Lorem ipsum dolor / Lorem ipsum dolor
Because it has 4,000 street food traders
If you want to eat lamb with rice at midnight, you just have to wait 15 minutes in line on the corner of 53 rd Street and Sixth Avenue, because there’s always a crowd at the Egyptian’s. Then you walk through the street and eat all sorts for six dollars, and it’s as though you’re on a gourmet journey around the world. In New York you often feel like you’re on a journey around the world. It is enough to head from Harlem, where a half-naked tattooed man does pull-ups on the traffic lights at minus 15 degrees, to Queens, where the best bu- rek in New York is sold, through the uni- versally known Little Italy and Chinatown (the largest Chinese enclave in the west- ern hemisphere).
And, very importantly, because New York has Brooklyn
And Brooklyn is something wonder- ful because, among other things you can be insiders at a leisurely Sunday gathering in a church with gospel music. And those black girls really let go and improvise and sway, and it’s so good that you get goose- bumps, and maybe even cry even if you’re not religious in the slightest – it’s enough for you to be emotional. Brooklyn didn’t want to “unite” with the rest of New York, and if it hadn’t it would be the third larg- est city in America. And then, in 1898, it became one of New York’s five districts. And Brooklynites still regret this fact to- day. Brooklyn, apparently, has unjustly re- mained in the shadow of Manhattan. In Brooklyn there are around 700 institutions of art and culture, beautiful brownstone houses and the wonderful Brooklyn Bridge – a marvel of engineering of the time, with a free and priceless view of Manhattan. Brooklyn is young, with the average age of residents being 34. It is coloured with galleries and flea markets, and inhabited by the ghosts of writers, artists, and – Mar- ilyn Monroe. Many things have developed in Brooklyn, like the aforementioned gos- pel. Then there’s also air conditioning. And teddy bears, in a candy store. Permission to call the bears Teddy came personally from then-U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. And more... It’s not that I don’t like winding romantic lanes, but there’s something in those New York streets and avenues that always cross at right angles First, you can always go only straight. There’re no winding streets. Second, you
to these department stores softened me and reminded me of the dear 1980s and child- hood, and of excitement because“we’re go- ing to the department store”. Well, in New York there are still genuine department stores, and each covering eight floors. And I love it because it looks like a city where happiness and a future are easy to find, if you try just a little bit Wherever people fly or sail from, they see the Statue of Liberty and be- lieve they will find something better than what they left behind. It doesn’t look like Europe. It doesn’t seem pretentious like Paris or London... It didn’t seem like that to me. It seemed to me more like it accepts everything and everyone, which is possi- ble, given that more than half of its inhab- itants weren’t born there, but rather who knows where. Those people we see in the Subway and who I couldn’t stop watching, and guessing where they’re from and why they’re there, in that metro, is why I love New York.
are in one of the largest cities in the world, yet getting lost would require you to be extremely untalented when it comes to map reading. Simple, and above all prac- tical. However, it didn’t seem so in the late 18th century when the urban planner’s pro- posal for a network of streets was roundly rejected by the city council. Nevertheless, the idea was accepted a few years later and a special commission was formed to carry out the plan in flattening hills and over- grown courtyards, to the general indig- nation of the inhabitants of what is now called“downtown”. And so Manhattan was gridded with vision, lengthwise and cross- wise. And although everyone asked why someone would live in some distant 51 st Street, today the price of rent in a small studio apartment in this street is at least 3,500 dollars a month. I also love New York because it has department stores Department stores! When was the last time you heard that someone bought some- thingatadepartmentstore?I’mnotashopa- holic, if we exclude flea markets, but going
52 |
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator