What Is It About New York?

I have not always been a New Yorker my whole life, but what exactly defines a New Yorker anyway? I was born in Manhattan and lived in Astoria with my grandmother until I was about five years old. My parents were busy working in the bustling city to save up money to buy their first home. My sister was old enough where she did not need a babysitter, but too young to take care of me, so my parents decided it was best if I lived with my grandmother for a few years. Living with my grandmother who did not speak the native language here, made it a little tricky to get around the city. As a child, I did not really have the chance to leave Astoria to see the rest of New York. After I graduated from kindergarten, it was finally time to move to Poughkeepsie and reunite with my family. I stilled visited the city that never sleeps almost once a month, during the twelve years I lived in the Hudson Valley. We always came out to buy our oriental groceries whether we drove to the over-crowded Chinatown, or the quieter-version, Elmhurst. To others it might seem strange to drive two hours away just to buy some vegetables and Chinese cooking sauce, but to my family it was normal. It felt like driving to the Shop Rite down the street; it was our routine. But I never thought I would move back down to go to college here. I was not the biggest fan of New York City until a few years ago; it is smelly, dirty, and over-populated yet there is something compelling about the city that still attracts thousands of people every year.

I did not realize how special New York City is until the last recent years. Before that, New York City was just a place to run errands for my family: buying groceries, visiting the family, and going to the dentist. Most, which occurred in Chinese-populated areas like Chinatown, Elmhurst, and Flushing. This is most likely one of the reasons why I did not like coming down. I hate being pushed around and touched by the over whelming crowds around me on the streets of Chinatown. In addition, I only stayed within these areas of the city every time we came to visit, so I began to feel a little bored even though these places provided me a sense of familiarity and comfort. In addition, New York City is not the perfect city you see on shows like Sex in the City or Gossip Girl. There are garbage bags and litter covering the sidewalks, hobos occupying the street and the subway stations, the never-ending noise of ambulances, fire trucks and honking, and the not-so-friendly people you encounter at least once during your day.

However, once my sister started to go to college at New York University, she got to know the city better and started taking me out to explore with her. She took me to some concerts, my first and only Broadway show, local restaurants, Central Park, the Highline, and one of my favorites, food festivals. My sister worked for the food truck, Coolhaus for about a year, so she got involved with a lot of food truck and food vendor events, which meant free delicious food like Korean fusion tacos to gourmet grilled cheese for me to devour. I discovered that there was more to city life than purchasing Asian fruits and vegetables. There are events going on all the time somewhere in the city, a person can never be truly uninterested if they went out and explored. Even a whole lifetime is not enough time to discover and search for all the nooks and crannies of New York City and I think that is truly amazing.

It never ceases to amaze me how many different types of people live in one city. Beside ethnicities and backgrounds, there are also so many different personalities and characteristics of New Yorkers. You will never find two of the same people here. Living in a suburban area for most of my life, you do not see that much diversity and most of the time, people with the same ethnicities would stay together. However in the city, I see everyone talking and befriending each other even if they look like completely opposites of each other. Going to one of the most diverse colleges of the country, I have met so many different people within the last month; a transfer student from China, a girl who was born and lived in Poland until high school, an artist, a musician, a math-lover, a Netflix binge watcher, a movie-lover, and the list goes on.

If you ask my ten years old self where would I be for college, I probably would have told you that I would be dorming somewhere in upstate New York where they make sure you weigh enough so the wind and the snow storms cannot blow you away. Never would I have thought that I would return back to the place I was born and live in an apartment in the busiest part of New York City, Manhattan. Even though there are restless nights due to the drunken noisy people in the downstairs bar or the never-ending sirens, I love living here and I cannot imagine myself anywhere else. Even in the future, if I move into the countryside to raise a family, I hope to find myself returning back to the concrete jungle. Or if I ever move elsewhere to work and I do not know what the next step of my life is, I will return to New York City where I know the answers lie. New York City is not flawless, it has its bad qualities like very other city, and it is definitely not the cleanest city, nevertheless New York City is home and people always return back to their homes.