A matter of inches
A few nights ago, I got off the subway one stop early, and on the short walk home I noticed several beautiful new condo buildings. I thought "How nice, maybe el ministro and I could buy into one of those someday soon," but then I looked around and realized that, although I was within blocks of my apartment, where I've lived for a year and a half, very little was familiar.
Life in New York, you see, is a matter of blocks, or perhaps subway stops. Every single institution I frequent is determined by my regular path from the subway to my apartment, and if my subway stop changed, the entire landscape of my world would be fundamentally altered.
On my way to the subway, I detour half a block to buy my bagels at the Bagel Factory, where Eddy call me "maestra" and have my bagel ready for me almost as soon as I walk in the door. Even the Arab owners call me maestra, or sometimes teacher, although they know I'm not a teacher anymore. They see me in my business clothes every day, and the few times they have seen me in going-out clothes, I thought their eyes were going to pop out.
If I have dry-cleaning to drop off, I go to the cleaners next to the subway, where the adorable woman who works there and I discuss novellas, and when I forget my receipt she can still find my clothes.
On the way home at night I do my shopping--at the Polish grocery store for fancy food, at the Spanish grocery store, where they speak to me in rapid, slurred, Dominican Spanish for staples, and at the Chinese grocery store, which is 200 yards fewer out of the way, when anything will do. Once I lost a book and could not for the life of me figure out what I had done with it--until the woman who runs the grocery store handed it back to me the next time I went in to buy pop.
Across from the Chinese grocery store, just down the hill from my apartment, there is the Spanish bakery, where they apologize as soon as I walk in the door if the baguettes are gone, and Luigi's pizza, where the counterman from Puebla flirts with me while his Italian supervisors interject with their Spalian.
All of these interactions are determined by my daily walk. A block or two in any direction, and everything changes--the butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker. I suppose I could walk back to frequent these businesses, if I moved, but the truth is that generally I wouldn't. Oh, I might make a special trip to the Bagel Factory, but eventually the crew would change, Eddy would leave, and I would be just another unknown face.
This does not happen in the suburbs, at least as I know them, or at least rarely. Most of the time you shop at mega-stores, and when you do develop these personal relationships, it is so very normal to drive 5 minutes to access any service that an extra 5 is not liable to change anything; loyalty is not defined by geography.
I'm looking at condos differently now, noting what is being built within blocks of my house, which developments would at least allow me to keep my subway stop, and hopefully part of my neighborhood as I live it, intact. This may not be possible. It seems likely that we will have to move when we are ready to buy. But when we do, I know where I'm going to visit before we move in--the bagel store, the grocery store, and the bakery.
Life in New York, you see, is a matter of blocks, or perhaps subway stops. Every single institution I frequent is determined by my regular path from the subway to my apartment, and if my subway stop changed, the entire landscape of my world would be fundamentally altered.
On my way to the subway, I detour half a block to buy my bagels at the Bagel Factory, where Eddy call me "maestra" and have my bagel ready for me almost as soon as I walk in the door. Even the Arab owners call me maestra, or sometimes teacher, although they know I'm not a teacher anymore. They see me in my business clothes every day, and the few times they have seen me in going-out clothes, I thought their eyes were going to pop out.
If I have dry-cleaning to drop off, I go to the cleaners next to the subway, where the adorable woman who works there and I discuss novellas, and when I forget my receipt she can still find my clothes.
On the way home at night I do my shopping--at the Polish grocery store for fancy food, at the Spanish grocery store, where they speak to me in rapid, slurred, Dominican Spanish for staples, and at the Chinese grocery store, which is 200 yards fewer out of the way, when anything will do. Once I lost a book and could not for the life of me figure out what I had done with it--until the woman who runs the grocery store handed it back to me the next time I went in to buy pop.
Across from the Chinese grocery store, just down the hill from my apartment, there is the Spanish bakery, where they apologize as soon as I walk in the door if the baguettes are gone, and Luigi's pizza, where the counterman from Puebla flirts with me while his Italian supervisors interject with their Spalian.
All of these interactions are determined by my daily walk. A block or two in any direction, and everything changes--the butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker. I suppose I could walk back to frequent these businesses, if I moved, but the truth is that generally I wouldn't. Oh, I might make a special trip to the Bagel Factory, but eventually the crew would change, Eddy would leave, and I would be just another unknown face.
This does not happen in the suburbs, at least as I know them, or at least rarely. Most of the time you shop at mega-stores, and when you do develop these personal relationships, it is so very normal to drive 5 minutes to access any service that an extra 5 is not liable to change anything; loyalty is not defined by geography.
I'm looking at condos differently now, noting what is being built within blocks of my house, which developments would at least allow me to keep my subway stop, and hopefully part of my neighborhood as I live it, intact. This may not be possible. It seems likely that we will have to move when we are ready to buy. But when we do, I know where I'm going to visit before we move in--the bagel store, the grocery store, and the bakery.