As You Like It: New York, New York

I pride myself on being a born and bred New Yorker. I may have been living outside the city longer than inside; in fact, I’ve lived elsewhere for over 30 years now, but things like attitude and accent creep up on me at unexpected times. We were in a restaurant perusing our menus with Lisa and Matt a few weeks ago when suddenly I heard myself ask, “What is everyone going to awe-deh?” Three heads popped up, stared, then laughed. I blamed my semantic slip on being exhausted, but I knew that wasn’t the real reason. You can take the New Yawker out of New Yawk but you can’t…

My assistant, Lalitta, loves to impress people with the fact that I’m originally from the Big Apple. She’ll warn students who are giving her a hard time, “You better behave or Joan will get all Brooklyn up in your face!” I’m not even sure what that means, but it seems to scare them. They think that I was one of the original Goodfellas.

This past weekend Steve and I met our friends Mike and Mary in Manhattan. Mary had only been there once before, but since her mother had warned her that she would probably be raped and robbed the minute she set foot in the city, she didn’t enjoy her stay much. Mike had visited many times and had great memories that he wanted us all to enjoy. The last time we had visited was about ten years ago when Lisa and Mariel were kids. We were excited about returning but even more excited about seeing our friends again.

After driving down from Boston feeling like kids let out for summer vacation, we sat out on the hotel’s bar terrace trying to catch up. Our conversation pinged like a pinball ricocheting off each of us. Later, while walking to a restaurant for dinner, Mary yelled, “We’re in New York City, can you believe it?!” I didn’t. I kept looking up expecting to see the Hancock building on the skyline.

On Saturday we visited the Empire State Building as quintessential tourists. At 10 in the morning it was already packed with people from all over the world standing in a hundred lines, including a security line (where our dangerous belts were removed and x-rayed), a line for tickets, a line for the first elevator, a line for the second elevator, a line for … I lose track. That was just for the 86^th floor. If you wanted to go to the top you had to pay extra. If you wanted to skip a line, you had to pay extra. If you wanted to actually breathe, you had to pay extra. And if you wanted to buy a souvenir, including the ever popular gorilla poop (don’t ask), you had to pay through the nose. New York, New York. But it was a clear day and the view was unbelievable and Mary was smiling. Mission accomplished.

Afterwards we walked along 5^th Avenue, stopped at Rockefeller Center where, despite the 70-degree temperature, people were ice skating, and visited Grand Central Station to gaze at the ceiling. We walked to Central Park where Steve and I used to spend our Sundays rowing on the lake and where we now felt lost. I yearned for the Boston Common. Everywhere there were pushing, shoving, loud crowds fighting for a piece of New York real estate. The city was giving me a headache. Later on, when I asked Steve how he had slept the night before, he told me that he hadn’t since he wasn’t used to the continuous night noise. That’s when I realized where my headache had come from. I wasn’t used to city night noises either. Somewhere along my life I had turned into a suburbanite sleeper.

That night we headed off to see Jersey Boys, which had us dancing in our seats till 10. Afterwards, out-of-town idiots that we were, we attempted to flag down a taxi back to our hotel. Catching a cab in Manhattan on a Saturday night is not for amateurs. We ended up walking back for another night of car horns, sirens, and jack hammers. My New York headache was getting worse.

The next day we took the subway to Battery Park. Steve and I had grown up riding dirty, gritty, graffitied trains filled with nutty people. That day we sat in a pristine white-walled train adorned with bright, plastic covered posters, helpful subway maps and announcers clearly calling out the stops. We felt like we were strangers in a strange land no longer our home. But we loved riding the Staten Island ferry and the fact that Mike and Mary were having fun.

It was not the weekend I expected. I had my usual great time with our friends and loved getting away, but I never expected to feel like a fish out of water — Charles River water to be exact. I never thought I’d feel homesick for the Pru, the Green line, and the Boston Globe. Born and bred in Brooklyn, I was now an expatriate and it rankled. I was too old for New York, too set in my ways, too afraid of the rush and the crowds and the frenetic pace. So even though I may drift into a Brooklyn accent and reminisce about ice skating in Prospect Park or having “two-franks-french” at Nathan’s in Coney Island, it’s all become smoke and mirrors. I’m a Boston girl now.

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Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on Oct 21 2010. Filed under As You Like It, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.