Naive Infatuation. Maybe.

I was hunting for summer jobs in New York, ran over a few blogs that touched on the subject of the city a bit, then decided to re-read some material from blogs I'm familiar with about it. There seems to be a general consensus between older bloggers that too many people, especially younger people, hold the city up on a pedestal and that there really isn't much need to clamor over its grandeur. I can understand that viewpoint well enough; after all, what is there in New York that isn't anywhere else? With the amazing pervasiveness of the Internet, there is a diminishing need to be physically close to where the action is and the cost of living there is so damn high, it pretty much offsets a ton of the advantages, right? So what's so great about this place?

Maybe it really is just my age, but two summers working in Manhattan has yet to disillusion me from its magnificence. The aesthetic appeal never seems to diminish. I love the 50-story buildings and the sea of taxis streaming down Fifth Avenue. I love the rush hour foot traffic swarming 7th Avenue towards the transit lines. Even when it's raining cats and dogs and there are a dozen peddlers trying to sell you umbrellas for five bucks (and they will probably break by the third or fourth use). I love the ignorant tourists and the fact that most people are perfectly happy to disregard traffic laws. I love the incredible diversity. Every little thing is just so incredibly artistic and I find that feeling hard to escape. Just being there in the city always seems to inspire me somehow. I want to write; I want to draw; I want to work. I want to live.

And that's all just the feeling I get from standing there. Job hunting reveals the amazing proximity of everything. It's one of those facts that you sort of know, but don't really realize until you really look into it. I had worked in the second and third floors of an office building on Broadway and 35th. Five blocks away is an animation studio I was looking at. Five blocks in the other direction is a small gallery also offering internships. Viacom is five blocks away. The Times building is five blocks away. National Geographic is closer. This is amazing to me, that such a motley crew should be stationed so close to one another. But as illustration can be applied to many a different fields and companies, it's amazingly convenient that I could take the same commute into the city for a hundred different jobs.

Obviously, the offset of all of this is the cost. I don't delude myself into thinking that I could afford a Manhattan flat on an intern's salary (if it's even a paid internship). For now, I'm lucky enough to have an uncle who lives in Jersey and also commutes into the city, but I would still love to live in the city itself some day. Would it be worth it to scrape by just to live there though? I don't know. Probably not in the long term, but even the other boroughs offer a proximity that I would love and with any luck, I'd be able to round up some awesome roommates to share space with. That would be worth it to me - good friends, good city, good inspiration. Hopefully good job? Haha.

It's almost like the urban fairytale land. It's where so many great things have started and ended. Wouldn't you love to be a part of it? Even for a little while? Many people seem to grow out of it and years later, after they've moved away, they reflect on it in a more cynical light. I'm a cynic too. But also sometimes a romantic. It's a weird combination, I suppose, but the city definitely brings out the hopeless romantic in me. I love New York and don't really see myself outgrowing that. Maybe I'll have to eat those words in a few years, but.

Maybe not.