Dane St-Cyr
=======================The Saga of Dane St-Cyr===================
On May 24, 1990 I was born in Brooklyn, New York. Since then I have been to many places and seen many things, but I have developed an identity anchored to my birthplace of New York City. Through many trying times and experiences, I have come to identify myself as a New Yorker.
I lived the first few years of my life in Brooklyn, before traveling to the other side of the country and settling in California. Although this was for just a short period of time, I feel as though it is important to note that my whole life has not been spent living in New York City. After a short period of time in California I moved back to Brooklyn, where my father owns and operates a pizzeria. We all know that pizza is just about as New York as anything can get. Living in Brooklyn for the earlier years of my life, my family and me moved to Staten Island, which is often looked down upon as being the suburbs and not a true part of NYC. It is here where I started my schooling and would be enrolled in catholic school, all the way up to my H.S. graduation just a year ago. The question remains though of when I became a New Yorker. This exact time is hard to pinpoint since I was born in New York and have become reacquainted with it several times. Although this is all true, I can safely assume that I truly became a New Yorker when I gained an appreciation for the different cultures that exist within it. I would say this was sometime during my sophomore year of H.S. when my family moved back into the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. It is during this time that I really started to travel in-between boroughs, going to school and visiting friends in Staten Island, living in Brooklyn, and taking trips to Manhattan on the weekends to hangout and do various activities. I began to appreciate New York City as a whole, when I left my small isolated community and branched out to see the larger scale of things.
Now that I go to Brooklyn College and live on Staten Island once again, I still have that same appreciation. I see the neighborhoods around my school and see how they are vastly different from my own. From the people, the cultures, the food, and even the architecture I am able to identify several differences. But in these differences we all become one entity, for we are the melting pot. As I drive from my house in Grant City, Staten Island to my school in Flatbush, Brooklyn, I see just some of the diversity that makes New York City what it is. I believe being a part of this is responsible for giving me such an open mind to new ideas and beliefs, which have continuously allowed me to shape and alter myself into the person that stands here today. An important development for me was leaving the community that I know in Staten Island, which mostly consists of very Americanized Italians, and meeting and befriending people that weren’t born in this country and are of cultures that are very different than my own, such as people of Jewish or Bengali descent. It is this ability to socialize, interact, and learn from a multitude of people from different backgrounds that makes someone a true New Yorker.
Well done!