Tag: avenue b

Island Life

“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”
— Thomas Wolfe

Last week, three years after moving to New York, and two and a half years after marrying my lovely American wife, I received my Green Card in the mail. According to the letter which came attached, I am now a Permanent Resident of the United States of America, although to me my new immigrant status still seems excessive. After all, I’ve only ever been to twelve of the fifty states, and generally never leave the island of Manhattan except to return to Europe. As John Lennon once said to an interviewer in reference to his deportation struggle, “Couldn’t they just ban me from Ohio?”

A colleague of mine left me a note which read “Congratulations, official New Yorker!” It was a sweet thought but one which left me confused. I wasn’t a New Yorker, just a Brit who got lucky enough to live here. Naturally, it begged the decidedly abstract question: when does a “New Yorker” become a New Yorker? I’ve heard it said that you’re only a New Yorker after you’ve lived here a certain number of years, but if so, how many? Whatever the answer may be I’m probably a few years away yet, but I’ve certainly feel like I’ve put in enough overtime studying this city to have shaved a few months off my sentence.

I know I have no greater right to be here than anyone else in my boat, but I doubt most new arrivals devote hours to meticulously researching the shooting locations of long-forgotten New York movies. Nor do they embark on a pilgrimage to the Upper West Side to photograph the city’s last remaining phone booths, or spend entire afternoons seeking out Manhattan’s humblest coffee shops on a self-assigned mission in search of the city’s finest egg cream. Nor do they drop $60 on an original 1974 Massimo Vignelli subway map (an exorbitant amount of money for something that was once handed out for free).

While I recognize that not everybody cares about these things (and nor should they), I also believe that a person is obligated to obtain an historical, cultural and social sense of their city, especially their chosen city, because I consider it important to understand where you are and what that means. When I see a group of young people in untucked shirts and trilbies exit a Barbie-pink stretch Hummer on Avenue B, it makes me sad that none of them look up from their iPhones long enough to realize they’re standing feet away from the former home of Charlie Parker. That is, if they know who Charlie Parker is to begin with. Personally I think they should make all would-be New Yorkers take a test. Anyone who fails has to spend six months in New Jersey swotting up on their Newyorkology. That would hopefully weed out all those who consider food trucks to be the height of urban chic.

Edward Hopper once said you get the greatest sense of a place upon arriving or leaving for the first time. I think he was right. To this day I still get a slight twinge the day before I leave New York or when heading to the airport at dawn, as if I begin to appreciate the greatness of the city knowing I’m going to be away from it (if only for a few days). But each time I return to Manhattan after a trip, I get a rush of the same excitement and awe that I felt the first time I got in the back of a yellow cab. Somehow the city looks, smells, even feels different. Streets I walk on every day are seen in a different light. Even the people with whom I jostle for space on the crowded sidewalk suddenly appear exotic and appealing. Could this be the same town I left less than a week earlier? That elusive magical feeling hits me like the first few seconds of “(Love Is Like A) Heatwave” and — at least for the duration of that cab ride — I remember why I always wanted to be here in the first place.

elizabeth lennard 2

Maybe you become a New Yorker the first time New York feels like home. Not long after I moved to the U.S. I took a trip to visit my girlfriend’s family in West Virginia. It was the first time I’d left New York City, and I remember feeling an unexpected sense of blasé familiarity when I landed back at JFK, an airport I had until that moment associated only with extreme excitement and anticipation. Now, it was other places gave me that feeling; New York had become “normal”. The slightly bittersweet compromise but inevitable consequence of living somewhere you’d always dreamed of living is that that very special feeling — that urgent, frantic desire you once felt, perhaps even years before you got here — is lost. Of course, it’s replaced with something arguably much better: the real and more rewarding experiences that come with actually living somewhere.

