You Talkin' ta Me?

I don’t know if it’s just me, but New Yorkers seem nicer than people back home. They smile more, they’re funnier, and… dare I say this?  They’re more polite.

Or maybe it’s just me.

But I don’t think so. I have a theory. And since I share a birthday with Albert Einstein, my theories should be taken very, very seriously.

I have concluded that N=PF².

That is to say, the number of People (P) times the amount of square Feet (F²) of available space equals a naturally occurring sum of Nice (N).  Or, Nice equals People times Square Feet.

So the more people there are who must share a finite amount of space in the City, the nicer you kinda have to be to each other. It’s, like, a survival thing, I guess. Or maybe it’s tribal. Or species-al. (really? spell-check doesn’t have a problem with that word? weird.)

It’s my theory, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Because back home in the western states, everything is spread out. The buildings, the mountains, the towns, and the people – all spread out. So you don’t really have to be very nice, or even say hello to someone for an entire day if you don’t want to. You could go to the grocery store, grunt back at the girl beeping all your food past the register, get gas at the station by swiping your card and never even looking at a gas station attendant (do they even still have those?), go shopping at the mall, eat a burrito grande in the park, and make it home in time to catch up on Bret Michael’s Rock of Love without brushing someone’s arm or even making eye contact.

Not so much out here. If you drive, good luck not being honked at, waved at, or having some kind of expletive (in varying languages) spat in your general direction – all in good fun, of course, because that is how New Yorkers acknowledge each other and say to one another that “You are, most definitely, NOT invisible to me.” You exist!  You’re not a number – dammit you’re a man.  And you’re in everybody’s way and everybody is in your way and isn’t it great that we can all muck about and be in each other's ways these days?

You see, I consider being recognized, even with passing anonymous disdain, a much friendlier gesture than being ignored entirely. And that’s what they do out west – they ignore each other.  Booooring!

I can prove my theory. Remember those cheeky Westerns where the bad guy always says to the good guy, “This town ain’t big ‘nuff fer the two of us, pard’ner…”? Well, there’s your historical account of how people acted towards each other back in the wild west days.  I think the people who initially moved out there did it to get away from everyone – and it took one hell of a long journey in covered wagon to accomplish this. And now, thanks to genetic memory, those of us who’ve descended from those lone cowboys still feel a pang of violence toward that one other guy who seems to be taking up our space in our town.  Now that gun fights at high noon are (mostly) illegal, I think we’ve all just learned to ignore each other so as not to be startin’ somethin’ (sorry – I think that’s more Michael Jackson than cowboy talk). Maybe that’s where the lack of eye contact comes in as well… they say not to make eye contact with someone if you don’t want to start a fight…

Again – I digress. I digress a lot these days. Blogs are good for that.

Case in point: I was in Sedona a week before we left for NYC, and my watch got snagged on something and fell off somewhere around the Tlaquepaque shops. I noticed it almost instantly, since Gary knew he’d seen it on my wrist in the very last shop we came out of, so we retraced our steps multiple times, asking every shop owner along the path if someone might have turned it in, and stayed around long enough for someone to come clean and give back the watch. No one did. My watch was probably snapped up within a minute after it hit the ground. Someone obviously picked it up and kept it, not bothering to wonder or even care if its return might be greatly appreciated. It wasn’t even a very expensive watch, either.  I mean, geez.

A week later at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Gary and I were in the business center of the hotel where guests can use the computers to check in to their flight and print out their boarding pass, etc. I was helping Gary do this for his return flight home, and I was a little bit flustered at the time and trying to hide how upset I really was that he wasn’t going to be able to stay with me.

We got back to our room, and as I sat down on the bed, silently pouting at his boarding pass, the phone rang. Gary answered, looked at me incredulously (I’ve always wanted to use that word), and said “Thank you! Thank you very much!” and hung up. He told me that the front desk had called to inform us that my purse had been turned in by somebody by the name of AWESOME and that they were holding it for me to come pick it up.  I didn't even realize I was missing it until we got the call.  I'd inadvertently left it – credit cards, cash, driver’s license, passport, and all – on the floor next to the computer. Everything was still there, down to the last penny.  Could have been a New Yorker who turned it in, could have been someone from out of town; didn’t matter. It was in the City, and because N=PF², the person who found it was the product of the sum of Nice.

