MaxTalks

New York City. A.K.A. The Big Apple in the Concrete Jungle that Never Sleeps. For centuries it has served as an epicenter of finance, art, music, media, fashion, and global affairs. It is the backdrop to countless TV shows and movies including hit sitcoms, dramas, and 8,000 procedural cop shows. I mean, seriously, how do they keep making those cop shows? 

For most people across the world, including me, New York City is a place they have never been to yet have so many descript ideas about. I know of taxis cabs, hot dog stands, pizza slices, bodegas, bright lights, and busy people. But how much of that is an accurate representation of the city? Last week, I made it my mission to find the real nature of New York and to separate the myth from the metropolis.

I woke up Friday morning on the wind-whipped shores of Massachusetts with this beautiful sunrise to send me off. In order to get to New York, I would have to ride one train and two separate buses all before 8 am, so like any good Bostonian, I ordered my Dunkin’ and headed out. The four hour, 212 mile bus ride between Boston and NYC was surprisingly pleasant in all ways except visual due to the unfortunate fact that most of that trip consists of driving through Connecticut. Quick note about Connecticut: every city you pass you think to yourself “There is no possible way you can make a city uglier than that”, and then BAM! you’re in Bridgeport.

In the final 7 miles of the bus-ride I got my first glimpse of the New York City skyline. In blue atmospheric haze, the cluster of skyscrapers appeared like a distant mountain range and my mouth dropped at the sheer scale of what I was about to enter.

My bus dropped me off right at Penn Station on a busy intersection in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. I had such a huge smile walking around. Every person you pass on the street looks nothing like the person you passed before them. Walking 20 minutes down East 34th street I saw people of so many different ethnicities, fashion styles, heights, ages, you name it.

The reason I was walking down E 34th was to reach a Jewish deli called Sarge’s Delicatessen & Diner. On the way there, I stopped by a bodega to pick up a Gatorade and a copy of the New York Post. The New York Post is a very trashy newspaper – nowhere close to the excellent writing found here on maxtalks.blog – so after some light reading it became my placemat once my turkey pastrami was served. Sarge’s was everything I could hope for. A lot of restaurants in NYC are hallway shaped, so wherever you’re eating you usually end up in intimate settings near a lot of people. While I ate I listened to a group of three seniors at the table next to me joke and argue on everything from Woody Allen movies to Donald Trump’s upcoming campaign. In other words, a very Jewish conversation. Before I left I struck up a conversation with them to learn what they knew about the city. They all agreed – New York has everything. The museums, restaurants, Broadway shows, and night life are all here. Your night could go a million ways depending on what you want. One of the guys at the table, Jerry, said something that stuck with me the rest of my trip: “New York is the center of the world”. I had no reason to refute that. Just on the walk from the bus, I had already seen store signs in several languages, people from different ethnicities, and more buildings than words in this blog post. Final word about Sarge’s – if you go, get the matzah ball soup and the kugel.

My next stop was the Upper West Side to meet my friend Aviva for smoothies. To get there I had to take the A train where I got my first exposure to the New York subway system. As soon as I got underground I was in a jungle of 100 people rushing in all directions under a low-ceiling and weak fluorescent lighting. It was pure claustrophobic excitement and even though I wasn’t in a rush, I had to be in order to push through the crowd. A Bronx-native, Aviva went to college with me where they served as my RA for a year, and now their studying at Columbia University’s Teachers College. After catching up, I remembered my mission for the blog and asked Aviva for an inside scoop on the city.

Me: “So Aviva, are New Yorkers mean?:

Aviva:  “New Yorkers are not mean, they’re just real. Nobody here is pretending to like complete strangers like they do in L.A.” 

Me: “I think that means they’re mean”.

Aviva: “Listen, it’s a busy city. You have your friends, you don’t need to make any new ones when you’re out.”

I think I knew what Aviva meant. Several times on my trip whenever I asked for directions or tried striking up conversation with people, I was met with short, informative answers, and not much else. Nothing mean was ever conveyed, but I did get a sense I was wasting precious time.

Me: “Aviva, if you were approached by detectives during the middle of the work, would you continue nonchalantly working as they ask you really important questions about an ongoing case?”

Aviva: “Well, depends on what I was doing. To be honest, I would step aside to answer some questions, but I’d make it clear they would have to keep it quick.”

