Occupy Wall Street

I went downtown to see what all the fuss was about.

Opportunity

The sky is cloudless, the kind of blue Crayons hope desperately to be. Light pours directly into the intersection of 57th Street and 8th Avenue, spilling gold onto the asphalt. The air is cool on my legs and I worry I should be wearing tights of some kind, but it’s too late now. I click-clack on my heels across the street, eventually running on the tips of my toes to beat the light and make it across the street on time.

-

Sometimes I ask myself if I shouldn’t try living somewhere else (gasp! I know, me of all people…), just to try out a different life for a while, to explore somewhere else, to have new experiences, start a blog about living in another new place. I think to myself, New York is just a city, right? You can do the same things here that you can do anywhere.

Wrong. Absolutely wrong. Completely wrong.

Because, for me anyway, New York is where absolutely every opportunity exists. It’s in a park, it’s in a boutique, it’s at a conference, it’s on a damn street corner. Because this city is just crawling with ambitious, exciting people who do fascinating things for a living, many of whom are more than happy to tell you about it, and you can meet them anywhere. By some stroke of weird luck—although they say luck is when preparation meets, you guessed it, opportunity—they will maybe even like you and offer to help you with your goals. They’ve worked hard too, and they know how difficult it is to make it. This city is full of people who understand karma.

It gets to a point where you can prepare yourself into oblivion, but if you aren’t exposing yourself to any opportunities, then all of that preparation is lost on you. New York offers the opportunities. It is the center of industry after industry after industry, all waiting for little people like me to come in and just knock on their doors and say hello.

Too many people don’t think you can do that, though. You want to talk to someone at the top of their field? Who are you? A semi-recent college grad? Yeah, right. 

I used to think that, too. But New York has taught me guts. Just reach out. Because in this city, sometimes you will be on the same street corner as Robert DeNiro or Judith Thurman or Ivanka Trump. These supposedly untouchable people walk around on the same streets that everyone else does. They put their pants on the same way. As the great Penny Arcade once said to me, “I’m just a person.” I learned another lesson from my mother a long time ago—the worst thing anyone can ever tell you is no. So why not say hello?

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I ascend the escalator in the shiny, modern Hearst Corporation building. A glass fountain runs down either side of me, shiny metal beams crossing far above my head. I look at myself in the mirrored edge of the escalator and thank myself for having guts, for seeing an opportunity and going for what I wanted. Look what you did, I think. Look where you’re going.

I am headed to the floor of one of the most fantastic fashion magazines in the world, to have a meeting with a top editor. She had been kind enough to make time in her day to speak to me. I was, and continue to be, honored and humbled at the same time. What a gift to be given, by such a person. If you are reading this LB, there are not enough words. Thank you so much.

I open the door to the features department and step inside. I simply think, yes. This is why you live in New York. I make a mental note to remind myself of this feeling. This is what an opportunity feels like.

Reading Henry Miller on the Subway

At 7pm, I exit the main branch of the New York Public Library, having spent all day inside a palatial reading room. I’m not complaining by any means, because I love staring at the ornate gold mouldings and rows upon rows of ancient wooden desks, but my feet were near frozen. I must remember to wear a closed shoe of some variety when I go there again because sandals that leave my feet mostly naked are not really an option.

I walk down the beautiful white stairs, holding on to the gold railing. I’m wearing a red dress, almost like Audrey Hepburn in that scene from Funny Face, if Audrey Hepburn were carrying a bagful of writing materials and wondering where the hell her cell phone is.

Outside, the air has the slight chill and stronger wind of early fall. It is already dark and if there were any traces of summer left they’re now gone. In true Elyssa fashion, however, I am still dressed for summer and the fall breeze rushes right through me. By the time I arrive in Grand Central Station, I am cold enough to buy a Café au Lait from Financier, which turns out to be a good choice because they give free, tiny pastries with each purchase. Scores of people rush past me, men in their late 30s and early 40s looking to catch the MetroNorth back to their suburban lives. My plans, thankfully, are different.

