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September 22, 2004
A SLICE OF NEW YORK LIFE
I've had two really unexpected experiences in the last 24 hours -- one that sucked, and one that was kind of cool. The one that sucked actually led to the cool one, so I guess it wasn't all that bad. But it means that to tell you about the good one, I have to by necessity at least allude to the bad one. So bear with me.
I found myself at an auto repair shop in my neighborhood this morning, after the unexpected experience of last night. (There is nothing that'll get your adrenalin pumping faster than slightly pressing your brakes a little on the way home from work, just to slow down a little as you round a curve at 50 mph... and meeting no resistance -- is there?) Now, I should explain that while technically I do live in suburban Westchester County, my city borders New York City, and has far more in common with the Bronx than it does the tonier enclaves in the more northern parts of the county. I've complained before that the average price of a home in Westchester is $575,000; this figure would in fact be quite a bit higher if not for all the $240,000 tenements in my neck of the woods.
As a result, many of the neighborhoods in my city are rougher than a paunchy yuppie should probably feel comfortable in. Add in the fact that all of my friends in this area live either across the Hudson in Rockland County or in those aforementioned tony suburbs further north, and what you get is that I've been in this particular apartment for three-plus years now, and other than knowing where the grocery store, post office, and train station are, I have not ever really checked out the very city in which I live. The bars I go to are either up north or in Manhattan; same with the restaurants I frequent. Since I am at work more often than I am home, I selected doctors and a dentist who have offices closer to my office than my apartment. In other words, I don't know this town I live in at all -- and if it were not for the fact that my car pretty much should not have been on the road, I wouldn't have been going to a mechanic here either.
So I get in first thing in the morning after crawling my car across an empty shopping center parking lot, and the guy tells me that they will have the several hundred dollars worth of repairs done in about 90 minutes to 2 hours. I asked him where the closest place was that I could buy a paper and maybe get some breakfast; he pointed me down two blocks to one of the main drags in town, and said there was a coffee shop on that street about a block to the right. Having no other option, I sojourned off to find breakfast on an avenue only yards from the border with the Bronx.
I've said many times that I do not like New York; I still don't, and I never will. It's just not for everyone, and I am one of those with whom it just doesn't agree. However, even I am willing to concede that there are things and atmospheres here that you will never find anywhere else in the world. One of those things is the diversity. Other cities have ethnic neighborhoods, sure. But nowhere else do they have every ethnic neighborhood, often stacked on top of one another. And as I wandered down this avenue this morning, I discovered that my city has a bustling ethnic atmosphere that I never even knew existed.
I walked past about four Irish pubs and restaurants on the way; this in itself is not surprising, except that they were real Irish, not American Irish. I went into a convenience store to get a New York Daily News, and there were collection cans for sending money back home to Ireland, hand-made flyers advertising babysitting "by a real Irish mother," and Celtic music on the radio. And it wasn't for show; everyone in there, from the guy at the register to the old woman in line in front of me, to the five year old little girl with her mother behind me, all spoke in thick Irish brogues. I had no idea there was an enclave of first generation Irish immigrants only five minutes from my place!
So I kept walking, past the outdoor fruit stands and laundromats, and past at least two bodegas where the signage was entirely in Spanish. I passed an Ethiopian place and an Indian grocery store. And then I got to the coffee shop. It was everything you think of when you think of a Bronx coffee shop... a hole in the wall, very dirty looking, a couple of guys leaning up against the lamppost outside, looked like the floor hadn't been mopped since 1973... the breakfast menu on painted signs above the short-order counter... and everything fried you could think of on that menu. I stepped inside, and stepped into immigrant Americana.
I ordered my $3.25 breakfast (2 eggs over easy, three slices of bacon, toast, home fries, orange juice and coffee -- the cheapest meal I have ever found in this state), and sat down at a nastily dirty booth to read my paper. As I sat there, I overheard conversations in American English, Spanish, Russian, something that sounded like something Caribbean, and that delightful Irish brogue. The short-order guys behind the counter were all Mexican. The clientele was every color under the sun. And as the guy brought me my big old plate of food (little of which I intended to actually eat; I've been doing very well in the last two weeks of watching my diet and eating smarter... and there were no healthy options on that menu), I just thought to myself...
"Even as dirty as this place is and as skanky as I think this food's gonna be, this is America, right here. This is a neighborhood full of people who just got here, just like my family once had just gotten here. There's every color, about a half dozen languages, and at least as many cultures. And they're all sitting in here, enjoying a morning breakfast or working hard at their job, and oblivious to the fact that it doesn't work this way in every part of the country, that in most places the various tribes and colors self-separate and don't intermingle effortlessly. This is life for people here, the melting pot alive and not just as cliche. And all only about ten minutes away from my apartment, only in a direction I've never chosen to venture." And I realized that this was an experience I could only ever have in New York.
The food was as bland as I thought it would be; for $3.25, I don't know why I expected much. Despite its blandness, it managed to make my stomach do all sorts of funny tricks today; my cube farm cell mates were laughing at the preternatural sounds eminating from my rumbly tumbly all day. Even so, I am really glad I had the unexpected chance to experience a little slice of New York I would never have seen had it not been for faulty brakes.
I still don't like it here. But days like today remind me that there are definitely things I will miss about it, if and when I ever leave. It's not for everybody. It's not really for me. But even so, there is no place in the world like New York.
