In the City
Growing up in New York City is a one-of-a-kind experience, though I haven’t always realized it. I used to pride myself on not feeling like a tourist when I go to the city, but now I envy people who get to see it for the first time. I will never be able to replicate that awed feeling as I take in the people, the buildings, the cars, the street merchants, the fast-paced environment. Watching tourists is my way to relive those emotions again.
My mother often says that tourists see more of New York City than residents do, and she seems to share that sentiment with White. As White himself wrote, places such as the Statue of Liberty are places “where many a resident of the town has never set foot.” (702) I have not been to a lot of “touristy” areas myself because I have the mentality that I can go whenever I want. It all comes down to the same question: I can go any time, so why go now?
On the other hand, living so close to the city is like existing in limbo. It is a constant weighing of the pros and cons of taking an hour train ride or staying at home. There are many places in the city that I have never set foot on or have simply passed through without a glance back. These areas almost seem out of reach; as there is no real need for me to visit them, I don’t make the effort. “There’s always tomorrow,” I say, but tomorrow turns into a week and a week turns into a year and a year turns into almost eighteen. Yet the vastness of the city does not escape me, and I am aware that there is so much happening here that does not even register as a blip on my radar. My goal, though, is a very straightforward one: “go to school, then go home.” In essence, I live with a commuter mindset, as White details on page 699.
What I always make the effort for is museums. My family and I go as often as possible; a few weeks ago found us at the Morgan Library & Museum after seven, when admission is free (we’re nothing if not opportunists). Museums perfectly mesh together privacy and companionship: you stare silently at a work of art with others surrounding you, none of you speaking but all of you sharing in a moment together. As White says, there is a sense of participation in the city, a sense of unity and belonging so singularly unique, which White calls the “supplementary vitamin.” (701) To me, it all comes together in the arts of New York.
However, this togetherness can even be found on packed sidewalks. The other day I saw a man pound his fist against a car that tried to run a red light. In the background I could hear several sighs and the repeated uttering of, “Only in New York City.” There is a uniqueness that exists here, as White points out, in that bad situations seem both normalized and minimized because everyone’s seen it all before (701). Friends and relatives that have visited from outside of the five boroughs have been shocked by what they perceived to be people’s rude and unfriendly demeanors. In reality, we’re all seasoned veterans and it takes much more to shock us.
The ending of “Here is New York” drastically changes its tone, jolting me out of a wistful feeling and plummeting me into near-hopelessness. White references the destruction of a city he once knew, calling his time the death of the city (710). But how much has been destroyed since then? How much has been torn down and built upon? The same way the human body rebuilds itself every six months, so, it seems, does New York City. We are not walking among a world White once inhabited, nor one that will exist fifty years from now. His last few paragraphs awakened in me a stark realization about the inevitability of change. Just as White clung to the city he knew, I now want to capture the New York City I know today before it stops existing tomorrow.
