the streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see

by mg at 11:02 AM on April 26, 2002

If you’ve never been to New York City, or you’ve only visited, or, heck, even if you live here, you can have a distorted image of what the city is really like. The image of the city you get from movies, television, and books, that is New York, but it really isn’t the New York that New Yorkers live in.

I was just watching Woody Allen’s Manhattan today, and wished I lived in his New York. But I don’t. His New York is full of artists and writers sitting around discussing philosophy, having sex with gorgeous 17 year-olds, and playing racket ball at the 96 Street Y. Add to that Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City (etc, etc) and it’s no wonder people have this skewed view of what life in this city is really like.

I live in New York. I don’t live in Woody Allen’s New York, or Sarah Jessica Parker’s New York. I live in my New York, along with most of the rest of the cities 8 million citizens. We are the New York City that lives and works and dies. We are the New York City that buys monthly Metrocards and rides the subway every day; we’d never think to take a cab. We are the New York City that reads the Post and Daily News (not the Times).

We are the New York City that were born here. We grew up here; went to P.S. 72 and I.S. 149. In the summer we played frequently interrupted games of football in the street, ran through open fire hydrants, and chased after Mr. Softee. We are the New York that first got high in Central Park, right before heading into the laser show at Hayden Planetarium.

We are the New York that says “I’m going to the city” when we really mean we are going into Manhattan. We are the New York that will never appear in movie, or have a sitcom based on our lives. We are the real New York

We are not the New York that people from Ohio, who move here expecting to make it big, ever could have imagined. Those people get here, realize how different the reality is from the fantasy, and try hard to find the New York they’d been conditioned to expect. Those of us who really live here can spot those people miles away. We know they’ll either try for a few years, give up and move back to Nebraska and settle down to a traditional Nebraskan rut. Or, they’ll figure out what New York is really all about and become one of us, joining the collective.

Or, very rarely, those people will actually make it and live that Woody Allen kind of life. The real New Yorkers despise those people, because they have something we never will; something we simultaneously hate but struggle to attain for ourselves, something we can never reconcile with our own lives, but never achieve for ourselves.

Anyway, I was talking to someone a couple days ago I wanted to show them pictures of my New York, specifically the neighborhood I live in. I don’t really have any pictures from the neighborhood I live in, so I relied on my trusty friend Google. I ran across this site, which, for some strange reason, contains about 6-7 series of pictures of Jackson Height’s architecture, sans any sort of commentary (except a small rant about gas prices!?)

Well, I was looking through the pictures when imagine my surprise to come across pictures of my apartment building. I’d tell you exactly which picture is my apartment, but I don’t want to just hand it to my stalkers on a silver platter. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned the name of my building in the past, and if you really want to dredge through the archives to find it, and then come all the way to Jackson Heights to find me, well, you deserve to chop my body up into little pieces and store them in that industrial freezer in your mom’s basement. I wont deny you that.

Still, my apartment building appears on the main page, and also a side view. I go grocery shopping at Key Food. And Legends, aka Thumbs East, is just two doors down from this shop.

And, if you want to learn more about where this real New Yorker lives, you can check this out. As for me, I’m going to go watch Manhattan again.