(no subject)
I'm in New York. I wouldn't say that I miss Chicago - I don't - but I miss a few of the consolations of living in the 'real' United States. I guess I could always move to Brooklyn but I have always thought there was a deep sinister darkness about Brooklyn, and I can't tell the difference between real Park Slope and actual Williamsburg and brokers' exaggerations, and I need to be in Manhattan for school, and all of these things combined means that we are living in Manhattan by default, and uptown at that, though really like everyone else, I would like to be downtown.
The other reason Brooklyn also bothers me is that it always seems to me like a place actualized by the admission that neither the young nor the impoverished have any relevant place in the real life of the city except inasmuch as they can bus tables, so why not - let's sequester them across a body of water. There was a depressing article in the Times in May, about young people trying to live in New York on a budget - living in the outer boroughs, working menial jobs, eating $2 plates of black beans and rice for lunch and skipping dinner and staying home at night to save money for rent, living in closets. It is unreal. And if you come here on the budget of a hedge funder or a European, the existence of poor young people scraping coins together looks quaint and charmingly gritty and really makes this a unique tourist destination you would love to come back to, doesn't it.
Anyway the point is that I find it really hard to forgive them for this and so when they are trying to get off the subway at rush hour I have stopped trying to make it any easier for them.
The other reason Brooklyn also bothers me is that it always seems to me like a place actualized by the admission that neither the young nor the impoverished have any relevant place in the real life of the city except inasmuch as they can bus tables, so why not - let's sequester them across a body of water. There was a depressing article in the Times in May, about young people trying to live in New York on a budget - living in the outer boroughs, working menial jobs, eating $2 plates of black beans and rice for lunch and skipping dinner and staying home at night to save money for rent, living in closets. It is unreal. And if you come here on the budget of a hedge funder or a European, the existence of poor young people scraping coins together looks quaint and charmingly gritty and really makes this a unique tourist destination you would love to come back to, doesn't it.
Anyway the point is that I find it really hard to forgive them for this and so when they are trying to get off the subway at rush hour I have stopped trying to make it any easier for them.