MANHATTAN STATES OF MIND ACROSS AMERICA

 

 

Does anyone see a Manhattan sunrise and feel the power of the Big Apple, the urge to go out and take a big bite? Or a Manhattan sunset at the end of another satisfying day sorting chicken and chicken sh!t.

 

Manhattan promised you could make it anywhere if you could make it there. That’s how Frank Sinatra explained it in New York New York.

 

Who would know better than Frank?

 

Start spreading the news
I’m leaving today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York

These vagabond shoes
Are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it
New York, New York

I wanna wake up in a city
That doesn’t sleep
And find I’m king of the hill
Top of the heap

These little town blues
Are melting away
I’ll make a brand new start of it
In old New York

If I can make it there
I’ll make it anywhere
It’s up to you
New York, New York

I want to wake up in a city
That never sleeps
And find I’m a number one
Top of the list
King of the hill
A number one

These little town blues
All melting away
I’m gonna make a brand new start of it
In old New York

And if I can make it there
I’m gonna make it anywhere
It’s up to you
New York, New York, New York

 

Frank said it a couple of times, but that’s what happens in a city so nice you get to say it twice.

 

Any takers for living in New York, where math says a seventy story building with a hundred people on each floor adds up to seven thousand people. Anyone from a town of 7000 interested in moving into one of those buildings, or working in one?

 

How often do those little town blues whisper, “Move to Manhattan, be a New Yorker, wear a Yankees hat.” Ask people from the boroughs, from Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, the Bronx. Ask people from New Jersey and you’ll hear about New York like it’s a mythical kingdom with its own gravitational pull.

 

“I could never live more than a hundred miles from New York City. It’s such a fascinating place with art and theater and the people,” Loretta from Delaware said.

 

“When’s the last time you were there?” I asked.

 

“About ten years ago, but that’s not the point. Can’t you just feel it?” she said.

 

“Maybe you’re feeling Wilmington, or Philadelphia?”

 

“Not the same.”

 

===

 

New Yorker City is more than Manhattan and a New Yorker is more than happy to explain why. I used to tease my NYC pals for not knowing state locations on a U.S. map.

 

“Funny to you we don’t the map, but even funnier is we don’t care. This is the greatest city in the world right out our door. Who would trade that for some sh!thole little bump in a Washington road. We get it all right here, and we get it first, you know, with the three hour deal. Is Oregon next to Wyoming? No? Then f*ck Idaho,” big John said.

 

He got a big laugh in the local Queens bar with that one, lots of, “F*ck yeah.”

 

Anyone look at that top picture and see themselves in it? If you do, you’re walking on the sidewalk, walking up and down subway stairs, up and down the elevated platform like Gene Hackman drove under in French Connection, walking in and out of buildings, in and out of elevators.

 

It’s not Broadway, MOMA, or The Cloisters when you live there. Instead of a Gatsby lifestyle it’s laundry, food shopping, cooking, cleaning, chasing bugs out of your cupboards. And you’ll do it all without a car.

 

You won’t have a driver or a butler or a doorman, but you’ll have an apartment in an old building that’s been reconfigured and remodeled so many times to squeeze every square foot that you can touch opposite walls at the same time in every room. But it’s still the greatest city in the world right outside.

 

New Yorkers don’t care about outside opinions of where they live or how they live. They’ve heard it all before. Go ahead and tell them, “I don’t know how you can stand living with so many in such cramped spaces. Sidewalks look over crowded, trains look packed, it looks like every place is standing room only. How can you even breath?”

 

“How? Because we’re in New York City, baybay. That’s how. We’d all be suffocating in some California dreaming dump town. Not here, not now. This is the sh!t, always was, always will be. Dead f*cking center.”

 

Everybody knows that New Yorker, that denizen of Manhattan, from media, the arts, or personal experience. Now we get to know them better than ever, king of the hill, top of the heap.

 

Leave a take on your favorite New Yorker.