Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More

Last night, Julie and I watched Ghostbusters. It was the first time I'd seen the movie in many years, and aside from being one of the greatest movies EVER, it prominently features my alma mater (and the statue Alma Mater), Columbia University. Unlike that crummy World Trade Center movie with Nick Cage's stupid moustache and completely failed attempt at a Noo Yawk accent, Ghostbusters actually reminded me that there are things about that place I miss and probably always will.

For one, most of the shots I recognized were places I walked every day in college. My parents tell me I missed out on a real college experience, and I'll admit that I was never as happy as a college kid should be, but I was still a college kid--and I was GOOD at being a college kid, in my own way.

But it's not just college I miss sometimes. The saying in New York is, "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." No. I've known and come into varying degrees of many people who were doing just fine in New York but who, I assure you, could not make it anywhere--and possibly couldn't really make it anywhere BUT New York. The truth is, New York ain't so tough. It's expensive, crowded, and has more bad attitude per capita than a lineup of Rocky Balboa's opponents, but it has the most thorough public transportation system in the world, and the whole place is a numbered grid. All NYC takes is a little getting used to, and the reward is a sense of ownership and personal possibility you can't find just anywhere.

One of the things I hate most about New Yorkers is their apparent sense of entitlement and superiority. I will admit, though, that living in New York makes you feel like the star of your very own movie. Maybe it's the scale of everything around you, or maybe it's the way a place that crowded forces you inside your own head. On the other hand, when you're that close to so many people every day, knowing that each one has his own story, there's another sense of possibility that floats around you. Not personal possibility, not I-can-go-anywhere-I-can-do-anything possibility, but a more romantic possibility. The City holds so many incredible and unlikely stories; why shouldn't yours be one of them? It's easy to forget the odds, I guess.

For me, New York was always the best when you could feel its history. I liked the places that hadn't changed much in a hundred years. I liked the museums and parks. I'd stand in Central Park and look at the apartment buildings that lined it and imagine what the view must have been like in the 1920s. I could sit for hours in the sculpture garden at the Met, or wander through the Natural History Museum. Or I liked the City at Christmas time, all the places I went with my family as a kid--Rockefeller Center, FAO Schwartz, St. Patrick's Cathedral.

As I was writing this, I was (coincidentally, mostly) listening to Bruce Springsteen's 2nd album, which has two New York songs, "Incident on 57th Street" and "New York City Serenade." They both tell stories of the romance of the every-day in New York City: sweeping, epic ballads of average kids doing average kid things in NYC. That's the way the place makes you feel.

That is, when you're not too busy being rushed, stressed, grumpy, antisocial, crowded, and lonely to notice. That's a New York state of mind.