Welcome To New York
......By Samuel Person
There is something about being a New Yorker that sets one apart and provides for instant recognition elsewhere. It is perhaps an attitude that is evident to those who are not from New York. Certainly, the accent that hardly ever leaves us doesn't make it easier for us to be anonymous in the settings out of New York in which we find ourselves.
We are also defined by the excellence of what New York offers in our city that never sleeps (as expressed in that great song, New York, New York). There are legions of people we meet out of New York who are quick to tell us what a great city it must be to visit, and how they wish they could some day see it. Out-of-towners envy our cultural activities, our restaurants, our sporting events, and what have you. They know that if you want to do it, New York is the place in which you can.
By the same token, when life takes us out of New York, we seem never to forget it. And while we accommodate to whatever setting we are in, there is a deep down yearning to be in the city again, despite the misgivings we have come to acquire - much in the manner of the out-of-towners. When we are away from the city for an extended period of residency elsewhere, we fall prey to the concerns about being in New York - the crime, the traffic, the expense of being in the city, etc.
(In reality, New York is no worse than any other major city in the world as far as the problems of crime, traffic, congestion, etc., are concerned.)
But yet, we want to go back, if only for a visit. Many, when they retire, will downsize into an apartment in New York.
My legal residence is now in Florida, where my wife and I spend seven months of the year. To avoid the oppressive summers, but more importantly, to be in the city for a while, we spend the period from mid-May through mid-October in New York so as to have access to the theatre and museums, etc.
New York is one of the great walking cities in the world, which is something that the wife and I like to do.
One day this past summer, here I was, a native New Yorker, walking leisurely through the area around New York University with my wife. We stopped to cross a street, and perhaps looked like tourists, as we were looking about us at the various sights of the city.
If I may say so myself, I was rather resplendent in a red golf hat, and both of us were wearing walking shoes: these two items of attire taken together must have definitely earmarked me as a tourist. As I stepped off the curb and into the street, intending to go no further than a foot or so off the curb, allowing traffic to pass before I continued, a stranger stopped me and remarked, "you have to be careful crossing the streets in New York." We had a good laugh and I thanked this stranger with the foreign accent, who it turned out was originally from Lebanon, and now lives in Naples, Florida (which is in the same general area in which my wife and I reside in Florida). The gentleman was visiting his daughter in New York.
It was most kind of him to advise this native New Yorker about the pitfalls of the big city.
A "welcome to New York, " I thought, extended by a Lebanese-American from Naples, Florida to a "New York-American" from just down the road in Bonita Springs, Florida.
As they say, there are millions of stories in New York, and this has been one of them.