Everyplace in New York is supposed to matter
It's like the whole city is drenched in its own self-awareness. So much about itself, its own historical, and general, importance. Every street comes with a capital letter and some notion about itself. Every neighborhood drips with its nobility, even Harlem. The writers have wrapped every inch in importance.
My New York is the warm soapy fog that billows out of the vents of the laundromat, enveloping me for a moment on the cold street. My New York is a man on the subway with small, tight dreadlocks, thin wire glasses, and a short salt and pepper beard reading a magazine in such a way that I almost touch his hand and whisper "You look so kind. With a sometimes harsh intelligence, but so genuinely good. You remind me of english teachers I've loved." My New York is "TamalesTamales. TamalesTamales," in a thick drone as she pulls the corn husks out of the heater she keeps in a shopping cart.
How does the city do this? How does it make you want to know it, make you want to own its mythic proportions? How does it pull people into its sprawling, dirty, beautiful, nonsense? I do love New York. It's so preposterous.
My New York is the warm soapy fog that billows out of the vents of the laundromat, enveloping me for a moment on the cold street. My New York is a man on the subway with small, tight dreadlocks, thin wire glasses, and a short salt and pepper beard reading a magazine in such a way that I almost touch his hand and whisper "You look so kind. With a sometimes harsh intelligence, but so genuinely good. You remind me of english teachers I've loved." My New York is "TamalesTamales. TamalesTamales," in a thick drone as she pulls the corn husks out of the heater she keeps in a shopping cart.
How does the city do this? How does it make you want to know it, make you want to own its mythic proportions? How does it pull people into its sprawling, dirty, beautiful, nonsense? I do love New York. It's so preposterous.