I moved to New York City.
In my first 24 hours, I went to a (bad) warehouse party
after a (very bad) house party, where (I will be the first to admit) I may have flexed my ironic muscles a little too much after realizing the room could and would understand my every entendre, pun or faint hyperbole, I ran
down Bedford Avenue at the same pace as my friend traversing fire escapes atop closing bars, I missed something because of the G Train, I walked by a relatively famous however not-so-exciting celebrity, I toasted champagne at an overpriced Manhattan restaurant that hosted Robert De Niro's wife's surprise birthday party
last week and boasted a guest list of Harvey Keitel, Sting and Mayor Bloomberg, I fielded questions about my shoes/glasses/shorts/boots, I purchased my very first educated phone*, I inherited clothes from a model, I met an Indian pop star who wants to go more in the direction of Britney than Madhubala, and I definitely spent over 100 American dollars on cab fare †.
I moved to New York City.
I moved to New York City.
What can I say? Sometimes it feels like I am
cheating on D.F. or something, but when I really think about it, the two are not as different as no one every claimed they would be. Street vendors dishing out paletas. Check. Pirated CDs and or DVDs. Check. 4-dollar-plastic-diamond-rings (for that special someone). Double Check. Mildewed records swarmed by middle-aged men with beer bellies. A little more D.F. but Check. Streets replete with variegated and sometimes poetically beautiful refuse. God yes, Check. New York even has those same predictably unpredictable metro lines, strangely inhabited by the same older gentleman playing Los Panchos in a knockoff Stetson.
Hell, you might as well still be in Mexico when you are in Bushwick or Spanish Harlem, where the shear magnitude of tiendas, taco joints and telenovela-like characters imbue the streets with a replica more accurate but less kid friendly than Disney's Epcot center. That same feeling that you are in a theme park and you need to keep exchanging money for more tokens to keep this crazy ride going is alive and well, though it is a less dangerous and more expensive than D.F. or even Disney.
New York City is probably the most logical place for any returning seasoned expat likely to suffer from real or imagined reverse culture shock induced by 99.1264% of America's empty sidewalks next to manicured lawns in class- and or race- homogenous neighborhoods. That is because all countries seem to be represented here and have a designated part of town, where communities continue as if they are in an insert-nationality snow globe. And even when they leave the confines of their uprooted-but-replanted society, they are, at the very least, tolerated by other members of society because everyone has their own snow globe and, like, gets it, it being that at its core, New York is still a city of immigrants and is a living memorial to the foundations of the States while most other cities seem like sad anniversaries.
I moved to New York City.
Hell, you might as well still be in Mexico when you are in Bushwick or Spanish Harlem, where the shear magnitude of tiendas, taco joints and telenovela-like characters imbue the streets with a replica more accurate but less kid friendly than Disney's Epcot center. That same feeling that you are in a theme park and you need to keep exchanging money for more tokens to keep this crazy ride going is alive and well, though it is a less dangerous and more expensive than D.F. or even Disney.
New York City is probably the most logical place for any returning seasoned expat likely to suffer from real or imagined reverse culture shock induced by 99.1264% of America's empty sidewalks next to manicured lawns in class- and or race- homogenous neighborhoods. That is because all countries seem to be represented here and have a designated part of town, where communities continue as if they are in an insert-nationality snow globe. And even when they leave the confines of their uprooted-but-replanted society, they are, at the very least, tolerated by other members of society because everyone has their own snow globe and, like, gets it, it being that at its core, New York is still a city of immigrants and is a living memorial to the foundations of the States while most other cities seem like sad anniversaries.
I moved to New York City.
I always said everything in Mexico City is either Lynch or Tarantino, but in New York, Lynch is replaced by Allen, Tarantino by Cassavetes. The fading colors of a pulp existence fade into the black and white of the Baumbach film projected on a temporary screen amongst graffiti.
I feel like I have never been around so many Americans in my life; that might actually be true. A woman held open a door for me and I was disappearing into the building she told me that she has the same pair of shoes. Really? I asked, how? I made these, literally painted them years ago, and she said a few blocks down there is a shop with them, that somebody must have had the same idea to paint shoes in those particular colors and patterns (better said splatters). I was such an oddity in D.F., a collectors item for eccentric mexicans or older artists wishing to prove they were still in touch with a younger crowd that had interesting, convoluted jobs outside of the arts, but here I blend into the public transport and concrete among the millions of creative, impressive, intelligent types writing a screenplay or web series or acting or doing standup or starting a start up because this is the town where you get back what you put in and confidence goes a long way if you can back it up with content. I cannot emphasize enough that people are way more friendly than portrayed on television in the 80's, say in "Ghost" or "Escape from New York." Weirdly, people's shells are mostly non-existent. That is not to say that New Yorkers are not sassy. They are. In the best possible way. But there is this very accessible humanity to people that I could write off to a returned expat relishing in the simplicity of understood language while blending in, being just like no one and everyone.
I moved to New York City, a place where I can already tell one gets frustrated but never bored. A place where I already feel at home.
/////f o o t n o t e s//////
* My phone went to Berkeley and was considering"Double-Bearing" but decided that a Master's is just not worth what it use to be and with all of that debt and has in-differently and -definitely deferred his acceptance status. Aside from us hooking up a few months ago, he also works as a barista in a coffee shop in the Lower Eastside.
† At least. My god. It is the one thing I still have not come to terms with. I admit that i feared for my life a handful of times in D.F.'s infamous cabs but when it comes right down to it, were I to take cabs here with the same frequency in which I did in my previous Mexican life, it would probably be equivalent to a two fast-food-kidnappings.
I feel like I have never been around so many Americans in my life; that might actually be true. A woman held open a door for me and I was disappearing into the building she told me that she has the same pair of shoes. Really? I asked, how? I made these, literally painted them years ago, and she said a few blocks down there is a shop with them, that somebody must have had the same idea to paint shoes in those particular colors and patterns (better said splatters). I was such an oddity in D.F., a collectors item for eccentric mexicans or older artists wishing to prove they were still in touch with a younger crowd that had interesting, convoluted jobs outside of the arts, but here I blend into the public transport and concrete among the millions of creative, impressive, intelligent types writing a screenplay or web series or acting or doing standup or starting a start up because this is the town where you get back what you put in and confidence goes a long way if you can back it up with content. I cannot emphasize enough that people are way more friendly than portrayed on television in the 80's, say in "Ghost" or "Escape from New York." Weirdly, people's shells are mostly non-existent. That is not to say that New Yorkers are not sassy. They are. In the best possible way. But there is this very accessible humanity to people that I could write off to a returned expat relishing in the simplicity of understood language while blending in, being just like no one and everyone.
I moved to New York City, a place where I can already tell one gets frustrated but never bored. A place where I already feel at home.
/////f o o t n o t e s//////
* My phone went to Berkeley and was considering"Double-Bearing" but decided that a Master's is just not worth what it use to be and with all of that debt and has in-differently and -definitely deferred his acceptance status. Aside from us hooking up a few months ago, he also works as a barista in a coffee shop in the Lower Eastside.
† At least. My god. It is the one thing I still have not come to terms with. I admit that i feared for my life a handful of times in D.F.'s infamous cabs but when it comes right down to it, were I to take cabs here with the same frequency in which I did in my previous Mexican life, it would probably be equivalent to a two fast-food-kidnappings.
