New York, in ten easy points

[hermetic]

1. I completely fell in love with New York City. I had the same feeling of "I could live here very happily" as I did in Paris. I had a stronger feeling of that for New York than I did for San Francisco, and I've been in SF for over five years now. That said, there's no way in hell that I'd want to be anything less than comfortably middle class in

Comments

[matociquala]

I am so glad you love my part of the world.

What you describe in (4.) is one of the reasons why it's hard for me, as a Northeasterner, to really viscerally understand the levels of racism in other parts of America.

Which is not to say there *is* no racism here--there is; I've seen friends and colleagues deal with it; and it makes me furious. But the quality is different. That is to say, there is a poverty gap, an education gap, all the diseases of a sick society. But they're not insurmountable in the way I saw in Las Vegas. (ETA: hah, got it! In *general*, a woman or a person of color is judged by their class/professional markers before their skin color/gender here. In Vegas, I saw the opposite.)

Part of it may be that New York City had Harlem. And from Harlem, an entire culture grew. Not just a black culture, but a regional culture. And everybody in New York is the child of immigrants. (My grandfather, a New Yorker by education, was born in Sweden.)

And it is a city that belongs not to America, but to the world. Like London and Hong Kong--I'm not sure there are any others.

(It's one of the things I was trying to describe when you asked about Providence--the diversity is... taken for granted, in a way.)

Um.

I like my part of the world. Sorry. *g*

(When you come back, btw, if I am less deadline-riddled, I'd love to come down to the city and buy you lunch. Grand Sichuan in the East Village is aaaaaaaamazing.)

[hermetic]

I do love it. I do not doubt that I will live in that part of the world at some point. At least, I would very much like to. :)

I think your point about the order of judgment makes a good deal of sense, and accounts for the difference I felt.

I think that Paris and Los Angeles are near to that status, although the one is ineluctably French and the other American, both in ways that are transforming what that means for their respective nations. They live in the imagination of people the world over, and are becoming more and more cities that belong to the world. Of course, don't tell the French I said that.

When I go back, if you're free, I would love to go to Grand Sichuan with you.

[matociquala]

MMm yeah. I have not been to Paris, but what you say makes much sense to me.

[shandrew]

As a former Northeasterner, I can say that (4) is only alive and well in NYC and not in most of the rest of the Northeast. I merely need to step out to the suburbs to find places where as a minority, people stare at me and assume odd things about me.

Now, the nice thing about living in those areas is that the odd racial stereotypes are pretty weakly held since they're not based on strong evidence, so they are easy to overcome. It's a different situation from California, where racial stereotypes tend to be stronger but more harmless.