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I was reading Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem and there’s...this
It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city only for the very young.
”a city only for the very young”
As I said in this morning’s What Are you Reading? I think that she’s right about that.
She elaborates more on that thesis in subsequent pages.
Didion and I, of course, come from two different places, migrated to New York City in two different eras and under very different sets of circumstances, led very different lives in very different times all before migrating to two different places; Didion returned to California and I migrated to Washington D.C. in 1987.
Life for the Vogue magazine writer could not have been any more different from the black gay boy that was becoming a young man that couldn’t vogue.
Yet in both of our cases...we aged. We were no longer “very young” by the time we both considered high-tailing it out of New York...and it took the both of us a good while, relatively speaking, to do so.
And yet New York City probably remains...a city for the “very young.” Of the very young.
“Very young” might be the essence of the city.
I’ve been to Boston and New Orleans and both of those cities have a very old feel to them; even Washington D.C. gives off an old vibe; a feeling probably not unlike a few European cities that are centuries older.
New York City always feels new and somewhat refreshed as if it puts a fresh coat of paint or foundation on itself from time to time. It builds up, it builds out, it builds over…even though Manhattan, at the very least, is even older than Boston; you would never know that by (most) appearances.
It’s an aspect of New York City that is also part of the Chicago aesthetic; it’s one of the reasons that I love Chicago so much, I think.
(Chicago is equal parts New York City and Detroit, to be honest).
How can a place be for the very young, a playground for the very young and quite literally suck all of the “very young” life and soul out of you? and stay that way?
City must be a vampire its damn self, pleasantest that I’ve ever witnessed.
Comments below the fold.
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