With mixed emotions, Pentimento writes about moving out of the city and coming back into it to take care of business:
'Still, I will miss New York terribly in so many ways. Most of all, I think, I'll miss New Yorkers. There is a beautiful kind of unspoken understandng among people of all origins here; people approach one another with a frank openness, mostly lacking in the preemptive suspicion and guarded hostility found elsewhere.'
As a Southerner I am intrigued by New York City. I have visited several times, but never long enough to call myself anything but a tourist. Nonetheless, sometimes I feel as if I'd like to live there, or better yet, be able to say I once lived there.
UPDATE: I remember watching Sophie's Choice, which was of course a sad and tragic movie, but the summer scenes of Brooklyn made think it would have been great to root for Pee Wee Reese and the Dodgers.
UPDATE 2: Your comments make me think of my own experiences in NYC. When I was a college freshman, I visited the City for the first time. I went with my college friend from Long Island, and we visited a classmate who lived in an apartment building next to Riverdale. I remember the big apartment building and the small apartments, her mother's commute downtown on the train, and the view of the Hudson. We walked down to the Hudson that cold day. It was beautiful, and I have a photo of it. At 18, it was a great adventure, along with the Radio City Music Hall, the World Trade Center, and all kinds of shops.
Do y'all like my 1932 photo of the sunset? (I had to say "y'all.") Click on it to magnify.
'Still, I will miss New York terribly in so many ways. Most of all, I think, I'll miss New Yorkers. There is a beautiful kind of unspoken understandng among people of all origins here; people approach one another with a frank openness, mostly lacking in the preemptive suspicion and guarded hostility found elsewhere.'
As a Southerner I am intrigued by New York City. I have visited several times, but never long enough to call myself anything but a tourist. Nonetheless, sometimes I feel as if I'd like to live there, or better yet, be able to say I once lived there.
UPDATE: I remember watching Sophie's Choice, which was of course a sad and tragic movie, but the summer scenes of Brooklyn made think it would have been great to root for Pee Wee Reese and the Dodgers.
UPDATE 2: Your comments make me think of my own experiences in NYC. When I was a college freshman, I visited the City for the first time. I went with my college friend from Long Island, and we visited a classmate who lived in an apartment building next to Riverdale. I remember the big apartment building and the small apartments, her mother's commute downtown on the train, and the view of the Hudson. We walked down to the Hudson that cold day. It was beautiful, and I have a photo of it. At 18, it was a great adventure, along with the Radio City Music Hall, the World Trade Center, and all kinds of shops.
Do y'all like my 1932 photo of the sunset? (I had to say "y'all.") Click on it to magnify.
11 comments:
Should you ever find yourself here, be sure to drop a line. I think your last sentence sums it up best, incidentally.
Oh no, Fallen, do you really mean that? On the one hand, there is a big wide world beyond "The City." But on the other, I can't help thinking sometimes, "What else is there?" That is classic New York parochialism, of course . . .
I moved to NYC (Brooklyn) circa 1970 from Ann Arbor. I was initially scared to death. At the same time, I was overwhelmed by the readily available culture--the theaters, the museums, the libraries, the stadiums and arenas, the concert halls, the restaurants and clubs.
I lived in NYC for the next 20 years. After Brooklyn, I lived in the Bronx, and then in Manhattan. I have now been living in SE Ohio for about twenty years, and I still miss NYC. Neither before nor after the decade-plus that I lived in the Bronx have I experienced a stronger sense of community, or "neighborhood."
NYC is a wonderful place. There is no place else remotely like it in America.
Rodak, I'm a Bronxite too - Morris Park, and later Woodlawn. You're right about community. I'm in upstate New York now and it might as well be the moon.
If I ever get to bring my family to NYC, I think I would like to meet you, my blogosphere friends, at an Italian restaurant unknown to tourists, the sort one sees in a movie. I enjoy our cyber fellowship very much, and I hope to meet you, if not on this side of the Jordan, then the other.
Kindest regards, TQ
TQ, that Italian restaurant will be in the Bronx. Just name the day.
Pentimento--
I lived on Bainbridge Avenue at 198th Street. The immediate neighborhood was largely populated by immigrants from Ireland and Eastern Europe--mostly the USSR, Yugoslavia and Albania, There were some Puerto Ricans, West Indians, and African Americans, but not many. As a Mid-Western "Yank," I was pretty much a minority of one.
Has anyone read Walker Percy's "The Last Gentleman?" It's set in NYC. The main character is a Southerner of good family, who lives in NYC, works the night shift maintaining the air-conditioners at Macy's, and spends most of his money on psychotherapy, until he meets a family of Southerners in town for medical treatment and ends up on the lamb.
There but by the grace of God go I.
Rodak, I was about a mile and a half north of you, in the east 230s in Woodlawn, a very Irish neighborhood with Italian and Albanian pockets. I know Bainbridge well. It's almost all Hispanic now, with some Albanians, Africans, West Indians, and a few hold-out Irish and young urban homesteaders. There's even a CSA-food coop down there now.
I've never read The Last Gentleman, but I'll put it on my list. It sounds great!
One should read every word that Walker Percy ever wrote.
People say they don't like NYC because it's dirty. I say, "look up."
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