It’s been referred to many times, quite accurately, as the concrete jungle. The buildings climb higher and higher and close you in like a treetop canopy. The taxis are as fierce as tigers, hunting a prey to pay their next fare. Buses and delivery vans and garbage trucks charge by with the intent of angry elephants. A cacophony of noise emanates from all sides in the form of honks and squeals and cries. People move with a certainty that leaves the confused even more lost. If you don’t know the unwritten rules of the jungle, you don’t survive.
Molly got us into a taxi at sunset and we swerved our way downtown from her apartment on 90th Street. It felt less like a stampede and more like a swarm of raging hornets, hissing and swaying, jeering and shifting, all jockeying for the best position at the next light. Our necks were craned back as far as possible out of tinted, childproof windows to see the lights come alive like stars in a darkening universe of rising steel and concrete. There is something incredible about this place. For all the disdain I now have for the gigantic shitshows we call megacities, I cannot quell my naïve and childlike affection for New York City. Being from Middle America, this is the center of the earth and its energy is magnetic, and I am sucked in and won over.
When people move here, they move with a certainty and a determination. If you don’t know where you’re going it’s very apparent. You can tell who the tourists are. Just like you can smell the greed radiating from the Wall Streeters in their fancily tailored suits. Or the apparent arrogance wafting off of the effortlessly cool and uncaring hipsters. Ear buds are in almost every head, lattes in almost every hand. Walk and Don’t walk means little, people go. Cars go. Buses and taxis go. Just keep moving forward. You can’t stop to take a picture, there is no looking around, that architecture’s not to be admired. Everyone has a place to go—you’re only getting in their way.
There’s a busy-ness that goes with those people. It’s why they move that way. The subway comes screaming to a halt and a metallic flash. Whether it’s the 2, the Q, or the red or blue. The doors open. People rush in, people rush out. There are signs and symbols, arrows and signals. Only the natives get it, or those who’ve put in the time to learn. That sub plunges on and another arrives for a different destination. A different color. A different number, a different letter. Molly points and we go and she knows and we act like we do.
The history of this place is written under all those mightily rushing footfalls. You can see it in the architecture and watch as it’s slowly consumed and yet still added to by modernity. Lady Liberty has the power to still evoke such unexplainable feelings of patriotism with her hardened face and glowing torch forever facing the world. Buildings with names like Empire and Chrysler steal your speech no matter how many times you go by. You can’t seem to take enough pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge. This is New York City. The international food vendors and smalltime shopkeepers. The squatty wooden water towers on building tops. The dapper bellhops outside hotel doors. The quaint, picturesque brownstones. The accented taxi drivers from Bulgaria. The rusting iron fire escapes. New York City.
We got the insider’s view. Molly (a recent convert to Manhattan from the surrounding area) and Maria (a NY lifer) held us by our little Hoosier hands and took us to hole-in-the-wall places that we never would’ve found on our own. They let us crash in their awesome Upper East Side and Harlem (respectively) apartments. They allowed us to take in this frightening and tremendous and overpowering city in the safest and most guided way. They allowed us to enjoy the true magic of this greatest of cities. There’s just something about this place you can’t resist.
No comments:
Post a Comment