Tag: chrysler building

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.

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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.

I’ll Take Manhattan

The other day I came across a tatty copy of New York magazine dated June 15, 1987. The cover story was entitled “The Buildings New Yorkers Love to Hate”, a list of the city’s most unpopular architectural landmarks which included the World Trade Center and the former PAN-AM Building. Most remarkable however, were the local listings towards the back of the magazine. The Restaurants section included just three eateries for the whole of Brooklyn. If you’ve been to Brooklyn lately this may seem hard to imagine, though if you were around in the late-eighties probably not quite so much. Indeed, the first time I visited New York eleven years ago it never even occurred to me that I might even venture across the East River.

When they hear the words “New York”, most outsiders think of Manhattan, and who can blame them? After all, when Frank Sinatra sang, “If I can make it there I’ll make it anywhere,” he wasn’t talking about Red Hook. Many visitors mistakenly consider Brooklyn another neighborhood, when it is actually New York’s most populous borough and existed as an independent city until 1898 (today it would still rank as America’s fourth largest). But no-one ever crossed the Atlantic with aspirations of making live hummus in Carroll Gardens.

But suddenly it seems Manhattan is no longer where it’s at. Indeed, if you believe everything you read, you’ll be told that Brooklyn is now everything Manhattan once was: cool, exciting, edgy. In short, the place to be. Before we go on I should make one thing clear: I’m not talking about the Brooklyn of Coney Island or the Dodgers or even Spike Lee; I’m talking about New Brooklyn. New Brooklyn looks a lot like old Brooklyn, except it’s a bit prettier and a lot more expensive. Though New Brooklyn garners plenty of media press attention, nobody does a greater job at promoting New Brooklyn than the New Brooklynites. The New Brooklynites are easy to spot. They are usually white, might have a beard, and definitely don’t speak with a Brooklyn accent. If you meet a New Brooklynite there’s a good chance they will soon tell you how glad they are to be living in Brooklyn, and how you really should be living there too.

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Call me a contrarian, but when someone strongly urges me to do something, my natural inclination is to not do it, even if my original instinct might have told me otherwise. Maybe I’d have moved to Brooklyn by now if it weren’t for all those Brooklyn dwellers recommending I do so as soon as possible. Even my boss (who lives in Brooklyn) will regularly bring up the question as to why I’ve yet to move there, imploring me to “get off the grid”. I sometimes imagine he would enjoy enormous satisfaction were I to transfer out to Ditmas Park, so I too can endure an hour-long commute on the Q train at the cost of $89 a month. Many people who live in Brooklyn still work in the city; by living in Manhattan I currently use the subway only once a week at most, so I’m already saving money plus two hours out of every workday.

Much of the problem regarding the Manhattan-Brooklyn divide is definitely psychological, a syndrome by which I am affected as much as anyone else. I can be in Park Slope almost as quickly as it takes me to reach upper Broadway, yet I wouldn’t think twice about hopping on the 1 train up to Zabar’s for a cinnamon babka. Ask me to schlep out to Brooklyn and I’ll pull out a list of excuses.

Certainly Brooklyn’s rapid, ongoing transformation and continuing cultural divergence from Manhattan is arguably one of New York’s most significant changes of the last twenty years. There are several factors which New Brooklynites will always cite when discussing the advantages to their borough. The first usually concerns the lower overall cost of living. Yet while a railroad apartment in Bushwick may be considerably cheaper than a two-bedroom in the West Village, as New Brooklyn continues to generate hype so its rents in the more desirable (and exclusive) neighborhoods become comparable to those in Manhattan.

Such areas are also epicenters of Hipsterdom, an alarmingly unimaginative subculture whose primary concern is appropriating aspects of bygone eras and passing them off as its own. Skinny jeans, horn-rimmed glasses, plaid shirts and ironic facial hair: these are the cornerstones of the young New Brooklynite’s carefully cultivated wardrobe, items which must be worn at all times with the nonchalant attitude of someone who isn’t really trying. It also helps if you have some tattoos (you can almost guarantee that most of these people had very dull parents). Most hipsters look like they haven’t seen a gym — or the sun for that matter — since they left their altogether drearier hometowns (which to be fair probably wasn’t all that long ago).

Manifesting itself through music, fashion, even food, New Brooklyn has in recent years developed its own brand of taste and style that often appears a deliberate antithesis to Manhattan’s urban brashness and cutting-edge commercialism. Small businesses label their products as hand-crafted, home-made, organic or artisanal, in an attempt to differentiate themselves from the giant, soulless corporations which proliferate across the river. Yet the sheer number of like businesses which have cropped up over the last couple of years only diminishes their collective value. Suddenly it seems, every kid in Williamsburg is making Prohibition-style soda while attempting to grow a moustache. The appropriation of this down-home folksiness is clearly an attempt to lend weight to fleeting projects by referencing something real. In this sense Brooklyn is the crafts to Manhattan’s Arts. But as it continues to bemoan Manhattan’s so-called superficiality New Brooklyn has unwittingly created its own culture which is no less manufactured. At least Manhattan isn’t bullshitting anybody, and I’ll take an egg cream and a tuna melt any day over a gluten-free vegan cupcake.

