LITTLE NEW YORK CITIES

on wednesday, huck and i went to the corner where chinatown meets little italy to have some prescription lenses put into some vintage frames. 

we were in a part of new york i don't see often these days, so once the prescription was dropped off we decided to walk a little further west along canal street to see what we could see. 

as canal street stretched further west and chinatown grew distant behind me, i happened upon an apartment that i looked at with my mom around this time last year. it was the cheapest apartment we saw, a one bedroom in a run down building on the ground floor, with garbage cans flanking the windows outside at street level. in the end we decided that the real deal-breaker (there were lots of deal-breakers) was the location. not really chinatown, not really soho, no subway stop close by, sort of a no-man's land. or so i thought at the time.

yesterday i realized this silly apartment was about a block and a half from some of my favorite parts of the city. oh it made me mad. you should never apartment hunt when you have no idea where things are in relation to each other, is the lesson i learned that afternoon. and until i walked past the building itself and saw those sad, dirty little garbage cans flanking that sad, street-level window, until then I was totally kicking myself for being so dumb. but then i got there and i remembered, oh yeah this apartment really was awful. 

the thing is, there are just so many ways to do new york city, because there are an infinite number of new york cities to do. 

right now we are doing the upper west new york city, with strollers all over the sidewalks and giant grocery stores on the corners and parks filled with kids and dogs and families. i love my neighborhood, and i love all of the friends i have here. but we could certainly have done the upper east, instead, with doormen and ladies in furs and glass-fronted shops boasting gucci.

or we could have done midtown with the hustle and bustle and traffic and amazing delis. 

maybe the theatre district, a little run-down grime and ambition around every corner.

or the financial district, surrounded by the skyscrapers, the streets dead until rush hours and lunch hours.

or cobble-stoned tribeca, or the east village with the rest of the kids my age, or the west village where it is perfect . . .

in a few weeks we are moving to another little new york city, it will be the same but it will also be different. we're leaving our tree-lined streets for a lot more concrete. we're abandoning some charm for lots of space and a washer/dryer and a full-sized fridge. it will be a different new york city. a little bit better, and a little bit worse. 

i thought about my new washer dryer yesterday as we walked through the west village. i think i am in love with my new washer/dryer, but that washer/dryer is certainly not my ideal new york. it is a compromise. as much comfort as you can squeeze into the city, and in the exchange, you lose a bit of the city you're trying to domesticate. 

i like to pretend like i could pick my perfect new york city. i think about it a lot. if i had all the money in the world, where in the city would i land? every day it seems like my answer changes. but if you asked me right now i'd say a spot somewhere south of fourteenth street, a little north of houston, and just a bit west of broadway.

or else brooklyn. and that's a whole other story.