I am headed where I always go when I am by myself and have no plans in particular: The Strand. On the corner of 12th Street and Broadway, just off of Union Square, The Strand occupies four floors packed top to bottom, inside and out, with books, books, more books, and miscellaneous things book readers love, like Moleskines, calendars, and a variety of tote bags emblazoned with The Strand logo. The store is said to have in its clutches over 18 miles of used and new books, which is longer than the length of Manhattan. I always feel at home when I go there, running my fingers over the colorful paperbacks, reading the summaries in hopes of finding the next book that I will call my own and hold close to my heart as I walk through the city looking for a place to sit and read.

Today I found myself hovering in Fiction, a pleasant surprise since I am often drawn to other areas, like Sociology, Photography, New York History, Creative Non-Fiction, Journalism and, of late, Food Writing. I have to be in the right mood for Fiction, mostly because I have always preferred the truth to the imaginary. Staring up and up and up at the bookshelves, around each corner and into each crevice where books are stacked, I’m thinking a modern classic tonight, but I don’t really know where to begin. I contemplate Nabokov, Updike, Janowitz, and others before I spot Tropic of Cancer. The novel by Henry Miller I remember is advertised in the front window in a celebration of Banned Book Week (I will find out later that upon publication, Tropic of Cancer was banned in all English-speaking countries. I think this is pretty badass.) Deciding I could go for a bit of salacity and dry wit from the 1930s, I pick up the book and, involuntarily, hold it close to my heart. Miller and I have already begun our love affair, and I am eager to jump into bed with him later. I realize a smile crossing my face and remember just how long it’s been since I bought a new book—my income is not as disposable as it once was, so I am only the utmost selective when purchasing a book. Sometimes too selective. I think it has been almost six months. Nevertheless, I am glad to have chosen Miller to end the dry spell, in what is perhaps a perfect exercise in irony.

I tell the cashier no thanks, I don’t want a bag for my book and I walk out happily holding it in my hand. I am excited when I remember I will have time to start the book on the train, as it will take about 15-20 minutes to get to my stop. I enter the station, and sit and wait for my train. Another gift of reading time! The subway station is loud and clatters and clangs with the noise of incoming and outgoing trains and passengers, but funnily enough it is a perfect place to read. Once my eyes start taking in the words, external sounds fade to nothing and I am lost in a sea of quiet punctuated only by the words in the novel. Is this what being a New Yorker feels like?

A blond man to my left with a bag of Whole Foods groceries at his feet asks if I’m enjoying the book. I smile and say I’ve just purchased it, but I hope so! He is visiting for three weeks from New Zealand, he says, so he has a lot of time to read. I smile again and turn back to my book. I could have easily kept talking to this attractive man and perhaps we would have started a grand love affair, but I am not interested, especially since the far more interesting Miller is in my lap at the moment. Just call me Belle (start video at 1:02).

Eventually the man departs and offers his goodbyes, and my own train shows up. I get on and open the book again, wanting to ingest as much of the book as I can (I sometimes find it difficult to read elsewhere because I always think I should be doing something else). But I quickly realize I really am a funny girl with her head stuck in a book—I have gotten on a train going in the wrong direction, which I have not done since I moved to New York. This Miller chap has quite a spell over me it seems. Ah, well! More time to read on the train home.

Buttery, Flaky Deliciousness

You wouldn’t think there’s a place called Sunnyside in a city that had three blizzards last winter, but strangely enough there is. It’s a neighborhood tucked away in Queens, right off the 7 train, that I had the pleasure of visiting when writing a story about it for a magazine recently. My assignment was to walk around the neighborhood and find cool things to do, places to eat, things to see. It turns out Sunnyside is a cultural fondue pot, with vendors and restaurants from places all over the world—everywhere  from Nepal and Russia to China and Colombia. 

