Metropolitan Diary
Real New Yorkers will get this
Tourists
Dear Diary:
I was on the 6 train headed downtown after working late, wearing a very expensive black suit from Barney’s. I stood in the doorway by long habit and noticed, across from me, standing in the opposite doorway, relaxed and cool, a young man dressed all in black with a very good haircut and a New Yorker tote bag just like mine. Our eyes met and slid off each other’s until we stopped at Times Square. The door opened and the car filled with tourists in loud, colorful clothing, chattering excitedly, cameras hanging from straps around their necks. I looked across the car to the young man again, and this time when our gazes met, I rolled my eyes. The slightest of grins crossed his face before he looked away again. I might be an elegant business woman heading home after a long day of corporate shenanigans, and he might be a cutting-edge youth on his way to the trendiest nightclubs, but we were both real New Yorkers surrounded by tourists.
RNY
Queens, NY
A Real New York Lunch
Dear Diary:
I was on the 1 train headed uptown to perform at Lincoln Center where I am a principal dancer in an internationally famous ballet company. I knew I would be arriving late, so I had put on my ballet costume before leaving my West Village apartment. I found a seat in a half-empty car and sat down, across from someone who appeared to be an outer borough construction worker, going by his battered yellow hard hat and traditional steel lunch bucket. He must have been in a rush, too, because he was trying to fit lunch into his commute to the job site. He opened his lunch bucket and took out what was unmistakably a pastrami sandwich from the Stage Deli. As he was about to take his first bite, he saw me watching him and stopped. He picked up the other half of the sandwich and held it out to me. I smiled, said, “No, thank you,” and reached into my New Yorker tote to pull out my own identical pastrami sandwich from the Stage Deli. That day, we delightedly had lunch together, just a couple of real New Yorkers, eating our pastrami sandwiches from the Stage Deli.
RNYWV
West Village
Ah, New York! Never Change!
Dear Diary:
I was waiting for the L in the Union Square station, from long experience standing where I knew the door would open that would let me exit the train at the 8th Avenue end directly in front of the staircase I would take to catch the A uptown for some chicken and waffles. I noticed further down the platform standing at a less advantageous position a young man who looked like a classic New York intellectual of long standing: corduroy jacket with elbow patches, black turtleneck, pipe. But it was immediately obvious to me that he had some distance to go before he was a real New Yorker. Not only wasn’t he carrying a New Yorker tote bag like mine, he was poorly positioned on the platform, and, most tellingly, he had fallen for the classic New York pineapple scam. “Get yer New York pineapple right here! Get yer genuine New York pineapples!” the con man had been calling. I, of course, had given a wry grin and ignored him, not having fallen for that in years. But my intellectual new friend had paid five dollars for a pineapple (which he could have gotten for three at Fairway, besides!), little suspecting it was attached to a string that would jerk the pineapple back through the train doors right before they closed! It reminded me of my first days in New York, before I became a real New Yorker.
USRNY
Union Square
