New York: An Introduction
View from the Empire State Building
Describing in writing the pull New York has on me is difficult. I’ve been coming here since I was six months old; my parents brought us to Manhattan almost every year, for work or simply to absorb its energy.
That familiarity is exactly why, at twenty-five, I needed to know what it meant to stay. I spent over a year and a half in the city as a journalism student, long enough for the initial thrill to wear off, and for New York to start toughening me up.
New York asks a lot of its inhabitants: constant movement, urgency, ambition, and expectations that never quite settle. At times, that pressure drains you. And yet, all it takes is pulling on a pair of sneakers and stepping out of a — more often than not — minuscule apartment to be absorbed again by its streets: loud, electric, indifferent, alive. In those moments, it truly feels like standing at the center of the world, where anything can happen.
From skating between trash and rats on the curb to towering over the city from the top of a glitzy Manhattan rooftop, the city lives in its contrasts, as the legendary Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier once said:
“A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: It is a beautiful catastrophe.”
Trying to describe such a complex place as a single entity would inevitably flatten it. New York City is built from a multitude of identities and cultures that shape the character of its boroughs, neighborhoods, and streets. The only way to approach it is by breaking into the mosaic of neighborhoods that have developed, organically and stubbornly, into places with distinct identities. Or, as Alistair Cooke famously put it:
“New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world.”
As a lightpost to everyone imagining the scintillating American-dream, New York is one of the great capitals of the Western world: a symbol of freedom and possibilities shaping culture worldwide through TV and cinema.
So how did New York become a melting pot for people from every corner of the world?
As a major port into the “new world” and a driving force in American industrialization, the city drew in waves of immigrants seeking a better life. Starting with the Irish and later expanding to Eastern and Southern Europeans, everyone filtered through Ellis Island, where they could just about grasp their new, undefined future. Today, most immigrants fly in from the Caribbean, China, Mexico, and South America - making Spanish the second most spoken language. Over time, this convergence of cultures gave rise to distinct neighborhoods, together with new forms of music, art, fashion, design, and food that define the city’s character.
Having been immortalized as backdrop and protagonist of countless movies and cult TV shows, from Seinfeld and Sex and the City to Friends, Mad Men, and How I Met Your Mother, New York cemented itself as the place where success (in life) is expected.
A city forever moving, always unfinished, perpetually open to welcoming new guests to share its chaos.
This is only the beginning — in the next pieces, I’ll read New York the only way it allows itself to be read: one neighborhood at a time.
