New York or California?

The ebb and flow of traffic noise was punctuated now and then by sirens or honked horns. I began to wake up enough to notice birdsong in downtown B-Town, California. Spring brought a symphony of bright, cheery birdsong. They perched on the few sidewalk trees or on the roofs of the downtown buildings. There were no buildings here over twelve stories high. And the buildings looked rather dull. I missed the concrete canyons of New York City and the great variety of architecture.

Coffee, my mind pleaded. I threw on some clothes and walked the block and a half to the local coffee shop. I almost ordered a regular coffee but then remembered in California that meant black. Instead, I ordered a coffee with milk and sugar, thinking that was too many words to describe what I wanted. In New York it was "regular" - boom, no waste of time to convey a thought. Because in New York, as you know, everything moves fast.

I looked at the B-Town's streets as I walked home, coffee in hand. It struck me that this was far from being a New York City street. It was far too clean. Sure, the street itself had a few oil splotches and patched asphalt - but no potholes! Where was the character? The sidewalk was fairly clean, too. It didn't have the white stippled look of New York sidewalks, intermixed with smears of unknown origin. No discarded cigarette butts, no dried spit, no urine stains on the walls. No sudden upheavals of sidewalk to trip on, and most of all - believe it or not - no scaffolding! Sidewalks in B-Town were bland milk toast by comparison to New York's walkways. Again, where was the character?

Most of all, B-Town didn't smell like NYC. I remembered my last trip to the City. New York smelled of car fumes, people's odor, and the smell of the gutter. Then once in awhile I would walk smack into a stagnant pocket of air smelling of stale urine and beer. I knew I was in New York when that pungent smell hit me in the face, and I smiled broadly. It had been far too long since I had been away.

Mind you, when I first moved to NYC in '88 it took this California girl awhile to get over the culture shock. You know how we crunchy granola types can be. But once New York's peculiar charm and irresistible magnetism invaded my soul like a fast-spreading virus, I was totally hooked. I declared to my California friends that New York was the center of the universe, the capital of the world, the richest display of life anywhere. Their quiet "uh huh" response told me they must be in the middle of eating crunchy granola.

I lived just across the Hudson for about 15 years. During those 15 years I became a proud New Yorker. It didn't matter if I actually lived in Teaneck, New Jersey. After all, the megalopolis I think of as New York stretches from far Long Island to Far Rockaway, from Spring Valley to Spring Lake. That's about 3 hours driving in any direction before you see true countryside.

If the City itself is the heart of this vast megalopical body, then the streets, bridges, turnpikes, and tunnels pump the blood that races through its veins and nourishes the City. The buildings are the stalwart bones of the City's body, a visible statement that we aren't going anywhere, not even if a couple of the tallest buildings crumble. We found that strife only makes New Yorkers more unified, more determined, and more fired up. Bring it.

After all, we as individual New Yorkers are used to picking ourselves up and getting back to business. New York can run you over one minute and pat you on the back the next. You adjust to that, you survive, and by God you even thrive. The City's very nature forges a type of homo sapiens found nowhere else on the planet. DNA samples may someday reveal a new subspecies - homo new yorkus.

In New York, women carry handbags, in California purses. You put on sneakers to go for a run in New York, tennis shoes in California. Sodas in New York always come with a straw, never in B-Town. There's not a bad Jewish deli in B-Town, much less a good one. Order a regular coffee in NYC and you'll get it with milk and sugar. In California they will hand you a black coffee.

Don't get me wrong & please, no nasty emails -- I love California. But in many ways, my heart is and always will be in New York.