First Impressions

New York City doesn't exist. If you ask the Post Office about it, they will correct you. Actually, they will make you feel like an idiot, if you are looking for a zip code and you use "New York City" in the form. You can try it on your own (use 83 East 4th Street for the rest of the address - I've been there). New York is not one unified place, it is many, much smaller places jammed into one geographical area. It's impossible then to discuss my first impression of the city as if there were only one. There's too much to experience, too much going on, for that to be even remotely true. This is the case with every major city the world over and "first impression" syndrome where someone offers a sweeping generalization of the city because they spent a couple days exploring the ultra-famous parts of the city is one of the most grievous sins of tourism (and I am just as guilty of it - I'm sure Amsterdam and Brussels had much left for me to truly explore). Most cities defy easy generalization and categorization, but some are more eclectic than others. Berlin, for example, offers a more varied experience of German life than Munich. Berlin isn't even properly one city yet, it is literally a collection of areas (though I understand they are working on that). But New York is easily the most diverse city that I have ever been to.

Truthfully, I have only experienced one borough of New York, a tiny sliver of it's metropolitan area. Jersey City, where I live, has several facets of it's own. I live in the part that is surrounded by the crappy and the run down. It sounds worse than it is because the rules of economics are slowly dictating a move into the area. It's fine. It's a bit of a dump, but it's fine. Then there is Hoboken and apparently a tiny bit of Weehauken (things run together here), which are trendy and solidly middle class (and just as predictably the food and bars are mostly overpriced). Pavonia/Newport is for people who want to feel like they are living in New York proper, but with a view of the city, and the prices and taxes of New Jersey. It sounds like it's a cheap imitation, but Goldman Sachs has an entire office tower not too far away. It's only cheap when compared to Manhattan.

Ah, Manhattan. That's the only borough of the five that I've spent any time in. I'm sure that I will end up in Brooklyn at some point, but the PATH trains only run to the World Trade Center or 33rd St. So no Brooklyn and no Queens just yet. It took me a couple of days to work up the nerve to cross the river and check out the city. I'm not sure why, to tell you the truth. Maybe because going over the river (or under it rather since the ferries are stupid expensive) meant that I was really here. I couldn't chicken out and bolt the city if I set foot in Manhattan. But the truth is, as soon as I saw the New York skyline in person, I knew I was hooked. I am sure that I will take pictures of it at some point. It's stunning and if it captivates you at all, then you know, you are in New York to stay, come hell or high water. Or that's how you feel if you are a little bit of a romantic. The whole reality of unemployment may indeed have something to say about staying in New York or not, but I'm working on it. I'm working on it.

Looking at the skyline though already demonstrates a truth you will encounter on that ground: New York isn't really one place. You can see the difference between the skyscrapers downtown, the vast and obviously residential area, and the skyscrapers in mid-town. The Empire State building dominates its part of the island, practically unchallenged. Downtown, the skyscrapers are thickly forested, competing with each other like jungle trees for the light of the sun. There will be a big boy on the block in the near future when they finish the new World Trade Center tower, but for now, there are no winners, just competitors.  It was unintentional, but my exploration of that gorgeous skyline followed the same path as my eyes from one end of the island to the middle (it's not the other end - I've made it to 50th St. and the island goes all the way to 216th St.).

If you get on a different PATH train, you will end up on Christopher St. instead of the WTC and it's a completely different world, the world of Greenwich Village. I was disturbed to find how easy it was to lose entire skyscrapers when you are actually among the brownstones and walkups (if those are the terms - Law and Order gave me the vocabulary, but I still use it like a tourist). In parts of the Village, you could easily go the entire day without ever knowing that downtown was even there. The parts that I walked through were gorgeous and I've seen quite a bit of it, though not enough to make unqualified judgments about the Village. It is always a surprise to discover major theatres just tucked into the buildings. Cherry Lane is literally tucked around a corner, the buildings so tight that even the sounds of traffic are significantly diminished. The Lortel is in an unassuming building on Christopher St. It's incongruous. In my world, these theatres are more important than the commercial giants on Broadway and around Times Square.

Yesterday, I got my first real taste of walking into that other, fabled, part of mid-town: Times Square. I had a few hours to kill before the concert I was to observe (the very same French Horn Rebellion I mentioned earlier), so I figured I would check out the Empire State Building. I was on 11th, it is on 33rd. That's not so bad. But then when I got to 33rd I thought, what's nine more blocks? So I ended up in Times Square, where I heard quite a few languages that were not English. New York reminds me of Europe in a lot of ways - you can walk large parts of it, it's packed with history, you hear all kinds of languages and accents all the time. But then I figured I would check out some of the theatres where I was trying to intern. I felt much worse about my application to Roundabout Theatre Company when I saw American Airlines Theatre. Roundabout is a LORT theatre company, much like the Alley, but on steroids. I am much more confident about New York Theatre Workshop where I was allowed to hand my application to an actual person. One who works for the theatre. Not one who works for the post office.

Finally, I thought I'm so close to Rockefeller Center that I will just pop over and then walk back. I was already at 47th and 9th, it's nothing to get to 50th and 6th (it's so easy to say those numbers like they mean something, but if you don't know New York, how much sense does it make?). After which I walked back to 11th and 4th. The walk back felt endless because I had somewhere to be at a particular time, so it was much more frustrating that you can only walk a block or two before you get stopped by a red light, even with jaywalking, even when you are traveling with traffic. I arrived at the concert venue and discovered that my feet hurt quite badly. I knew I had walked a fair bit, so I looked it up. If I had gone straight to Rockefeller Center from Webster Hall (which I most emphatically did not - Broadway is a kooky street that does weird things around Union Square and again around the Flatiron building), it would have been 2.2 miles. At first that number didn't impress me because I was so used to looking at kilometers. 2.2 km isn't that bad at all (it's barely a mile and a half). Then I doubled it because I had walked back and than I had to add another mile and a half to cover the walk to and from the subway stops (I say subway, but I have yet to be on the New York subway proper - just the PATH trains to and from Jersey). All told I walked about 8 miles yesterday. I can safely say after a stretch like that on the streets of New York that I still don't really know anything about the city at all.