Colson Whitehead says “You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.” I can definitely relate to that, and I’m always surprised just to what extent the New York in my head differs from the city I experience everyday in 2010. I confess to occasionally standing on street corners and squinting, trying desperately to recapture the sensation of walking down Broadway for the very first time, or even attempting to recall how I’d imagined New York all those years before I ever arrived. But whenever I start to wonder if this is a city best enjoyed through books and movies or my own imagination, something will jerk my senses suddenly and it all comes flooding back: early evening light on the side of a building, the sudden sight of one of the last Checker cabs bouncing down Seventh Avenue, or the inviting mix of pizza and Martha & The Vandellas floating out onto the sidewalk on a July afternoon. It’s all here, and it’s all real.

My daily commute is punctuated by the clatter of storefronts opening, a siren’s intermittent wail, hosed sidewalks, and, as I stand waiting for lights to change, the urban morning aromas of coffee, perfume and garbage. My heart lifts as I turn onto Irving Place and glimpse the Chrysler Building, half-hidden by summer’s haze or gleaming in the crisp winter sun. On the walk home I always remember to turn and look the wrong way up Lexington Avenue, to glance at all that steel and chrome rendered golden by dusk. Just in case I ever forget what I’m doing here.

In his 1949 essay “Here is New York”, E.B. White eloquently suggests there are three New Yorks, that of the native, the commuter, and the immigrant, claiming “the greatest is the last — the city of final destination, the city that is a goal.” He says the immigrants give the city “passion”, which accounts for its “high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements.” Certainly New York, more than any other city in the world, owes its very existence — social, cultural, political, even physical — to the steady influx of people who have dared to dream that this could be their home.

Jeremiah Moss says “a New Yorker is someone who longs for New York.” While it’s true that not everybody who lives in New York automatically becomes a New Yorker, by the same token he implies you can be a New Yorker without actually living here. New Yorkers are a unique breed unto themselves, and maybe it’s enough to be one in thought and spirit. Maybe New York really is a state of mind. Maybe you’re a New Yorker when you can’t imagine living anywhere else. In which case, though my adjustment of status was only recently made official, maybe I’ve been a New Yorker all along.
 
 
All artwork by Elizabeth Lennard.

Empire State of Mind

New York said goodbye to an icon this weekend. On May 14 the Empire Diner closed its doors for the last time — or rather, the first time, since this Chelsea landmark had until last Saturday night been serving locals and tourists, artists and cops, partygoers and insomniacs 24 hours a day since it opened in its current incarnation thirty-four years ago. In 1976, the diner lay closed and abandoned when it was purchased by three young New Yorkers — Jack Doenias, Carl Laanes, and Richard Ruskay — who transformed the Tenth Avenue eatery into the self-proclaimed “Hippest Diner on Earth.” The Empire Diner’s success was a prime example of the neighborhood’s renaissance, as galleries, hotels and restaurants began to pop up between the gas stations and auto parts stores which had until then dominated the landscape.

As a child growing up in the UK, I probably first caught glimpse of the Empire Diner during the opening shots of Woody Allen’s Manhattan. Later, it also made an appearance in Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, but by that time I was already all-too familiar, having gazed many times at the cover of the Tom Waits LP Asylum Years. Released in 1986, this double-album compilation featured John Baeder’s painting of the Empire Diner on its front cover. It was an appropriate choice of artwork for a Tom Waits record: the man had made a career of verbalizing bittersweet tales of urban folly to anyone who’d listen, like some down-and-out character permanently slumped at the end of the counter. Whether it was the image of the diner glistening in the Manhattan night, or Waits’ midnight rambles, I knew I had to check this place out for myself.

Years later, after moving to New York, I finally got my chance. It was a cold, November evening, and I’d arrived from the Theater District where I’d been volunteering at a contemporary dance performance. Instantly recognizable from the outside by its chrome exterior and giant “EAT” sign, inside the diner was altogether less familiar. On entering I was surprised to be greeted by a calm hush, and certainly not the usual hustle-bustle which characterizes many open-all-hours places. Instead, people spoke in soft voices and on the piano someone was playing “Song For You” by Leon Russell, making the Empire Diner the first and so far only diner I’ve ever seen with a live pianist. I sat down at the polished black counter, ordered, and gazed at the yellow cabs silently gliding up Tenth Avenue. I immediately wrote about my experience on my blog (now defunct), soon after which a certain Eileen Levinson wrote to me thanking me for my kind words. I returned with my wife the night of my twenty-ninth birthday: the overtly camp staff was hilarious and delightful. I left with a t-shirt with the “EAT” mantra emblazoned across the back. When my parents came to visit, they insisted we go to the Empire Diner for burgers.

