I, New Yorker
(This version has been edited and condensed from the original.)
I am a New Yorker. I have lived in New York City almost five decades, far longer than I have lived anywhere else. I was reborn in New York, I learned on its hard sidewalks and I grew once again in its towering, radiant light.
My life in the incredible City of New York has special significance because it has been entirely as an adult. The choices, challenges and solutions were my own. There was nothing random or accidental about my residency.
New York City became the new foundation of my personal freedom to see and to be who I am. One of its major rewards is that I have been liberated in ways that I could not have been elsewhere.
In New York City I established my life all over again from the ground up. I gained strength and perspective through difficulties and survival. New York led to my most important attempts, achievements and contributions in life. New York was and remains my road and my destiny.
My New York City is a personal one. For years I jogged in the city’s parks, swam in its pools, rode my bicycle countless times across its bridges, traveled its subways to and from work every day, went to the ocean, saw parades and protests, ate in restaurants, strolled through skyscraper canyons, used train stations and airports, drove on streets and highways, read in libraries, watched the city’s television news, went to movie theaters and plays, checked out galleries and stores, listened to concerts, visited the suburbs and hung out in legendary as well as mundane neighborhoods.
I read the New York Times every day, paid close attention to the city’s problems and solutions, coped with peculiar laws, participated in the political system, understood the lingo and prepared formerly new kinds of foods as if they were native to me. I buy my groceries in New York supermarkets, disagree with unpleasant neighbors and undergo its unexpected disasters like blackouts and the horrific, devastating September 11th attacks. I have altered my daily route to acknowledge transit disruptions and I have deliberately revisited Times Square after work just for variety’s sake. I know the city’s landmarks and history, stadiums and arenas, parks and beaches, educational institutions and the overriding role that the financial industry has in its life.
I am a core part of the city. I pay taxes, vote and go to the doctor in New York. The Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve celebrations are those of the city where I pay rent and work. When tourists ride by in buses down Fifth Avenue or Broadway and point their cameras at New York pedestrians along the streets they are photographing me. I have stopped and given directions to those same tourists as well as to other New Yorkers, functioning in a practical way like the Statue, welcoming them to my city and our nation.
When I go to other places in the world I state “New York” (and not “the USA”) when I am asked where I am from. When I arrive at Kennedy or LaGuardia airports after a flight or disembark from Penn Station after a long train ride I know that I am home. And when the city needs to point out a resident who speaks, thinks and breathes what it is to live in this tough, fast, diverse, imposing world capital, it points to me as the everyday yet quintessential example.
I am a New Yorker, and I am also New York.