I still get chills when I remember the first time that summer of 1960 when my fifteen year old self watched the skyline of New York City rise up as my family crossed the causeway
over the Jersey meadowlands and rounded that strange remaining lump of hillock. Ah, New York, that city of dreams and possibilities. This trip represented the fulfillment of a prize I'd won the previous year in a local essay contest, my prize money being used to help defray the cost of a hotel room and restaurant meals for my parents and myself. Exactly how this trip all came about I no longer remember, but my mother was always up for an adventure, and my father, who liked to drive places complied, though he never liked the city very much, having been there often during his teaching career to the annual conferences of the Modern Language Association. I think the city, so intense, so crowded, so huge compared to my hometown of Akron, frightened him a bit. But he was brave, and we went, and I fell in love.
I returned to the city many times after that, including one summer after my sophomore year in college outside Philadelphia when I lived with a friend from school in Mount Vernon and commuted to a summer job as a secretary for a huge international engineering firm based on Madison Avenue. While living in Northern New Jersey, the city was a frequent destination--we had friends from school who were New Yorkers and until she died by favorite aunt lived in the East Village and worked as an archivist at the NY Public Library. The city I remember was intense, dirty, sometimes threatening but always exhilarating, buzzing, a hive of politics, art, ideas, culture, and people. So many people! I recall nothing bad ever happening to me in New York.
Finally, this spring I returned, this time with husband and his husband's two sibs in tow--one who knows the city well, the other coming from the South with fresh but interested eyes. We all had a great time! The city has cleaned itself up over the past 20 years--the subway cars which used to be dark with graffiti are shiny inside and out, sidewalks are generally clean, and the homeless and the destitute somehow moved off the streets of midtown. Gentrification is rife and a building and tourism boom is on, as anyone who pays attention is well aware. Still crowds of people, New Yorkers are still as friendly as I remember, though gruff and short when stressed. More trees than I recall, better street facades, bicycles(!), but it's still hard to get a cab at times, and the buses are crowded and the subways a long hike down and back up as escalators and elevators are infrequent. But we managed in our age, camped out in our small rental apartment in the East Village. Saw some shows, did a couple of museums, need to go back.
May 2015
I returned to the city many times after that, including one summer after my sophomore year in college outside Philadelphia when I lived with a friend from school in Mount Vernon and commuted to a summer job as a secretary for a huge international engineering firm based on Madison Avenue. While living in Northern New Jersey, the city was a frequent destination--we had friends from school who were New Yorkers and until she died by favorite aunt lived in the East Village and worked as an archivist at the NY Public Library. The city I remember was intense, dirty, sometimes threatening but always exhilarating, buzzing, a hive of politics, art, ideas, culture, and people. So many people! I recall nothing bad ever happening to me in New York.
Finally, this spring I returned, this time with husband and his husband's two sibs in tow--one who knows the city well, the other coming from the South with fresh but interested eyes. We all had a great time! The city has cleaned itself up over the past 20 years--the subway cars which used to be dark with graffiti are shiny inside and out, sidewalks are generally clean, and the homeless and the destitute somehow moved off the streets of midtown. Gentrification is rife and a building and tourism boom is on, as anyone who pays attention is well aware. Still crowds of people, New Yorkers are still as friendly as I remember, though gruff and short when stressed. More trees than I recall, better street facades, bicycles(!), but it's still hard to get a cab at times, and the buses are crowded and the subways a long hike down and back up as escalators and elevators are infrequent. But we managed in our age, camped out in our small rental apartment in the East Village. Saw some shows, did a couple of museums, need to go back.
May 2015