Ode to New York City

[music]

Brigid: You're listening to the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin filling in for Brian today. It's been a difficult year, made more difficult by living in a densely populated city. The lines for groceries were incredibly long in the beginning of the pandemic. Now the lines to get tested can take hours. Add to that theater, restaurants, and so many offices have shut down, threatening our livelihoods and our way of living. This show has covered how many people have left New York City. Now, we want to talk to the people that have stayed.

Listeners, we'll open the phones for you right away to tell us why you love New York City. Is there a certain restaurant that you order from every single week? Are you still visiting museums? Does your neighborhood represent a special culture that means a lot to you? Maybe you've had a really special moment of solidarity or experienced an act of kindness during the pandemic that you don't think could have happened anywhere else. Tweet @BrianLehrer or give us a call now to share why you love New York City at 646-435-7280. That's 646-435-7280.

Joining us are Ben Yakas, arts and culture editor for Gothamist and WNYC, and Jen Carlson Gothamist editorial director. Gothamist has a new project in partnership with the New York Public Library called "Dear NYC" which aims to record the many reasons why New Yorkers love New York City. Welcome back to the show, Ben and Jen.

Ben Yakas: Hey.

Jen Carlson: Hey.

Brigid: [chuckles] Jen, you recently wrote up the project on the Gothamist website, describing it as A Love Letter to New York City. Why a love letter and why now?

Jen: We're coming to the end of a historically bad year. We teamed up with the New York Public Library because we wanted to speak with New Yorkers about the city that we love, and that we may feel a little bit detached from right now, and we want to celebrate the city itself. Even though we're all here, we miss it because it's not the same right now. This group Love Letter is a little reminder of the New York that we do love and that we all desperately want to return to.

Brigid: Ben, there are several ways that people can contribute to this group Love Letter. One is by recording a voice memo. Can you walk listeners through how to do that and how to send that message to Gothamist?

Ben: Sure. The nice thing about smartphones is almost all of them include something called a voice memo. So if you can search, you can use Siri to find it if you don't know where it is. If you open up this app called Voice Memo, you can then press record and you can record whatever you want to say about the city, whatever lovely poetic thing that comes to mind. After you finish that, you just can go to share on the app and send it to tips@gothamist.com.

Brigid: These voice memos have to be pretty short, right?

Ben: Yes, we said 30 seconds is the maximum length. If you want to do a type 15, please go ahead, but the point is, we want to be able to get some of these voices on air. The shorter they are, the more we can include in the future.

Brigid: Absolutely. Jen, people can also write a paragraph of one place they love in the city. Can you give listeners a little inspiration about what to write about?

Jen: Yes. This can be a place that you love and have been enjoying more during the pandemic, or maybe it's a place that you miss, and you haven't been able to access. I think Ben might have an example of what he's been experiencing.

Ben: Yes. I've spent a lot of this pandemic walking around the city walking in my neighborhood. In particular, I've gone to Riverside Park, almost every day, whenever it's nice out. I have found a spot in the park, where a family of raccoons live in the wall. I visit them around 5:00, 6:00 PM every day because they come out, they are nocturnal, so 5:00, 6:00 PM is dawn for them. They're just coming out and they are delightful. Don't feed them or anything. You shouldn't feed them.

Brigid: Absolutely.

Ben: Yes. You'll see a crowd of people who have gathered around and just aimlessly watch them for minutes at a time. They're very bold, they'll climb up the wall to the top and they'll sort of like do a little bit of showing off and prancing in case anybody has nuts or anything that they'll throw to them. It's one of those things that I have come to appreciate even more the ability to walk around an area like that and be able to be near other New Yorkers without crowding in, without having the feeling of a mass gathering, it's not quite like that.

Just knowing that there's a quiet appreciation that everyone in this neighborhood has for this little tiny micro section of the park. In this small little corner of New York City. Knowing that there are these little corners of New York City all over, and there are people experiencing life happening here without needing to go into stores or do things that are potentially more dangerous right now.

Brigid: I love that to the counter-intuitive. Enjoying something in New York City, the wildlife of New York City as opposed to the tall buildings, et cetera. Ben, how are you hoping to display this love letter once it's complete?

Ben: We have a couple of different things that we're going to be doing and thinking about. Some of the submissions are going to be on Gothamist this month, as well as on our Instagram. Of course, as I said before, some of the voice memos, some of the audiograms that we get are going to be on WNYC. Now, people should also know that they can submit artwork. You can draw something, you could photograph something, we've even gotten a cross-stitch already.