The Empire Diner’s iconic status continued to be maintained: in March a digital image of the restaurant — drawn using an iPhone app by Portuguese artist Jorge Colombo — appeared on the cover of The New Yorker. So it was with much surprise that I learned of the imminent closure less than a month later. As soon as I heard the news I wrote to the owners, Renate Gonzalez and Mitchell Woo, expressing my shock and sadness. Renate immediately responded inviting me to the official closing party on Sunday afternoon. Arriving for the last time, I found a relaxed crowd settled on patio furniture clustered outside the restaurant, whose famous chrome glistened in the late-afternoon sun. Inside the diner, the atmosphere was decidedly more raucous, as the diner’s most flamboyant followers got down to a soundtrack of eighties club hits. There was something quite sad about seeing the last remaining survivors of a city’s much-flaunted party scene enjoying a final dance on a Sunday afternoon. This may have only been the closing of a restaurant, but what does it say about New York?

* * *

It seems not a week goes by that New York City doesn’t say goodbye to another family-run business or cherished establishment. Most of these closures go unnoticed by many, although certain blogs, such as EV Grieve and Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, manage to meticulously document these aspects of the city’s transformation. While I strongly sympathize with the aforementioned bloggers common stance, I personally think nostalgia can be a dangerous thing, and I’m always cautious about extolling “the good old days”. After all, a lot of people were glad to see the back of them. As one commentator pointed out, “People who hate the new Times Square probably were never mugged in the old one in 1989.”

A city must always keep evolving, and nowhere is reinvention more possible than in New York. But what about when your favorite coffee shop is converted into a Starbucks? Or when the corner deli where you’ve been buying milk for twenty years is suddenly shuttered, only to reopen serving only something the kids are calling Fro-Yo? Or when an entire historic block is razed and an eco-indulgent glass condo is built in its place? I’m not alone in feeling that New York, once just a trendy, rebellious cousin to the conservative USA, is becoming victim to the steady encroachment of corporate America. Of course, this phenomenon exists the world over and is evident elsewhere — look at the state of popular music or sports — but what’s most alarming is the rapidity with which such changes occur in this millennium, particularly in a fast-paced commercial capital like New York.

New York is a city of immigrants, one which has always been driven by the arrival of new people. But in recent years, New York, in presenting itself as a desirable place to live, has gone out of its way to invite the wrong kind of transplant: a sort of suburban-urbanite, one who associates the city not with history or culture, or even crime, but with luxury and status. These are exactly the kind of people who not too long ago would have turned up their noses at Manhattan: too dirty, too dangerous, too cold. They’re the kind of people who don’t know what an egg cream is and aren’t about to try one. Sadly it seems the latest generation of adults has scant concept of a New York, or a world, pre-internet, pre-Carrie Bradshaw. I’ve met people not much younger than myself who didn’t know what the Twin Towers were until they watched them fall on TV on 9/11. If these people are the future of New York it’s not hard to understand why certain long-standing businesses are failing.

Ms. Gonzalez and Mr. Woo, while clearly saddened to be leaving what has been their place of work for the over three decades, remain philosophical. They plan to bring the Empire experience abroad and are currently looking for a future site for the diner. It wouldn’t be the first time a landmark eatery has up and left town, silently in the dead of night. The Moondance Diner closed in 2006 and reappeared somewhere in Wyoming. Last year, the Cheyenne Diner was closed, dismantled and rebuilt down in Alabama. So look out for the Empire Diner in a town near you. As for New York, like the day they decided to plant deckchairs in the middle of Times Square, it’s just another small step towards suburbia. The hippest city on earth just got a little less hip.