York's elitism is intellectual but is more pointedly creative and aesthetic,[2] and it is this subjective power that makes me paranoid.
Put simply, D.C. is about the constant shifts between perception and reality: can we make people believe what we want them to believe? New York is about the shifts between art and reality: can we make people feel what we want them to feel?
Beliefs are strong and rigid and hard to change, and so those district denizens who work in social, economic or national politics learn to "agree to disagree" and maintain a low-level murmur of mutual distrust. Feelings are more fragile and malleable but are as deeply connected to our sense of who we are; feelings hurt more when they are exposed.
So there is some fear in me as I turn from street to avenue -- fear that my shoes are "last year" and my iPod isn't an iPod and by the way doesn't have any Radiohead on it -- and it seems like New Yorkers can smell fear. to the I am buoyed only by the knowledge that New Yorkers are actually too self-absorbed to even notice me, much less judge me. I should consider myself lucky that they don't actually step on me as they make their way to wherever they're going.
When I finally get to where I'm going and when I'm with the people I can reasonably expect not to judge me, then I can relax and enjoy what New York City has to offer.[3]
Let me preface this by saying that there is a lot to love about New York[1]. It provides endless opportunity for employment, entertainment, education and good-spirited mayhem. I have many friends and family members who either live or have lived in the city and maintain a strong sense of loyalty to it. For its attitude and aspirations it stands as a worldwide symbol of everything that is awesome about America.
Unfortunately, it is also a worldwide symbol of everything that sucks about America. Toughness turning to frigidity; confidence stiffening to arrogance, commerce bending to avarice -- name a deadly sin and New York can put a jingle to it.
I can handle these large abstractions, because that is what is required of all Americans. But the city affects me on a personal level. In the city that never sleeps, I feel suffocated by all that consciousness.
Walking down any street in Manhattan makes me feel assessed, judged, evaluated constantly. I feel like every time I enter a restaurant, every time I leave a store, with each glance from a passing local, people are determining whether I am "cool" or not.
It is, basically, like high school.
Don't get me wrong. Washington has its share of elitists, too. But the D.C. elitism is intellectual and ideological. New York's elitism is intellectual but is more pointedly creative and aesthetic,[2] and it is this subjective power that makes me paranoid.
Put simply, D.C. is about the constant shifts between perception and reality: can we make people believe what we want them to believe? New York is about the shifts between art and reality: can we make people feel what we want them to feel?
Beliefs are strong and rigid and hard to change, and so those district denizens who work in social, economic or national politics learn to "agree to disagree" and maintain a low-level murmur of mutual distrust. Feelings are more fragile and malleable but are as deeply connected to our sense of who we are; feelings hurt more when they are exposed.
So there is some fear in me as I turn from street to avenue -- fear that my shoes are "last year" and my iPod isn't an iPod and by the way doesn't have any Radiohead on it -- and it seems like New Yorkers can smell fear. to the I am buoyed only by the knowledge that New Yorkers are actually too self-absorbed to even notice me, much less judge me. I should consider myself lucky that they don't actually step on me as they make their way to wherever they're going.
When I finally get to where I'm going and when I'm with the people I can reasonably expect not to judge me, then I can relax and enjoy what New York City has to offer.[3]
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[1]
Date: 2007-02-26 10:22 pm (UTC)Maybe it's possible that my mother, born on the south shore of Long Island, imbued me with some of her native toughness, though frankly she is not what you would call hard-boiled. She is more accurately somewhere between scrambled and sunny-side up.
[2]
Date: 2007-02-26 10:22 pm (UTC)[3]
Date: 2007-02-26 10:28 pm (UTC)What inspired this post?
Date: 2007-03-01 07:51 pm (UTC)Re: What inspired this post?
Date: 2007-03-01 08:09 pm (UTC)Re: What inspired this post?
Date: 2007-03-05 04:43 pm (UTC)--EE