Real New York
There's nothing quite like walking through the garment district in the morning. Box trucks are idling while men push racks of clothings around, taking up sidewalk and street space, yelling at each other in classic NYC accents. In these narrow side streets it feels like walking through a New York City that's a little bit more real than some of the cleaner places where the sun shines with more clarity.
Of course, I'm well aware that it's foolish to romanticize some notion of a realer, authentic New York. All that does is play silly games trying to compare New York City to the city that lives in postcards, and movies from the 1990s about people who move here (single, to work for a magazine and think about their love life - heterosexual) somewhat unprepared for life in New York City. Charicatures and fantasies, as if New York City needed to be romanticized.
It doesn't! It just needs a general acknowledgement that everything that happens is real, and that nothing - or, perhaps everything - is just as "so New York" as anything else, to take a phrased that was overused by an intoxicated and somewhat idiotic public commentor on a friend's wedding ("How much you love each other is just so New York, and how you met, such a great story, just so New York, and I see the two of you together for a long long time, with so many stories, and so New York..."). The Starbucksification of New York - damn near all of Manhattan now, not to mention the more profitable parts of the other boroughs - is as real as the interesting pockets full of sweating, swearing, duct tape and tin.
Riding through the Bronx on the MetroNorth - seeing handpainted signs for small auto parts businesses - tagged-up brownfiends behind barbed wire.
Last week, I was involved in conversation which included a short bit with somebody describing herself as a nonhegemonist.
My exposure to all of the spit-and-polish of midtown does strange things for me. I see more suits and taxicabs on a daily basis than I care for. I've actually spent nine dollars on an unsatisfactory lunch, and I've also tried to find food at seven PM and failed. Fortunately there's always the $1/slice pizza place several Avenues over - hmm: in the garment district. Where I stand with my bike, back to the wall, watching the trucks and handcarts.
The garment district really is a funny bubble. Funny like the dirty diner across the street from Madison Square Garden - the Tick Tock Diner, where you can pay a couple bucks for coffee and fries and sit there for an undetermined (unlimited?) period of time withoug being bothered - unless you consider the offer of a refill (free, of course, otherwise it wouldn't be a diner, would it?) to be a bother - which I do not.
I imagine that tourists see the Tick Tock Diner, imagine that it's special because it's a diner in New York City. They have a meal there, and are satisfied, until they realize that they've used up one of their finite number of meals in New York City on perfectly ordinary - satisfied in being unsurprised - diner, just like the one out on county road 141, just outside of town, near the truck stop.
Explanation: I guess I think that every tourist is from a town - not small, but certainly not large, near enough to a large city, but definitely not a part of the city, nor a suburb, a distinct unit - in the midwest.
How right or wrong am I?
There's nothing quite like walking through the garment district in the morning. Box trucks are idling while men push racks of clothings around, taking up sidewalk and street space, yelling at each other in classic NYC accents. In these narrow side streets it feels like walking through a New York City that's a little bit more real than some of the cleaner places where the sun shines with more clarity.
Of course, I'm well aware that it's foolish to romanticize some notion of a realer, authentic New York. All that does is play silly games trying to compare New York City to the city that lives in postcards, and movies from the 1990s about people who move here (single, to work for a magazine and think about their love life - heterosexual) somewhat unprepared for life in New York City. Charicatures and fantasies, as if New York City needed to be romanticized.
It doesn't! It just needs a general acknowledgement that everything that happens is real, and that nothing - or, perhaps everything - is just as "so New York" as anything else, to take a phrased that was overused by an intoxicated and somewhat idiotic public commentor on a friend's wedding ("How much you love each other is just so New York, and how you met, such a great story, just so New York, and I see the two of you together for a long long time, with so many stories, and so New York..."). The Starbucksification of New York - damn near all of Manhattan now, not to mention the more profitable parts of the other boroughs - is as real as the interesting pockets full of sweating, swearing, duct tape and tin.
Riding through the Bronx on the MetroNorth - seeing handpainted signs for small auto parts businesses - tagged-up brownfiends behind barbed wire.
Last week, I was involved in conversation which included a short bit with somebody describing herself as a nonhegemonist.
My exposure to all of the spit-and-polish of midtown does strange things for me. I see more suits and taxicabs on a daily basis than I care for. I've actually spent nine dollars on an unsatisfactory lunch, and I've also tried to find food at seven PM and failed. Fortunately there's always the $1/slice pizza place several Avenues over - hmm: in the garment district. Where I stand with my bike, back to the wall, watching the trucks and handcarts.
The garment district really is a funny bubble. Funny like the dirty diner across the street from Madison Square Garden - the Tick Tock Diner, where you can pay a couple bucks for coffee and fries and sit there for an undetermined (unlimited?) period of time withoug being bothered - unless you consider the offer of a refill (free, of course, otherwise it wouldn't be a diner, would it?) to be a bother - which I do not.
I imagine that tourists see the Tick Tock Diner, imagine that it's special because it's a diner in New York City. They have a meal there, and are satisfied, until they realize that they've used up one of their finite number of meals in New York City on perfectly ordinary - satisfied in being unsurprised - diner, just like the one out on county road 141, just outside of town, near the truck stop.
Explanation: I guess I think that every tourist is from a town - not small, but certainly not large, near enough to a large city, but definitely not a part of the city, nor a suburb, a distinct unit - in the midwest.
How right or wrong am I?
Labels: midtown, new york city, tourists, work
posted by mattio at
11:31 AM
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