Though it didn’t make it into the article, my favorite place was Nita’s European Bakery, a Romanian bakery in a little space snuggled right next to Greenpoint Avenue under a yellow vinyl sign for about 30 years. I absolutely loved its warmth. Two little tables sat to the slight left of the doorway, display cases filled with cookies, cakes, and pastries savory and sweet forming an L shape. Romanian crooners’ CDs were sold behind the counter, along with coffee, iced or hot, for $1.50-$2.25. Jugs of candy lined the edges of the cases. Signs in Romanian written in swirling, red cursive hung on the wall. In the back, the owner apologized for not being able to answer my questions right away because she was in the middle of making a meringue.

So often in Manhattan, or anywhere if you really think about it, you’ve got bored teenagers with lip piercings they’ll one day regret shoving your cupcakes into a paper box, smudging the frosting all over the inside, not even caring about where the sprinkles end up. The attendants at Nita’s, however, were just so kind. Yes, they knew I was there for a magazine, but I’ve had people respond not-so-nicely even upon hearing that. They offered me buttery, flaky pateuri—like a puff pastry, almost—stuffed with beef (or cheese, if you so desire), that melted in my mouth. 

 

They helpfully explained all of the different Romanian pastries (it’s a Romanian bakery), like savarina (vanilla cake with orange syrup), amandina (chocolate cake with rum syrup, chocolate crème and chocolate icing), and mascota (chocolate ganache, dried fruit, lime, lemon, orange peel and dark chocolate). Each of the delicious-sounding treats, which were really quite large, clocked in at only $2.25 each. I couldn’t believe it—the mere sight of such delicacies in Manhattan costs $5 at least! But the bakery was inexpensive AND delicious (MASSIVE sugar cookies for only 75 cents!), though it is cash only.

“Here, have a Linzer tart!” the girls behind the counter smiled. Having already had my fill of pateuri, I laughed and declined, but they happily persisted. “No, it’s fine! You have that one savory, and this one sweet! You take it home and eat it later.” Okay, I said finally. Who was I to decline a Linzer tart that was half the size of my face? I thanked the girls profusely, and we all smiled. I just felt so welcomed into their store, even as a complete stranger. I think that they would treat anyone so kindly who came in there, however.

I know I am not wrong when an elderly woman sitting at one of the tables pipes up. Her name is Mary, and she was born and raised in Sunnyside. She has been coming to Nita’s for a very long time, she says. “She’s one of our best customers!” one of the girls smiles behind the counter. Nobody goes back someplace repeatedly if they’re not treated well, no matter how buttery, flaky and delicious the pastries may be. This makes me happy, and I’m glad that even when the reporter leaves the customers will still be treated kindly. Their delightful nature actually kept me in good spirits the whole day. There are few times I have felt so instantly welcomed upon entering a place, in New York or anywhere for that matter. 

Not one for sweets usually, I didn’t actually get around to eating my Linzer tart until about a week later. I was expecting it to have gone stale and crumbly, but no such thing happened. The cookie was fluffy, if that’s possible, and the powdered sugar stuck deliciously to my lips as I sunk my teeth in. The raspberry jelly was fruity and not too sugary, and with the fluffy cookie it was surreal. For your fill of Romanian and non-Romanian deliciousness, check out Nita’s European Bakery, at 40-10 Greenpoint Avenue in Sunnyside, Queens (718.784.4047). I decided this is the kind of stuff they serve in Heaven, if such a place does actually exist.

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Taking Neil Simon as my inspiration, I decided my next big adventure would be to Brighton Beach, in Brooklyn. Brighton Beach is Coney Island’s Russian exchange student roommate. Though it’s right next door to Coney Island (you can actually see the Wonder Wheel from the Brighton Beach boardwalk), Brighton Beach parties with the other Russian exchange students, accounting for its nickname, Little Odessa. European Jews were some of the first people to settle in Brighton Beach, but eventually these families made their way out of the area by the 1970s and 1980s. Then, a new wave of Russian immigrants entered the area and grew it into the bustling ethnic neighborhood it is today. I had never been to Russia, but I figured a visit to Brighton Beach was a good substitute for the time being.

