Small Town: New York City

Dear Reader,

The next time one of your out-of-town relatives gives you the line about how unfriendly, alienating, anonymous and generally psychologically burdensome New York City must be (“and I just don’t understand how you can live there”), let them know what many of us who live here know: New York City, in some ways, is simply a collection of small towns. We happen to call them “neighborhoods,” but anywhere else in America, they would be small to medium towns, or even cities, and they have all of the same positives, and some of the negatives, that small towns exhibit.

In my own neighborhood, the Upper West Side, I’ve got a Mom-and-Pop (literally) store where they know my name and what I’m going to order when I walk in; we talk about their young son and how he’s doing, and the wife keeps track of when I come in (“Late today;” “Early today”). I’ve got many folks that I say “Hi” to in the street; folks I know from my various activities in the Park, living in my building, going to the vet, shopping, etc. I’ve got regular folks I see in the Park when I’m working out there; sometimes we intersect on Broadway, and they do a double-take when they see me out of context (as do I). I’ve got people I met when I was volunteering out in the medians of Broadway; we still stop to chat when we run into each other.

But, it’s more than just the neighborhood I live in; the “small town NYC” stretches to other neighborhoods sometimes. Last week it was the East Side, where I went to a concert of my old chorus. I hadn’t sung with these folks for more than 10 years, but when I went to the post-concert reception, I was so pleased to see many of my old singing compatriots, and they were equally glad to see me. I also ran into other old friends on the way into the concert, with whom I sat and caught up. Given the numbers of performances on any given night in the NYC area, it always amazes me when I run into people I know at concerts, but I almost always seem to.

Last night, I went caroling with a group of folks down in the West Village. This was an activity sponsored by another choral group, one of whose members sings with my group occasionally. He emailed me the particulars of the caroling evening; I sent it out to my group; I was the only one from my group to show up. Here I was in a room where I knew only one person, and not all that well, but I decided to make a go of it anyway. We went out, walked around the lovely, quaint area of the West Village along Hudson Street, caroling and chatting. Reactions to our presentation were mixed, but many more positive than negative. We were even invited into a couple of trés chic restaurants to sing for the patrons! Alienating, indeed. At the end of the evening, back in the church school cafeteria we started from, I had a very nice chat with a member of the Parks Department’s horticultural crew. She works in Brooklyn, but we had a lively conversation about male and female gingko trees, pulling down dead branches, seasonal “hort” work, and other fascinating topics. As large as the City is, many times it feels very small to me!

I looked for a great bar I used to go to in that neighborhood; McBell’s on 6th Avenue. It seems to have been swallowed up in the “mallification” of that stretch of 6th. Too bad. It was the kind of place a woman alone, or anyone for that matter, could go into, sit at a table, eat a burger, drink a couple of beers, and not be made to feel like a pariah. Fortunately, there is a place like that in my own neighborhood, so I went there for a post-caroling repast, and ended the evening on an up note. And oh, yeah, the bartender in this place knows me, too. I don’t frequent the place, but she’s “small town” enough to even remember the occasional customers. “Anonymous” indeed!

So, next time you visit New York, or my neighborhood, look around and see all of the small town “values” exhibited here every day. Yeah, we have crime, shootings, people sleeping on the sidewalks, drugs, theft, you name it, but every single place in this country has those things. We just have more people who hear about these eventualities while or after they happen, and word spreads faster. At least we don’t have people spitting wads of “chew” into the gutter, and our meth labs are in penthouse apartments.

I Love New York,
Catbird