The city of juxtapositions

personal takes on new york

New York Bustle by Irina Rumyantseva

Like all life decisions I came to New York for a mix of reasons good and bad. Yes, it was a bustling city with good job opportunities, robust public transport, interesting people to meet and an endless array of fun things to do. But there were things I didn’t want to admit: by coming to New York I could be cool and unique, I could differentiate myself from all my computer science friends who moved to Silicon Valley, I could maintain a subconscious hope of rekindling a relationship I had yet to move on from. Brandishing my shiny degree and programming skills I had many reasons to move westward, but something deep within me was pulling me to this city.

I first became familiar with New York through the Humans of New York page, a page I began to peruse in ninth grade, back when Facebook was still a thing. The photographer’s hallmark skill was conveying intimacy: both with the people depicted and with the city itself. I got to see people in a vulnerability they didn’t show even to their friends and family; I also got to know the subtle intricacies of the city—the color scheme of the subway signs, the brownstones, the yellow taxicabs, the flamboyant outfits, the gritty and disgruntled expressions of people passing the street from all walks of life. After having followed that page for years, after having memorized all of the lyrics to Empire State of Mind, coming here for my high school graduation trip was like a visit to Hogwarts: fiction became reality, stories and scenes you’d read on a screen came to life before your eyes.

Ever since that high school trip, moving to New York was a dream. Big cities have always captivated me, have always felt like home—the tall buildings are a kind of shelter, the lights and pedestrian bustle a constant reminder that I’m not alone. So what better place to move after college than the concrete jungle, the city that never sleeps? While the first month here after college gave me the magical feeling I’d sought—walks down Wall Street, gaping at the World Trade complex and the Oculus, stopping at a bookstore in Seaport, ambling to the Hudson river and watching the Statue of Liberty at dusk—it did not last long. I came back down to real life soon enough. New York is loud, it’s dirty, and oddly dangerous. People here die in the strangest of ways, like trying to step out of an elevator or over a sidewalk cellar. Terrifying accidents aside, I realized after a few months here that New York is just a city, it’s not the answer to your problems, it’s just a different physical location that you inhabit with the same mind and body you’ve always had. All of a sudden the pungent sidewalks and rundown subway entrances were less charming and more—how do you say?—disgusting.

New York is a city of juxtapositions. The rich and the poor; the iconic buildings recognizable around the world, next to heaps of garbage bags strewn about the street; the most advanced cancer research hospitals next to sidewalks with collapsing holes; a row of high-rise apartments for billionaires, a few blocks over from walkup apartments so old the stairwells have become slanted. Not to mention the subway system: almost five hundred subway stations in operation, more than any other city in the world—and yet it keeps hinting to you through coughs and wheezes that it’s past its day, when the signaling system breaks down and an afternoon of rain floods entire stations. And then there’s the contrasts inside the subway cars themselves: the exuberantly dressed artist next to the emo rave-goer next to the suited-up investment banker, next to a growing and marginalized homeless population.

Here’s a juxtaposition that always captivated me: New York is teeming with people who could be your friend, and suffused by a corresponding loneliness. There is so much to do, so a moment alone has all the more weight and regret wrapped up in it. Why am I alone on a Friday night? How come everyone I message is busy, or has already made plans, or can't be bothered to respond? For two years this city did not feel like a home: it felt like a concrete enclosure in which I was temporarily housed and fed until such a time as I could set roots somewhere else, somewhere that had more space for me than a crevice in the sidewalk.

And then something changed—after enough text messages and parties and invitations to hang out, I eventually got to experience the version of New York in which the abundance of people around you is no longer a source of shame, because now you actually have friends, you have people you see every week or two and friends you can invite to a birthday party or an intimate vulnerable philosophical gathering. And this is where the magic of the city hits you more than ever. Everyone is ambitious, curious, tasteful, trying hard at something, whether it’s subway art or TikTok or writing a book or starting a company. I don’t know of any other city with this much variety in its social spaces, any other city where you can propose a “literary / writing friday night hangout” and have a dozen friends and strangers respond. Everyone here is excited and engaged, everyone is trying to make something of their life.

New York is a city that reminds me that wherever there is order, some disorder lies underneath, some energy had to be expended to bring that order about. That you can't clean up everything without sweeping some things under the rug. Yes, every city has its contrasts and contradictions, every metropolitan hub will bring about its own forms of diversity and disparity. But New York stands out to me in its paradoxes, in the way it contains everything all at once, and in its lack of shame toward its own blemishes. For all the things I don’t like about it, there is something I can respect in the blunt honesty. New York is a city much like its own inhabitants, those self-assured pedestrians and bikers and taxicab drivers zipping through traffic, with no hesitation about the obstacles in their way. It’s is a city that says: this is what I am, and this is where I’m going, take it or leave it.

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