My Two New Yorks

I was born in New York City, and spent the first years of my childhood here in Brooklyn, and now, am back in Brooklyn for the first years of adulthood. For me, New York City has always encapsulated a sort of duality. There’s Brooklyn–or really, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx–and Manhattan. From an external and superficial perspective, New York City is Manhattan. Manhattan is where you find yourself absolutely dwarfed by the skyscrapers on either side of you or blinded by the pulsating array of lights in Times Square. It’s where the pictures for the postcards are taken and the movies are filmed, and where the famous shows are performed and the fine restaurants are. It’s also where the multitude of well-dressed and powerful people flow into and out of their imposing office buildings and to the subways and taxis and coffee shops and sandwich carts.

If Manhattan is the gleaming surface of the giant machine that is New York, the outer boroughs are the mechanical underside. This is where the city begins to feel like a home–a home for lots and lots and lots of people. Where your life is pushed right up against the life of the next person. In short, it’s where New Yorkers are.

I feel that the dialectic of Manhattan and the outer boroughs is reflective of the dichotomy between New York and the New Yorker. ‘New York’ is the hustle and bustle and bright lights of Manhattan, but the ‘New Yorker’ is only found in the jumble of humanity that is the outer boroughs.

After reviewing the posts of many of my classmates, I feel compelled to embed a video that speaks to my relationship with my city. So, please take a moment to appreciate a small part of a masterful work that does so much to bring the New York and the New Yorker together: Annie. Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/ADWo3q8GKaA