A friend of mine in a local writers' group I belong to is changing her name while she tries to get somewhere as a published author. She's from Canada, but she hops back and forth between her hometown and New York, and she hopes to emigrate to the Big Apple. How appropriate for someone to come to New York and adopt a whole new identity. :-)
What I find interesting is how everyone who wants to make it in whatever field they choose wants to make it in New York first. Yeah, yeah, yeah - if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Guess I'll never make the big time. Because even though I live in northern New Jersey, about twenty miles west of Manhattan, I've never felt welcome in New York; they're more accepting of folks who come to the city from all over the world, but they're not so accommodating to the "bridge-and-tunnel" crowd. We in New Jersey can visit there as much as we want - some of us even move there - but we're always looked down on as outsiders looking in.
In fact, I've come to regard New York City as my bad luck town and New York my bad luck state. Like writer James Kunstler, who has the same attitudes toward Boston and Massachusetts for all of his bad breaks there, I'm sure much of what's happened to me is just coincidental, but as Kunstler does regarding his bad-luck places, I sometime wonder if New York really, really hates me. Particulars:
In the summer of 1977, while New York City was obsessing over blackouts and the Son of Sam, my mother sent me to a resident camp in the Catskills in an effort to get me to learn how to live away from home and make friends with boys my own age. In fact, the conditions were awful, the food was terrible, and the kids teased me so mercilessly, I ended up playing make-believe games by myself because other kids wanted nothing to do with me.
When I was about ten or eleven, my father, my sister, and I got stuck between stations on the subway. I've ridden rapid transit systems in several cities, but this is the only time this happened to me anywhere.
Every year I go to the auto show in Manhattan. One year, I was harassed by security officers and humiliated for spending too much time at one display; they thought I was up to no good.
The first time I visited Brooklyn, I went to Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It was so hot, I almost passed out from the heat while looking for a place to get some lunch.
I went to Macy's one Christmas season and got stuck between floors on the elevator - the only time that's ever happened to me.
On my first day trip to Long Island, to see Theodore Roosevelt's Sagamore Hill mansion, I drove over a pothole on the Long Island Expressway that caused a flat tire a couple of weeks later.
On my last day trip to Long Island, to see a Vanderbilt mansion on the North Shore, it was overcast and foggy, so I turned my headlights on. Because it was daytime, I forgot to turn them off, and the battery died. I needed a jump start to get home.
I tried to get out of a Manhattan subway station after portaging my bicycle on the train; when I tried to get my bike through a turnstile exit, I got it stuck and I damaged it getting out. It was the only way I could get out; it seems the exit door for bikes, strollers, and the like was locked.
My first subject for a profile article was a performing artist based in Manhattan. As noted on this blog, I had to junk the article after three years and nine drafts because the artist in question didn't like how it was coming out.
Although I never set foot in New York on September 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks occurred the same day I set out on vacation via Amtrak. I boarded a different train from the one I was supposed to get on, I had to get off at Wilmington, Delaware (I was headed for Baltimore), and I was stranded for two hours or so while waiting for a rental car to drive home.
I hope my friend has a better experience with New York than I have had. But I wouldn't mind moving to Boston, Philadelphia, or even Chicago, which has a tougher test than New York - if you can't make it there, you can't make it anywhere. (I want to live in a city, not a suburb, but New Jersey is a very suburban state - and New York is certainly out of the question for me.)
Needless to say, "New York's Not My Home" is one of my favorite Jim Croce songs. :-(
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