Aviva told me New York has a big hustle culture. People are always working to stay afloat in a city where long, stressful hours come as a cost of living. On fashion, Aviva said that yes, New Yorkers are definitely fashionable, but most days people are not trying to look runway ready.

While talking about things to do in the city, Aviva brought up a socioeconomic perspective I hadn’t thought about. New York is an expensive city, and when you think of all the things the city has to offer, a lot of people don’t have the time or money to enjoy those things. Whether working all the time or raising a family, leisure time in New York is a privilege. For instance, nobody ever buys Broadway tickets at full price. They get them discounted at TKTS.

One location for TKTS is Times Square where that night I went to get tickets to the Broadway musical Chicago. I knew nothing going into it besides the “Cell Block Tango” song where several incarcerated women relay the stories of the terrible, deceased men from their life getting what they deserved. Overall – great show. Fun performances (Charlotte d’Amboise as Roxie especially), silly plot, and enough good songs interspersed throughout the two hour showtime to keep you interested. 

After the show I bolted out the doors of the theater and ran down the rainy streets of the city. In typical fashion, I was late for a train. I was headed for New Jersey where my friend Jeffrey and his parents were letting me stay in their house for the weekend. Flat-out, this trip could not have happened without them and I’m super grateful they were so accommodating on short notice. From my time in New Providence, NJ, I want to mention that Jeff’s friends were really cool, I got pizza with fries on it that was sick, and on my last day Jeff took me to get a Black Russian bagel with cream cheese and jam on it that rocked my world.

Gallery includes photo of Jeffrey (pictured middle) as a child that I thought was very sweet

For my second day I wanted to start in Brooklyn. On the C train, I noticed that there were signs posted over the subway car with instructions on how to behave on trains. “Attention: Do not take up seats with your bags!” or “Notice: Assaulting a metro officer is a felony”. Didn’t think the second one needed a sign, but I digress. In Brooklyn I went to Court Street Bagels and got an everything with lox, cream cheese, onions, and capers. Guys – this was maybe the best bagel I’ve had in my life. The whole “New York has the best bagels” thing is probably true.

After the bagel, I headed to Unearth Vintage to go thrift shopping. Fifty percent of the fashion I see on Tiktok comes from 20-somethings posing on the streets of Brooklyn so I figured why not head to the source and see what was happening. I tried a lot of clothes and wanted something to fit really bad but came up short. 

From there I headed back into Manhattan for one of my favorite parts of the trip: biking through Central Park. The bike-sharing system in New York is called CitiBike. It started back in 2013, but recently they’ve rolled out electric bikes or as like to call them, heaven on wheels. One push of the pedal and I was flying. Central Park is massive. I flew past horse-drawn carriages, animal exhibits part of the zoo, the Met, and dozens of inferior, non-electric bicycles. I had a really great time taking in the park. At one point, Phoebe Bridgers was playing in my earbuds and I began to get teary-eyed with how grateful I felt to experience this sort of thing.

After reaching the end of the park, I circled back to the Met to wander around. I got lost a few times inside, and I have no idea how much or how little I got to see. I like their impressionist collection and their medieval armor displays. After that I walked around the park, then Times Square, then back to New Jersey.

As I’m writing now, I’m sitting on a coach bus across from Penn Station scheduled to take me home to Boston. It’s snowing outside and I’m watching the parking lot manager yell at a guy in a New York accent. I’ve finished describing my trip so it’s time to answer the question directly. What is the real nature of New York?

The most important thing I learned from my trip is that I asked a stupid question. First, New York is not a single place, it’s five boroughs and three hundred neighborhoods. Second, New York is not a static city. Every year there are new buildings, new restaurants, new fads, and new people coming in to change the face of the city constantly. So, the question I set this whole blog on was really “What is the real nature of a place that is three hundred places that are all in constant flux? I think some parts of New York are a little less fluid than others, and those parts I can talk about. For instance, the subway, the attitude of the city, the hustling, the crowdedness, and the tourist sites. I think TV and movies do an accurate job describing the spirit of the city in that way. On tourists: they are as much a part of New York as the residents. I doubt anyone who lives in the city visits the Statue of Liberty more than once in their life, and parts of the city like Times Square are totally touristed out. But, that’s still part of the city. It’s as if the reality of New York got turned into a myth, and by years of selling that myth to tourists, it became reality again.

I have more thoughts on the city and my experience, but the bus is headed out of the Bronx now. New York is behind me, I’m tired, and all I can think about is how badly I want Dunkin’.