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Jun. 7th, 2006 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
d_aulnoyYesterday, as I walked to tea, I had one of those Weird New York Moments.
I stepped out my front door, wearing my shiny new skull-emblazoned tank top (I'm vaguely chagrined to realize that fashion has co-opted my aesthetic, but not really, because, well, this means I might stand a chance of getting to buy stuff I like this season), lit one of the pretty colorful cigarettes that TPB bought me on his Nat Sherman run (I personally think that these are a much bigger threat than Joe Camel ever was, because ... pretty! like British crackers and Chinese fireworks rolled up into a delightfully vivid flammable treat), and heard myself addressed by a young woman with her hair all in knots, a guy with a little hand-held video-recorder behind her.
"Excuse me, are you from New York?"
So I figured, what the hell, tourists looking for directions. Right? Wrong. For, you see, the next question wasn't, "So, how exactly do I get to the Apollo from here?" but rather, "Did you grow up in New York?" And at this point, my incredibly slow-moving lizard brain sat up, stuck forth its forked tongue to taste the air, and sssuggested that thessse might be activissstsss ... or worse, documentary film-makers. And, well, I was in a kind of a White Rabbit situation, what with having taken too long to choose the tank top, so I politely begged off and told them that I was late.
No dice. They were happy to walk with me. So there I was, cautiously answering questions about where I'd grown up, wondering when I'd be hit up for a donation, asked something way too personal, or asked to sign a consent form, all the while walking and being asked to look straight at the camera (harder than you'd imagine, but then again, I may just have been having a Blonde Moment) (in my own defense, the woman kept weaving behind and around me so as to not block the shot, and I was experiencing that same sense of "But it's rude not to look at you!" that you have when you're talking to a taxi-driver and staring at the back of their head while they're looking at you in the rear-view mirror).
Sometimes, I'm too much the New Yorker - cynical, suspicious, jaded, etc.
Because the woman asked me one of the more interesting questions I've gotten in a while before brightly thanking me and returning to the corner to await further participants.
"So, what's your definition of a New Yorker?"
In restrospect, I reckon I pegged them wrong: most likely film students.
My on-the-fly definition was that a New Yorker is someone who's willing to take risks in order to experience life to the fullest. What's yours?
P.S. - This whole thing threw me to the point that when a blustery red-faced gentleman in an alligator tee and plaid pants, accompanied by his wet-behind-the-ears but otherwise identical offspring asked me for directions to Columbia in front of St. John the Divine, I almost got into a conversation with him before getting brusquely brushed off.
P.P.S. - I'm still faintly nervous that I'm going to end up in one of those "The Truth" commercials.
I stepped out my front door, wearing my shiny new skull-emblazoned tank top (I'm vaguely chagrined to realize that fashion has co-opted my aesthetic, but not really, because, well, this means I might stand a chance of getting to buy stuff I like this season), lit one of the pretty colorful cigarettes that TPB bought me on his Nat Sherman run (I personally think that these are a much bigger threat than Joe Camel ever was, because ... pretty! like British crackers and Chinese fireworks rolled up into a delightfully vivid flammable treat), and heard myself addressed by a young woman with her hair all in knots, a guy with a little hand-held video-recorder behind her.
"Excuse me, are you from New York?"
So I figured, what the hell, tourists looking for directions. Right? Wrong. For, you see, the next question wasn't, "So, how exactly do I get to the Apollo from here?" but rather, "Did you grow up in New York?" And at this point, my incredibly slow-moving lizard brain sat up, stuck forth its forked tongue to taste the air, and sssuggested that thessse might be activissstsss ... or worse, documentary film-makers. And, well, I was in a kind of a White Rabbit situation, what with having taken too long to choose the tank top, so I politely begged off and told them that I was late.
No dice. They were happy to walk with me. So there I was, cautiously answering questions about where I'd grown up, wondering when I'd be hit up for a donation, asked something way too personal, or asked to sign a consent form, all the while walking and being asked to look straight at the camera (harder than you'd imagine, but then again, I may just have been having a Blonde Moment) (in my own defense, the woman kept weaving behind and around me so as to not block the shot, and I was experiencing that same sense of "But it's rude not to look at you!" that you have when you're talking to a taxi-driver and staring at the back of their head while they're looking at you in the rear-view mirror).
Sometimes, I'm too much the New Yorker - cynical, suspicious, jaded, etc.
Because the woman asked me one of the more interesting questions I've gotten in a while before brightly thanking me and returning to the corner to await further participants.
"So, what's your definition of a New Yorker?"
In restrospect, I reckon I pegged them wrong: most likely film students.
My on-the-fly definition was that a New Yorker is someone who's willing to take risks in order to experience life to the fullest. What's yours?
P.S. - This whole thing threw me to the point that when a blustery red-faced gentleman in an alligator tee and plaid pants, accompanied by his wet-behind-the-ears but otherwise identical offspring asked me for directions to Columbia in front of St. John the Divine, I almost got into a conversation with him before getting brusquely brushed off.
P.P.S. - I'm still faintly nervous that I'm going to end up in one of those "The Truth" commercials.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-07 08:11 pm (UTC)Because, frankly, I could move to Timbuktu tomorrow and I think I'd still think of myself as a New Yorker. But I wasn't born here, and I grew up as part of the bridge'n'tunnel crowd, so ... false affiliation? Only true since coming to Columbia?
It's an interesting point, re: is NY just a place, or a state of mind, or both, or ...?
Also, for a better analogy, you might ask when the 60's began, given the two schools of thought on dating the decades. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-08 09:24 pm (UTC)The sixties refer to those years beginning with the phrase "nineteen sixty," so they began at 12:01 AM on January 1, 1960.
You are way over-thinking.