I don’t wish to suggest for a minute that most of those who love Brooklyn aren’t genuinely happy living there, or that everyone should want to live in Manhattan or feel unhappy if they are not. Manhattan is definitely not for everyone, and of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with eating local or buying homemade, except for the holier-than-thou attitude that too often accompanies these ideas and lifestyle. Like the vegetarian who pulls a face when you order steak, the worst kind of New Brooklynite takes on an air of tremendous self-righteousness when you confess to enjoying the simplest of pleasures, as if drinking non-microbrewery beer could jeopardize your friendship. New Brooklynites’ constant praising of their borough can sometimes come off as obsessive, and in extreme cases it seems like an inverse reaction to not living in Manhattan, as if they are grappling with some trauma. Maybe they’re irked by Manhattan’s history of condescension towards the “outer boroughs”. Or maybe the very act of living in Prospect Heights gives them a warm fuzzy feeling of satisfaction akin to donating money to Africa or buying a T-shirt to benefit Haitian earthquake victims.

* * *

Of course, these phenomena are by no means exclusive to New Brooklyn’s population, but rather representative of the white, middle-class youth of America. Indeed, we are already witnessing the commodification of “New Brooklyn” as it enters the corporate mainstream. Take for instance the common brand of twee, faux-naïve songs which now permeate movie trailers and national television commercials for some of America’s biggest companies. In this week’s New York magazine (which incidentally lists nine restaurants in Williamsburg alone), Adam Sternbergh identifies every large city in the Western world as having its own Brooklyn, specifically a neighborhood with “nice blocks, good restaurants, and beards.” That the new Brooklyn can be defined so succinctly conveys everything about its limitations and its arch self-awareness. New Brooklyn, its look and sound, is now being used to sell everything from Japanese hybrids to portable e-book readers. Perhaps the most significant event in this trend was the launch of a “Brooklyn-themed” bar/restaurant set to open this autumn in — you guessed it — Manhattan.

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That there are people who feel the need to define “New Brooklyn” — through its cuisine of all things, and on Manhattan turf — says a lot about the borough’s pervading complex of inferiority. It’s also in complete contrasts to the island’s greatest strength of total defiance and utter indifference. Manhattan cannot be tamed, and somehow manages to resist the waves of social or economic change. Sternbergh argues that it’s Brooklyn’s supposed positive qualities which make it so obnoxious, and that the same phenomenon could never happen with Manhattan because “they only ever made one Chrysler Building.” Manhattan could never become a brand because its brand is too vast, too diverse and far-reaching, Movies, art, jazz, tourism: these are things that are too beloved and universal to be considered “cool” anymore.

Though separated by a small body of water called the East River, Manhattan and Brooklyn can at times appear like two worlds in the same city, of which their inhabitants are two very different species. From its breathtaking verticality to its teeming street life, Manhattan, more so than any other major city, is a direct result of its geography. While Brooklyn and Queens are still home to some of New York’s largest ethnic communities, Manhattan’s cosmopolitan population is forced to exist on a narrow twelve-by-two-mile island. This tremendous concentration of people, their different cultures and languages, is what gives the city its unique, relentless energy, and in extreme cases can breed bouts of aggression or creativity, sometimes in the same breath. It’s these immovable confines which have helped make self-absorption and ambition two of the most common traits among Manhattanites — without space to move outwards, the city can only look inwards and upwards.

All of this has enabled Manhattan’s inhabitants to consistently defy categorization and stereotype as they go about their daily lives. They rarely question their presence on the island — many seem to live in a self-imposed exile of sorts, and are often unable to imagine themselves anywhere else. Though often perceived as neurotic or narcissistic, the truest Manhattanite is a model of fierce independence, flagrant individuality and unwavering positivity. To stroll the city streets is to experience a warm, unspoken understanding — a camaraderie among strangers, an unlikely mutual respect between all those who share a sidewalk.

Yet for many Manhattanites, moving to Brooklyn is seen almost as an urban rite of passage, an inevitable step in the life of a New Yorker as young adulthood gives way to parenthood, and that Chelsea studio suddenly becomes untenable. But for now, my favorite reason to visit Brooklyn is the ride home as the N train trundles over the Brooklyn Bridge. Downtown skyscrapers soar into view, my pulse quickens and I am thrilled at the thought of my apartment nestled hidden somewhere within all of that brick and concrete. Why would I want to be anywhere else? Perhaps Tom Waits put it best when he was asked to describe New York. “Well, it’s like a big ship,” he said. “And the water’s on fire.” I’m not quite ready to jump ship just yet.
 
 
 
Film stills from “Manhattan”, 1979 (United Artists).