New York City- the city of dreams and endless opportunities and the city that never sleeps. For many people, living in New York City is only something they can dream of, but this is my reality. I was born and raised in New York City. My parents are immigrants from Bangladesh meaning that I am a first generation American. Just like many other people, living in New York was a dream to my parents and seeing their excitement about living here helped me to see why New York appeals to so many people. Growing up, I don’t think I really knew what it meant to be living in New York City, or how special the city was. I knew I should be grateful and excited that I could call this city my home, but why? What made it so different and special compared to all the other cities out there? As I grew older, I started to slowly understand what it truly meant to live in New York.
Although I was born and raised in New York City, I didn’t really start to “live” in the city until a few years ago. Growing up in the Bronx, I wasn’t exposed to what the city really had to offer. I spent the first 15 years of my life in the Bronx without really exploring the rest of the city. Of course, there was the occasional family trip into Queens or Manhattan, but those trips didn’t really teach me the true meaning of living in New York City. I grew up in a low-income neighborhood filled with minorities such as Blacks, South Asians and Hispanics. Living in the Bronx, I wasn’t exposed to the same opportunities and privileges offered to the upper-middle class of New York city. I remember watching movies like “Home Alone” as a kid wondering why the New York I lived in looked completely different than the New York shown in the movie. I remember seeing Kevin from “Home Alone” go toy shopping on his own and even go to a beautiful hotel, which I now know is The Plaza, one of the most luxurious hotels in the city. When I watched the movie I was around Kevin’s age, but why was his experience in New York completely different than mine? In the movie I saw tall, luxurious buildings but didn’t see any of this in my neighborhood. The New York shown in the movie seemed so much bigger and much more beautiful than the little neighborhood I grew up in.
On the other hand, there were movies like “Rumble in the Bronx” and “The Warriors” that took place in the Bronx that also looked completely different than the Bronx I knew. These movies showed violence and gangs on every street and showed the Bronx as a place full of crime which I didn’t really see in my life. In these movies and many others, they always portrayed the Bronx as run-down. Based off of these movies, many people got the notion that the Bronx was defined by crime and a poor run-down neighborhood and this idea still exists today. I’ve met many people who are afraid to come to the Bronx because of the stereotypes surrounding it. When I’ve mentioned to people that I’m from the Bronx some of the first questions they ask are, “Have you ever seen anyone get shot?” or “Do you hear gunshots often?” In reality, I don’t think I’ve ever heard gunshots. This shows how the media only depicts the bad parts of the Bronx just as they often only show the good parts of Manhattan. With these experiences, I feel that at a young age I was not able to truly understand New York City, even though I had lived there my whole life.
When I started high school, I began to explore the city as I made friends from outside of the Bronx and started attending social events outside my neighborhood. After starting high school, I was able to get the freedom of being able to travel in the city alone. Though my school was in the Bronx, my friends and I were always up for an adventure after school. We would go to popular tourist spots such as Central Park and Times Square to see if they truly were as fun and amazing as people made them out to be. Going into Manhattan, I was finally able to see the luxurious apartment complexes and skyscrapers that I saw in movies as a child. I was also able to see a more diverse breakdown of people as I came in contact with people from all over the world. I was able to see people speaking many different languages and hear more of the languages I often heard in my neighborhood. Seeing these people of all ages and races altogether in one location, each living their own lives and having their own story to tell, I was in awe the more I explored New York City. This is when I began to understand why people thought of New York with such respect as I watched these people live out their dreams. I began to fall more and more in love with the city. This was my city and I felt like I had missed out on so much. I made the subconscious decision that I never wanted to leave. There was so much more that I had to explore. I knew I was a city girl so I knew I would never survive a day in the countryside. But no other city could compare to this city- the culture, the music, the views, and just everything about it is incomparable.
Although New York has many great things about it, it also has its cons like everything else in life. Like all cities, New York City also has its fair share of homeless people, drug addicts as well as the garbage on every street corner. In Joan Didion’s Goodbye to All That, she states, “I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell the lilac and garbage and expensive perfume…” (228). I don’t think there’s a better way to explain to someone how the streets of New York feel. The subways are such a crucial part of the city and can be found everywhere. Standing in the streets, you can feel the hot air from the passing subway that hits you in the face with the stench of the garbage. But with that, you also can smell the expensive perfume of the businesswomen passing by.
Seeing people that seemingly had it all to people that had nothing made me think about what it takes to live in New York City. Most people think that you have to be rich or it is overly expensive to live in New York City, but this is not something I understood growing up. In My Misspent Youth by Meghan Daum, she mentions, “I’ve historically been pretty good at getting by on what I have…” (2). This quote really spoke to me because as a kid I never really knew the financial situation of my family and how we were “getting by.” I was always well clothed and well fed and had everything I needed and wanted so I never understood how much my parents were financially struggling to live in New York City. When I became a teenager and overheard my parents talking about their financial struggles, it was only then that I was able to understand how expensive it is to live here. I would hear about how in other places, houses much bigger than mine would be much cheaper than the house we lived in. There were multiple times in which my parents would consider moving upstate so the living expenses would be cheaper. But ultimately, we decided to stay in New York City because it’s home and irreplaceable. I could not imagine living anywhere but New York City. The struggles we faced and the things we achieved were all due to the fact that we lived in New York City, so moving seemed out of the question for me.
Growing up in a city that has so much to offer has been such a blessing, though it took me a while to realize it. Living in New York City is something that I am truly grateful for. The fact that my family chose to live in this city is something that I will always thank them for. From growing up in the Bronx and watching movies about the heart of the city, Manhattan, to actually being able to experience it firsthand has changed my perception of the city. Though my experience living here started a bit late, it’s something many do not ever get to experience. Oftentimes now when I hear someone speaking ill the city, I am quick to defend it. Despite the fact that New York City is not always as perfect as it seems in the movies, no other city could compare to it.
