What is a true New Yorker?
Emilee, is that a cliche question to ask?
Having grown up in Westchester, I consider myself as much as a New Yorker as Tina from Hoboken. But having ran into a former school mate's sister in Williamsburg one chilly day a couple of weeks ago, I started to re-consider. At discussing the rising cost of living in Willy B, she stated, "All these fucking people from Ohio coming in with their expectations and raising the rents, thats not a New Yorker. Where are you from?" I said, "Westchester." I might as well have said oops.
My vision of New York was and is sitting on a stoop on a 90 degree day in a tank top and cut off jean shorts and barefoot and sweating next to your multiracial group of friends waiting for the ice cream truck to come by. And the summers I've spent in NY have been like that, minus the cut off shorts and barefeet. (I'm from Westchester.)
A dear friend of mine who recently moved here from LA a couple of months ago once told me that she thought New York was this melting pot of culture and race. So you can imagine her surprise when, while food shopping on the upper west side, a Ohio-an called her a chink. Then I started to notice the yuppsters that graduate from their Mid-Western schools, moving into NY for fancy finance jobs (joke's on you) and getting wasted at their bars and screaming out racial obscenities from the safety of their cab when they zoom through St. Marks or Chinatown.
Not to say every replanted Midwesterner does that, of course not, I know a lot of people from Ohio. But it's just the same as saying, "omg. we have to go to the bronx?"
And then there is The City. Really? Really? Is that what New York is like? Because renting a high rise apartment in Midtown is most definitely not that easy. Especially if you're 23. It's a TV show and its sorta-kinda-fake but that (amongst other things) is what setting these expectations.
I feel like I am speaking as though I am entitled to something, but I know I'm not a New Yorker. I'm Westchester at heart. I believe in Range Rovers and golden retrievers and valet parking at the mall. And I moved here because I wanted to go hungry for a little bit, not RENT hungry, I'm not that gay.
The rents are too high, the food too expensive, you can charge a cab ride but they always yell at you, and there are a lot of people that look at you funny. But you should still move here. I'll tell you why...
Because we could sit on a stoop somewhere this summer in tank tops and cut off shorts and sweat on each other and because I guess I have my own expectations of what New York should be like and I wish we could share them together.