Brigid: Wow.

Ben: Some of those we're hoping are going to be displayed at an exhibit at the New York Public Library once things get reopened next year.

Brigid: If you're just joining us, you're listening to the Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Brigid Bergin, a reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. I'm joined by Ben Yakas, arts and culture editor for Gothamist and WNYC, and Jen Carlson Gothamist editorial director. Let's go to some of our callers. Jane in Manhattan. Welcome to WNYC. Do you have a love letter for the city?

Jane: Oh my God, you have no idea. [chuckles] I've traveled all my life. I've lived abroad, I travel just for fun. I traveled with rock and roll groups when I was in my misspent youth. I'm enjoying the fact now, and so for 14 solid years, I was traveling showing my work first all over the country at Saks Fifth Avenue, and then all over the world on cruise ships. I worked like 62 cruises in 5 years.

During those five years, my rent was getting so high that I think maybe I could find a place that I love as much as New York and it will be financially less pressure on me. I was always looking for that place, and because of that, it really fine-tuned in my heart and my mind what I love about New York City.

Brigid: You boiled it down to?

Jane: Okay. Most important thing is acceptance. You could be vanilla, you could be tutti frutti, you could be anything in between, you could be anything, and you come to New York and you're accepted. I never heard one person say, "I came to New York and I didn't fit in." New York is just about acceptance, and I love that.

The second most important thing is talent. Not just like going to the theater or going to music, talent, in everything, whether it's finance, or business, or creativity, or whatever. You can't walk out of your house without meeting people that are just so interesting and so talented.

The third is connectivity, because aside from the fact that we all just keep talking to each other because we're in such a small space together. Even my friends who live around the world when I'm not traveling, everybody wants to come to New York at some point, and so I get to see people. I'm lucky enough to live very central right at Columbus Circle. Even when people are really busy, they're gonna end up here anyway, and I get to go down and get a hug.

Brigid: Jane, thank you so much for calling and sharing your love letter. Let's go to Kim in Harlem. Kim, welcome to WNYC, what's your love letter for New York City?

Kim: Hi, I am a parent with special needs. Son with special needs and he's about 15. I am grateful for being in New York City with a child like this because he has become so resilient. His growth is exponential. The options for education, the options for activities. As he grows and he changes the resources that are available to him and to me as a parent. From organization like SKIP, Achilles Kids where he runs every weekend. Especially has been a lifesaver to me for online learning now and activities.

SMART Kids, which is like another group that have lots of options to parents and children and activities to be engaged after school and options for recreational activities. Just the whole idea that he he is a child very different, a minority child. As your caller previously said, everyone fits into New York City. Last week I was walking down 110th Street coming from Columbia University side.

There was a woman and she was walking in her neon green, like mermaid pants. I was speaking to a friend of mine in Michigan, and I said, when I'm walking past her, and I'm saying, "Yes. That's the best thing about living here." I know it can seem overwhelming for people who don't live here. One of the things about being in New York City is that every corner feels intimate.

Brigid: Kim, thank you so, so much for calling. Ben and Jen, I hope you are feeling the love that a lot of our callers are sharing. We have another caller Ryan from the Lower East Side. Ryan, what's your love letter from New York City?

Ryan: Hey, mine's pretty short. I live on Clinton Street on the Lower East Side. It's the first turn if you're coming over the Williamsburg Bridge Manhattan Down. We get a lot of traffic and my room is right on the street so I hear and see all of it going by. I've actually got a short 12-second piece of tape for you here because every Friday around closing time, 5:00 or 6:00 PM, you know those go-karts that are open and they got the neon lights flashing. I don't know what they are or where they come from, but maybe you know what I'm talking about. One of those roars down my street every Friday at 5:00-6:000 PM blasting the same Madonna song, and here's how it sounds.

[music]

That is something I love about living on the Lower East Side.

Brigid: I used to live in the Lower East Side, and you just made me miss it a lot,. Ryan, thank you so much for calling, and coming prepared with tape. We don't always get callers who call in with their own tape. Thank you for that. I should turn back to Ben and Jen. These types of stories are exactly the types of things that you're collecting. Jen, how can listeners participate through social media, or view some of the selections from the New York Public Library so far?

Jen: Currently, people can share using the DearNYC# on social media. If they want to submit something that way, we'll be monitoring that on Twitter and on Instagram. We'll be sharing them on the site, but they're not up there yet. They can also email tips@gothamist.com.

