Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

I live in a hipster building. I came to realize the fact coming home on the J or L train. I would always see these kids: the boy who dresses like Joe Strummer (complete with fedora), the kid wearing white loafers and too tight cords, the girl with the bleached asymetrical hair cut and surgically attached pod'phones, get on the train in Manhattan. Hipsters, I would sneer to myself and expect them to get off the train at Marcy or Bedford, but they wouldn't. When the J train would make express stops and bypass Hewes and Lorimer, they wouldn't seem nervous, like they'd missed their stop. Then they would get off at my stop and we would both start walking west, and the first one to make the right onto my street would look over their shoulder to see who was following them. (This is a bad neighborhood; people get mugged, you know.) We'd reach my building, not holding the gate open for each other. It happens all the time.
I've seen a lot of weird behavior. I'm no one to judge really, anybody who's lived with me can tell you that, but there are somethings even I find off putting. The other night as I was heading downstairs to get my laundry, I passed a man on the stairs holding a swaddled bundle. There are no babies in this building, I thought. He glanced up at me, both surprised and worried and hugged the the thing closer as if he were afraid I would wake it up. I tried to walk quietly so as not to disturb the "baby." As I passed him on the landing, I saw a dog's head poking out. WTF?

Cops and Robbers

Last night, someone tried to break into my neighbor's apartment by "ripping off the skylight." How do I know this? I was awoken by the conversation between the cops and my neighbor. The cops seemed pretty unconcerned and kept saying it must have been "a buddy trying to mess with you" while my neighbor kept repeating that the skylight had been ripped off and that it was a "cat burglar."

My apartment is just down the hall and also has skylights so I'm pretty edgy, but the whole thing seems so surreal, I'm still not completely sure what to think.

Wayfaring Stranger

Something strange happened to me when I came back from studying abroad almost a year ago. I only became more restless. I've never been content to sit around, and I've always been ready to leave for anywhere at a moment's notice. Shpilkes, my grandmother calls it. Ants in your pants. And yet I've always considered myself a die-hard New Yorker, even during those years in New Jersey, I always thought of New York as the only worthy place to live. But in these last few months, I've begun to wonder what else might be out there. I've begun to wonder if I might not really be happy elsewhere. My father, having spent a considerable amount of time in the Midwest, would tell me growing up that I had no idea what the "real" America was like, that New York was an anomaly existing in its own universe. Maybe America isn't like that New Yorker cover.
Maybe there's more than rocks out there.
I think it might have happened when a friend came to visit this past fall. She had never been to New York before, and the sight of the Empire State Building literally stopped her in her tracks. I couldn't quite understand her reaction. I've become a little inured to what makes New York so great.
New York has a lot of cons, and I've become a bit jaded to her pros. In the past six months, I've had several friends leave New York, and at first I was at a loss. Where do people go when they leave New York, I wondered. Doesn't any other place pale in comparison to New York? Aren't they bored? But maybe I've become a little bored.

Happy New Year!

I was lucky enough to be able to see the ball drop in person last night, and not have to freeze my ass off, either. I'll try to post pictures when I get them since I didn't bring my camera with me.

And the Giants won the Division title and are going to the playoffs! It will be a good year!