The New Yorker

The thing about New York that's incredible is that every New Yorker's got a real claim over their piece of this city. Whichever borough, whatever ethnicity, it's inconsequential to your being a New Yorker. In fact, it makes the claim more legit. It doesn't matter if you identify with blacks in harlem or bedford-stuyvesant, the chinese on canal st. or in flushing, the italians on mullberry st or staten island, the peurto ricans in the bronx, the jews of brooklyn, the arabs of astoria, the south asians of jackson heights, the irish of the bayridge, a stockbroker on wallstreet, or a cabbie from queens, the claim is undeniable. These examples might sound like generalizations, but the ethnic enclave is New York. Economic transcendence is New York. You can see it at the local bodega. It's the reason we have ethnic day pride parades with the Empire State Building lighting up in chromatic unison. And these ethnicities mix readily, more than any place on earth, on a daily basis. They mix on the subways, at the workplace, at our schools. New York is both a puzzle whose pieces come together in a union that is unparalleled AND the metaphorical soup whose flavors mix and compound. People ask me why i love this city so much, why i got so much pride, and the answer lies simply in my belief that people are tolerant: different in many ways, but rooted in a similar identity, whose definition encompasses all.


New York, the city that wakes your ass up.