If you’re one of my dear readers who happens to actually be in New York (or has lived there at some point), please grant me a smidge of humor in this following post. I’ve just packed a bag for my trip to the city to search for an apartment, and I’m feeling naively wistful.
I feel like I know New York. I’m sure you feel the same way. Its reputation is inescapable. Its grandeur, undeniable. As it settles in that in less than a month I’ll be living there, carving out my own story among the millions of others, I’ve been revisiting the various New Yorks I know.
Harry and Sally met and road-tripped and dated (other people) and found an amazing sandwich and dated (each other) and lived happily ever after in New York. (Also acceptable: Sleepless in Seattle‘s New York and it’s worthy predecessor, An Affair to Remember.)
Carrie Bradshaw lived the charmed life, a writer in New York, an endless stream of dating stories and shopping sprees to fill the inches of her column.
Holly Golightly escaped to New York in the ’60s, shedding Lula Mae Barnes in favor of pearls and an LBD, window shopping at Tiffany’s as the sun came up.
The six Friends went from aimless 20-somethings to parents, partners and professionals over the course of their ten years, all from an inexplicably large NYC apartment.
Scorsese’s New York – gritty and dangerous and territorial and unpredictable – has just enough bad-boy appeal to keep a girl swooning for more.
Rent gave me a New York full of badasses, kids determined to do exactly what they knew they were meant to, because no one and no disease ever told them they couldn’t.
And of course, any current impression of NYC wouldn’t be complete with out Liz Lemon’s NYC, that unfriendly, amazing, angry, beautiful beast of a city.
I have no idea which version of New York is in store for me – maybe some mashed-up version of all of the above? Maybe nothing at all like any of these. They are, after all, fictitious appropriations of the city everyone seems to know, no matter where you are.
As I sit here waiting for tomorrow and my (hopefully successful) apartment hunting trip to begin, I’m hoping for a little bit of each. But I’d just as gladly take my very own version, too.