Brigid: Great. Ben, Gothamist and WNYC are also sharing one NYC-related item from the New York Public Library's research collections every day in December. Yesterday in Twitter WNYC posted a photo from Alen MacWeeney, who took photos on the subway in the '70s. Can you tell us a little bit more about the image and why it was chosen?

Ben: Yes. These are really incredible, unique photos of the subway. Alen MacWeeney was born in Dublin. He started his career as an assistant to Richard Avedon. In the mid-70s, he came to the city with a small handheld camera, and he took hundreds of photos of straphangers, stations, and subway carts. He really was able to capture the grittiness, the uniqueness, the whimsy of this period, but mostly the grittiness because it was a very gritty period.

What he did that was so fascinating was he printed the photos, and then he paired different photos together. Each one of the photos you'll find in this series on the website, are actually two photos juxtaposed against each other. You won't always notice them immediately because some of them are very smoothly done. It creates a surreal effect, where it's almost like seeing two people awkwardly sitting next to each other on a train. It's going to make you do a double-take when you look at them. It's these wonderful moments of just people living and breathing and existing in the city during this period that I love to revisit all the time.

Brigid: Yes. Well, I love seeing the new images that you were tweeting every day. Let's go to another caller. Audrey in Brooklyn. Audrey, welcome to the Brian Lehrer Show.

Audrey: Hey, I'm so stoked to be on. Oh, my God.

Brigid: What's your love letter?

Audrey: I have a couple. I'll try to keep them short. The first love letter, I've been here for 10 years in New York and faced all kinds of hardships and dilemmas and hang-ups and whatever, blah, blah, blah. I started seeing someone really shortly before the pandemic and fell in love for the first time in New York and I actually live with this person now. That's my literal love letter [laughs].

Brigid: Congratulations.

Audrey: We moved in New York in the middle of a pandemic. Thank you. I appreciate it. That's been great. My second love letter is I'm a comedian in New York, which has been a nightmare because obviously, no one has been able to perform live in front of people. The theater that I was a part of, that I was a sketch comedian at, closed its doors permanently, right around the pandemic, the height of the pandemic if you will.

I took that opportunity, and I said you know what? When we are functioning again, and the world is rotating and revolving the way it should be. I want another comedy theater to go to. I'm actually founding a comedy theater with five other incredible people. We are called Circle Comedy Theater. You can find this on Instagram. We're just in our baby stages right now, but I can't wait to show New York and the world our theater when the time comes.

Brigid: Audrey, good luck. Circle Comedy Theater, getting your shout out on WNYC. Thanks so much for calling and sharing your love letter. I think we have time for one more. Let's go to Achilles in Park Slope.

Achilles: I would have answered this question a little different before this year. This year, my love for New York City, it's a love for my grandma who died of COVID this year in this very city that she loved so much. My grandma came to New York in 1969, from the Dominican Republic. She used to work at a swimsuit factory in Brooklyn. Two generations later, I get to live in Brooklyn, in the very city that my grandma never wanted to leave. I am in love with the city because being here is a commitment to my grandma, who never wanted to leave New York, what she called the capital of the New World. The capital of the world.

Brigid: Achilles thank you so, so much for calling and sharing your story. I'm so sorry about the loss of your grandmother.

Achilles: Thank you.

Brigid: I think we have time for maybe just one more. Let's go to Jessica in Brooklyn. Jessica, welcome to WNYC. Do we have Jessica?

Jessica: Yes.

Brigid: Sorry, Jessica. Go ahead.

Jessica: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brigid: I can. Real quick, what is your love letter?

Jessica: Okay, real quick. I was born and raised in New York City. Part of it is I was born and raised in Hell's Kitchen in a lower income building and part of it was not being able to leave during the pandemic because of access to resources. But a lot of it also has to do with the city that just raised me. It's like in my blood and my body and so it's just like any other relationship sometimes. I don't want to be anywhere near it and other times I'm totally in love with it, and that's just a constant fluctuation.

Brigid: Thank you so much for joining us. We're going to have to leave it there for today. My guests have been Ben Yakas, arts and culture editor for Gothamist and WNYC, and Jen Carlson Gothamist editorial director. Gothamist a new project in partnership with the New York Public Library is called Dear NYC. You can find more information on gothamist.com or by going to WNYC.org and clicking on the Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Brigid Bergin, WNYC City Hall and politics reporter. I've been filling in for Brian who is off today. Thank you so much for listening.

 

Copyright © 2020 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.