So I went to New York for a bit last summer. Not for very long, only eight days, and the trip was a hard needle to thread. I wanted to see some of the city, and see my sister, and see a friend out there, as well as engaging in my standard holiday occupation of befriending locals. It was a pipe dream to think this could all be done properly, as I was also occupied by a side-quest; getting pet rats with my sister. I made a face at the idea initially, and sparing you from the week of youtube-based propaganda for the idea I succumbed to, they do actually make cute pets.
I find New York hard to pin down, and growing up in London, that is all I have to compare it to. What I love about London is that even with all the different, disparate bits of it, they all retain a sort of London vibe. It is hard for me to properly verbalize this, so maybe an example is a little clearer. A wander round London can start with the (currently) stressed out City Boys and Girls in the financial district, reach St Paul’s and then take you round my favourite bit of London, the South Bank, before reaching the West End, and ending up buying random nonsense around Oxford Street. Whilst there is an obvious demarcation between areas, they all share a common atmosphere, or at least I feel they do. We talk about London universities, as if they themselves contain a little bit of the city in them, and the students are, largely, acutely aware that studying in London is a little different from studying anywhere else in the country, for better or worse.
New York isn’t like that. Walking round Columbia University, which is 20 minutes away from downtown (i.e. in the movies) Manhattan, you would never know that close by buzzes the busiest city in the USA. Only NYU, literally in the middle of downtown Manhattan, genuinely feels like a New York University. The meandering walk I took around Manhattan, going from Wall Street, to Chinatown, to Little Italy, and then to Soho, illustrated how sharp the distinctions are between different areas of the city. The common thread that I have found wandering around London doesn’t exist in New York. Chinatown and Little Italy bear no resemblance to the financial district, despite the short distance between them.
Another thing to think about is the sheer size of New York. I think the mythical status of New York City abroad is actually just the mythical status of Manhattan. Whilst it would be long, it is possible to get a sense of most areas of central London on a single, lengthy walk. New York is five boroughs, four of which are, shock horror, not Manhattan. Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, are basically small cities in themselves. It is all too easy to forget that New York City is not just Manhattan, and if you are a tourist with limited time, there is little reason to leave Manhattan, unless you really, really like baseball, and can’t work out how to get ESPN from amongst the gazillion channels.
Treating New York rather crudely as a microcosm of modern America, what I’ve learned is that American’s fetishise convenience and consumer choice. The things we Brits often mock them for is what many Americans love about their country.
I have been amused in the past by Chinese take-away menus, whereby every permutation of meat+sauce has its own entry, leading to a menu numbered Item 1 to Item 368; Chicken and black-bean sauce, chicken and peanut sauce, beef and black-bean sauce, beef and peanut sauce, etc. This ethos is very prevalent in New York. Nobody who has money doesn’t have the right to call the shots at the shops. Being illogically averse to lots of foods I have no real reason to dislike, I am often to be found asking if I can swap item x for item y on a restaurant menu, and subsequently, servers are often found to be rolling their eyes at me, or acting like I was asking a major favour, such as the donation of their kidney, as opposed to just asking for bacon instead of a sauteed kidney. My normally timorous voice when making such grave requests was unnecessary in America, as I was never made to feel like I was asking too much. Although tipping is a bigger thing over there, the difference in the quality of the service between the UK and the US is greater than the increased prevalence of tipping.
The other side of my claim is related to the admittedly ridiculous title I chose for this article. It’s not so much that you can get anything in New York; you can pretty much do that here. In New York, you can get anything, anywhere. My sister’s allergenically ill-fated quest to get pet rats lead to many a trip to Petco, a chain of pet stores to get, I swear to God, an item called the Rat Mansion, (although it was out of stock on Manhattan Island, and we settled for the Rat Manor). This niche item aside, these shops sold largely the same stuff. Within ten minutes journey from each other. Damn, I forget to get that thing from the place; its fine, we’ll just get it at the next place.
New York is less romantic but more functional as a city. It is, quite literally, a grid. One does not meander around Manhattan, one walks in a straight line, and makes 90 degree turns. Which are, let’s face it, more convenient. But much, much, much less fun.