The other day at the Museum of the City of New York, I got so starry-eyed at the Joel Grey display that I somehow left my camera on the display case and walked off (yeah, go ahead, raise your eyebrows at me – it is strange how often I seem to lose things these days). Once I realized I’d left it there, I went back to retrieve it and it was gone – and just as I was about to give up asking the staff if someone had turned it in, my friend Laura called after me and said “Margo! He has your camera!”  I whirled around (picture this in slow motion with violin music in the bg) to see a smiling older man – a very Nice man – holding my camera all safe and sound and warm in his pudgy little fingers. I thanked him profusely and my day was resurrected.

Not only are the people just plain friendlier, but weird and magical things tend to happen here. I was just telling Gary before last weekend how I’d suddenly realized, during a particularly humid walk home from Central Park, that I really would be needing an umbrella here, and felt stupid for not packing the little travel-sized one that I keep at home. So I promised him that within the next few days while Laura was in town, if we found ourselves at a shop where they sold umbrellas, I’d buy myself one. So the night Laura came out, we decided to walk along the Museum Mile, where you can gaze up at the Met Museum's eerily shadowed night lighting, when hardly anyone's around, and you can jump and play on the vast concrete steps that lead up to the remarkably mammoth Greco-Roman columns that signify the Museum’s grand entrance. As I skipped down the far side of the steps, my eye caught something in the light. Looking down, a single object lay parallel with the steps:

ella, ella, ay, ay, ay... Thaaaat’s riiiiight. An umbrella. Not just any old umbrella – a freaking New York Yankees umbrella. As Laura pointed out, it might as well have had a bow wrapped around it – and I pictured maybe even a small card that said, “To Margo, Happy New York.” Or something. Come on, admit it.  Say it with me: That was kind of spooky. Should I have turned it in?  Well, OK yeah, maybe.  But you see, when I opened the umbrella, I realized that it was dirty, slightly damaged and broken on one side, and kind of old - but usable.  The museum was closed, it was very late, and there was nobody around, so I took it home.  Maybe I should have turned it in the next day or something.  Crap.  Now I feel bad about it...  Maybe I haven't been here long enough yet to factor completely in to the realm of Nice.  I'm sorry - it must be genetic.  I'm working on it.  Irony in hindsight can be very unsettling... So not only do random New Yorkers seem to watch over my property for me, they also ask me things in the elevator.   “Going running in the park today?” “Do you like this weather we’re having?” “Where did you find those crazy shoes?”  You can’t avoid a conversation with a New Yorker, because they ask you things. Back home, you might hear someone say, “This dry heat sucks,” but you don’t necessarily have to respond. You could easily just vaguely nod and still avoid eye contact if you wanted to. Heck, they’ll even point out the most popular table to sit at in Effy’s Café, remind you in the shoe store not to leave your purse behind while you do the idiot walk of testing a potential new pair, and they’ll even stop you in the subway and say, “The 6 train’s not running today, you’ll have to go all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge and transfer back up on the 4…” – even if they have no idea where you’re actually headed.  It doesn’t matter where you’re headed. You’re there, you exist, the subways are jammed with people (remember, P x F2), so Nice will be in plentiful bounty all around you. Another friend of mine who grew up here pointed out that before 9/11, people weren’t quite so nice as they are now – so there are plenty of other factors that can weigh in on the sum of Nice. But it’s been 10 years since that horrific day, and I’d say that Nice in New York is here to stay. And maybe – just maybe, so am I. (...and now I feel really, really bad about not turning in that umbrella.)

Why New York?

Some of my friends from home have asked me, “What’s the big deal with New York all of a sudden?” and fellow film students have asked me, “Why not L.A.?”

Here’s my attempt to ‘splain it all.

New York City is a strange world.  It’s a country all its own, with its many boroughs and cultures and stories.  When I came here for the first time last August just to visit out of curiosity, I had no idea what was in store for me the moment I set foot in the City.

