I wrote this for an essay class last semester, but didn’t get around to posting it until now. The assignment was to reflect on a strong reaction you’ve had to another author’s writing. Sorry if it’s a little tl;dr.
“Good-bye to All That” by Joan Didion, the mandatory “this city has ruined me” essay that all New York writers inevitably produce, is a piece I’d composed in my head many times before realizing she had already penned it.
Written in 1967, the sentiments woven into this essay still resonate more than 40 years later, though maybe that’s because, as she writes, “One of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.” Upon reading “Good-bye to All That” for the first time, I realized that many of my own essays had a similar spine, albeit with a contemporary twist: they were peppered with misanthropic indictments of the internet and the personal challenges I’d faced in coming to grips with the city, but somehow I always eventually stumbled upon the same point that Didion makes: to be young and disaffected in New York is perhaps the most unoriginal stance a writer can take, but in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, it’s also one of the most resonant.
Manhattan is one of the most densely populated places on earth, with over 71,000 people per square mile in a 26 square mile radius. This sloppy, crowded mess of a city becomes most evident if you’re ever caught near Herald Square or Penn Station during rush hour. In those places, at those times, the desire to jump in front of a cab may rise in you so swiftly, so violently, that you may wonder how you’ve made it so long in a chaotic place such as this one. According to Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z (a song real NYers pretend to hate but secretly love), New York is:
- A concrete jungle where dreams are made of;
- A manic coke fiend that encourages the use of prescription sleeping pills (the city never sleep, better slip you an Ambien);
But most importantly, NYC is:
- A pity, half of y’all won’t make it.
I did not make it, or am in the process of not making it, and one of the outstanding factors that contributed to my failure to ‘make it’ is the density issue. For instance, it would be quite nice to not get jostled and elbowed every time I walked down the sidewalk.
In cities with space, there is not a line to get out of the subway station.
In cities with space, there is not a 50% chance you will end your commute with a fresh new bruise.
In cities with space, the following annoying sidewalk inhabitants do not impact your ability to move in any crucial way:
- Gaggles of chatty teen girls flirting with baby-faced boys weighed down by North Face backpacks.
- Tourists flanked by other tourists flanked by other tourists, stretching five-wide across the sidewalk, paused, while the one in sunglasses studies a map.
- People who move slowly because they have to: children and the elderly, primarily. Mandatory slow-movers are the worst, because you can’t really make a scene about how slowly they’re moving without being an unsympathetic asshole. But still, must they walk down the direct center of the sidewalk?!?
- Drunken bros in backwards caps and Yankees T’s trying to figure out which bar out of the ten bars on the block will have the most “grade A pussy.”
- People from chill places on the West Coast who don’t understand the importance of urgency (or of themselves).
Because of these people, and the sheer lack of space New York offers (my apartment is close to the size of the elevator at my job, for instance), you have to become incredibly adept at weaving. Weaving is one of the first things I picked up when I moved to New York four years ago. Even though I am chronically early to everything, I operate under the basic assumption that I am going to be incredibly late. This means that I rush everywhere, and usually end up getting to places 20 minutes early only to sit in the lobby/outside wishing I’d taken my sweet time. However, I could not rush if I didn’t learn how to weave. Dodging on tippy toe, I scan the crowd ahead of me for any of the people above so that I can plan my attack a half-block early. Dip to the right to avoid the stroller, swerve to the left because I don’t want a flyer with coupons for pizza. Muttering under my breath all the way about how much I hate New York, I eventually make it to my destination unscathed, annoyed and freakishly early.
When I move to the Bay Area, I will miss the skill that proper weaving requires. I’m sure I’ll get to use my weaving abilities should I ever find myself near popular BART stations around rush hour, but the urgency will not be the same. I will still be freakishly early to everything, but at least I won’t be so covered in elbow-shaped bruises.