Reflections on New York

I was surprised last year, when I landed at La Guardia, and took a cab to Washington Heights, my new home for the next year. I had chosen Columbia thinking "it'll be just like San Francisco, only hotter, and colder, and bigger."

Hah.

I wanted New York to be the New York I grew up watching on television.
The New York of the 70s, as in Rhoda, the Jeffersons, Taxi. I wanted the New York that I saw on Sex in the City, a vibrant, exciting city, full of variety, and opportunity.

I thought I'd be able to find more things like we have available here in San Francisco. Organic groceries, used book stores, healthy restaurants...I pretty much thought that if we had 4 or 5, New York should have 10 or 20. In truth, I couldn't even find one.

Sure, there's a Whole Foods--but they don't sell bulk grain, cereal, and so forth--everything is in packages, and scarcely anything is organic. If it is, brace yourself, because you're going to get charged organic prices for it.

I wanted to have myriad choices for art galleries, and hip hang outs, small clubs playing cool music, what I got instead was a schedule so busy that I could barely ever go out, even for groceries. And when I did have time, I couldn't afford (or justify the expense of doing) some of those things. NOTHING is cheap, or underground.

The few people who kmow about that scene are the people that "make the scene" and spend all their time doing it.

I'm worried now that I'm not going to be able to survive the first semester. How awful to have not only the core classes, which are terribly hard, but to add three more classes...that might just kill me.

Anyway, I hope I get to see any little piece of New York this time, and that I won't hate it and resent it as much as I did the first time.