The Dakota Building on West 72nd Street (photo from Wikipedia)

In Manhattan, the skyscrapers, apartment buildings, and business districts are alive.  There’s a feeling of presence that scuttles along with you as you walk down the sidewalks and gaze up at the beautiful spandrels and gables of the Dakota Building, or gawk at the (in my opinion) cheesy, somewhat mawkish Art Deco of Rockefeller Plaza.  Each and every block has a short story of equal importance but varying intensity in the NYC anthology.  

St. Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Avenue (photo by sunsurfr)

You can be walking down the street anywhere – Greenwich Village, 5^th Avenue, or even Wall Street, and happen upon a cathedral so massive, so beautiful, and so ornate in detail that you begin to wonder if you might be hallucinating from culture shock.  I found myself standing in front of these brilliant structures and just staring at them, completely mesmerized by not only their majestic charisma but also by the mere surprise of finding one there, literally in the middle of the City, surrounded by taller modern as well as older buildings, which always seem to hover around the cathedrals as if they’re protecting them from harm.

Then there are the “everyday” places where you go when you’re just being a citizen – like looking for a good book to check out at the Public Library on 42^nd Street, or just catching a train from Grand Central Station.  The buildings that have been preserved for these mundane activities are completely unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the west. 

But before this just ends up being an overly long rave about the architecture itself, I think I’ll go a little deeper into why this type of structural design translates, for me anyway, into personal security and a sense of well-being. 

Out west, we have the wonders of the Grand Canyon, the ancient, endless breathing terrain of Yellowstone, and the towering cliffs, crashing seas, and mammoth Redwoods of Northern California – all of these natural creations functioning as working evidence of the presence of God, or some kind of creator, because how could something like that exist without the existence of love to define it?  Natural beauty always gets a good rap for being described as “God’s creation”... but what about what we create as the hands, eyes, and soul of God?

I see the architecture, the loving preservation efforts, and the collective appreciation for the historical buildings, cathedrals, and public edifices in NYC as evidence of God working through our hands.  New York City as a whole is very extreme – and quite breathtaking in its various extremities.  Which brings me to another point about why this City speaks to me, personally.

I, like New York City, have undergone my own transformation.  I was also at one point in my own history in a very run-down, dangerous state, and I had to pull myself out of that place in my mind and body in order to survive.  New York has done this several times.  Most recently of course, in the decade following the attacks of 9/11, but before that, in a major transformation during the mid 1990s.  New York City had been described in the 1980s as a crime-ridden, crack-infested, depraved place to be trapped in, with no way out for the poor and no decent way to live for the middle class.  It became a living testament to the dark side of humanity, and was criticized profusely for the rampant pornography and subculture, while completely overlooked for its potential to celebrate sexuality and diversity.  It was, in a sense, the ugly, greasy, unpopular kid who always got picked last for dodgeball, while L.A. glimmered brightly in her effervescent notoriety as the “It Girl,” especially in the film and television industry.

In time, however, Manhattan was given a good sweeping up, a good polishing, and what some have described as a tasteless Disney-fying of Times Square (I happen to agree with this, although I don’t know what it was really like before, so I can’t judge it too harshly).  It still has its problems, but it’s come around 180 degrees and re-emerged as a popular tourist attraction, a city of joy and prosperity, and as the new Hollywood (with “Golden Age” connotations) as far as a renaissance in the entertainment industry goes.

I think New York City personifies what is possible, what is beautiful, and what is spiritual in humanity.  If you look hard enough, you can see twinkles of our own collective unconscious in the gargoyles, the seraphim, and the creepy little cherubim that line the storm drains and rooftops of the spectacular buildings here.  The City itself is a massive throng of human life, perpetually unleashed – back into the hands of New Yorkers who run about in their taxis, subways, buses and sidewalks to keep the place running 24/7, 365.  A soul never dies or sleeps, which is why this is the City that Never Sleeps, and it’s only fitting that Times Square is where the entire country, as well as a large percentage of the world, tunes in every year to watch the New Year begin – because NYC is the perfect venue to reinvent oneself and pursue New Life.   So that's why I 'get' New York, and why New York 'gets' me.

Ancient Kids

Today I went to the Lower East Side to help shoot a little video about a recycling project, starring local kids and tweens who are involved in the After-School Services program at the Henry Street Settlement (http://www.henrystreet.org/programs/youth/after-school.html). 

Katha is the Director of the program, and she is phenomenal with these kids.  And the kiddos themselves are a phenomena all on their own.  Sweet, polite, energetic, and enthusiastic – two of them in particular really pulled on my heartstrings.  One was a girl from Puerto Rico who, highly against her will, was moved to NYC about a year ago.  She had a very pretty-sounding name which I won’t even attempt to spell correctly.  You look into this girl’s big, brown, tween-aged eyes and you see a very old soul – very serious, very intelligent, and very sad.  She’s angry about being forced to leave her homeland, and hates New York, she says.  However, she did participate willingly (if not a bit methodically) in the activities, even though she wore her heart on her sleeve the whole time.  She smiled sadly, responded to questions with impressive confidence and poise, and even helped me figure out how to play back my footage on the camera I was using.  Confound it!  All that time fiddling around with DSLRs, and I forgot how to work a standard tape camera.  Silly me.  Good for her!

The other kid I especially liked was a 10-year-old boy named Joshua – yet another very serious, introspective soul who very astutely pointed out that the world is in a lot of “trouble”.  You can sort of tell when kids are just repeating stuff they’ve heard their parents say, or mimicking something they saw on TV, as opposed to when they really mean something because they’ve thought about it (and yes, probably worried about it too).  Josh means it, and he thinks and worries about this stuff.  Probably more than a 10-year-old kid should.  As he walked by me to sit back down, I complimented him on his performance in front of the camera.  He paused briefly, looked me straight in the eye, and very frankly said, “Thank you.”  He will do well, I think.  As long as he doesn’t let the woes of the world drive him into despair.

I found it just a little bit amusing that the first field project I was set to work on had to do with recycling.  Back home, I drive people crazy when I catch them throwing away a recyclable plastic, or using those god-awful plastic bags, because it drives me crazy to see something like that thrown into the trash.  I even started a pathetic campaign at Gore to try to get people to recycle those stupid little plastic creamer containers that are so rampantly used at the coffee station there (and yes, I called the local recycling company to confirm that those things are indeed recyclable). 

I don’t even want to get into what it was like trying to get those people to simply follow a minor request, which I clearly posted on the recycle container, asking, could they please simply remove the non-recyclable lids from the containers before dropping them into the bin?  Nope.  Sorry.  Too much to ask for some people, because I would invariably find several thrown into the bin with the lids still on them – even though in order to pull the lid off the container, all one needs to do is, gee whiz – pull a little more. 

What confounded me the most, however, was when I’d glance at the trash can not three feet away from the recycle bin, and see dozens of plastic creamer containers tossed directly into the trash.  And the trash was actually farther away from the coffee station than the actual recycle bin.  It was like they were going out of their way NOT to recycle.  But I digress… 

So yeah – pretty comically serendipitous to find myself helping some kids make an instructional video about how to recycle plastic, glass, paper, and aluminum. 

Take THAT, you Corporate numbskulls.

For the video, we had to scrounge up examples of each type of recyclable in order to demonstrate which items go into which bins.  So I quickly sprinted across the street to the little playground/park area and rifled through the little public trash bin, fishing out a glass bottle and an empty Pepsi can.  You should have seen the stares I got.  :) 

On my way home after the shoot, which involved walking a few blocks through the LES and catching two different subway trains, I overheard at least four different languages.  One was Asian, another African, and two different variations of Latino, or Spanish – but not the Mexican Spanish I’m used to hearing.  And walking through Queens on Tuesday, I found myself in the middle of “Little India” – a tiny subculture area near the subway line that I would swear has specifically been recreated to look exactly like the streets of Mumbai. 

Indeed, the Big Melting Pot for cultures from all over the world is right here in New York, and I get to experience it (as well as melt into it myself) a little more each day that I have to go somewhere I wouldn’t otherwise have gone, had I still been exploring as a tourist.  I’m looking forward to discovering more nooks and crannies around the City that aren’t listed in the New York for Dummies book, as well as meeting more kids from all over the globe who were born (or quickly became) older than their parents.