GD, J, and I head to the shore in J’s car (a supreme luxury in itself since getting to Brighton Beach by train normally takes an hour and a half at least). Pulling up to Brighton Beach Avenue, there are grocery stores, cafes, and bars as usual, but all the signs are written in Russian first, with English underneath. It is all I had hoped for and more. “It’s like we’re back in the old country!” I exclaim to GD and J who, like myself, are of Eastern European descent. They roll their eyes and laugh.

Brighton Beach Boardwalk

After finding a parking space, the next order of business is food. I learned earlier that there are two primary competing Russian restaurants on the Brighton Beach Boardwalk, Volna and Tatiana. We decide on Tatiana. I wonder if anti-Tatiana people will start shouting at us and throwing things, but it must be a more friendly competition than advertised because nothing happens.

When we sit down, we hear the pitter patter and slur of Russian around us, which turns into broken English from our waitress as we order foods we can neither identify nor pronounce. GD and J order cheese vareniki, which turns out to be tortellini-like dumplings dusted with sugar and served with sour cream. I go for the borscht because, even as a person of Eastern European descent, I have never tried the stuff. They’re out of cold, though, so I order hot. It also comes with a side of sour cream. It’s salty and magenta-colored, with onions and celery floating about in it (they eventually sink to the bottom and hug the bowl as I devour the broth), but the salt is lessened by the freshness of the sour cream. J makes a joke about Russian rappers and hot beets.

We then make our way to the beach which, for Labor Day, is surprisingly empty. Along the boardwalk, elderly women wear burgundy velour track suits and have their hair backlit into blonde cotton candy. An elderly man snoozes on a bench wearing only a Speedo. More Russian whirls past our ears and, if it were not for Coney Island in the not-too-distant horizon, I’d think we were in another country. Even so, I’m glad the beach is empty—in my mind, that means there will be less garbage on the beach and less old men leering at me.

GD on the beach

I am right on the first count. The beach is clean, for the most part, but the sand is embedded with tiny broken pieces of glass that are on their way to turning back into sand. An old man sits on a towel close by and stares as we sit and play in the water. Can’t win ‘em all.

The waves are cold, but not too cold to play in. In the wake of Hurricane Irene, they come up to my waist which, granted, isn’t that high, but it’s bigger than you’ll get in South Florida. On the beach, a youngish mother yells at her son, Yakov, in Hebrew.

Innumerable varieties of beet products

We walk to Brighton Beach Avenue and head up and down the street, the neighborhood’s main drag. Pharmacies, supermarkets, butchers, fur vaults are all in Russian. We go into Food Heaven, which has a variety of prepared side dishes involving beets, as well as a fine selection of Russian candies and sodas.
“What’s this one?” GD asks me.
“I have no idea,” I say. “Why don’t you try it?”

Russian candy and soda

GD’s candy looks like a truffle on the outside but tastes like a strawberry marshmallow on the inside. I get one that looks like a piece of chocolate covered tofu, and kind of tastes like one, too. I also get a soda that’s bright green and has the licorice-y taste of anise. I guess you can carbonate anything if you try hard enough. We sit and watch Russian soap operas in the store as we finish our treats.

GD with Russian Harry Potter

Next up is a large Russian bookstore. We find a well-developed children’s literature section featuring Harry Potter in Russian. Throughout the rest of the store, there are also crossword puzzles with naked women on them, matryoshka dolls, CCCP t-shirts and Russian versions of magazines like Elle, Shape, and Cosmopolitan. You know, the essentials.

Last is a visit to the large local grocery store, which has cole slaw by the heaping helping in a buffet-style serving area. And the most beautiful strudels I have ever seen (rather, I did not think a strudel could be so beautiful) just hanging out in the open air. I think it’s funny how the culture of a country translates into its food markets. You don’t want? Don’t buy. We do not change for you. Take or leave. I wish I could say the same so easily for myself.

Finding our way back to the car, we head home, the ocean turning to river on our left, sun setting behind grey clouds. As we drive, I resolve to be more like that strudel. 

Come On, Irene

I should have trusted my instincts, which said unequivocally, it won't be that bad. Being from South Florida, I had slept through worse hurricanes than what was supposed to hit New York in the form of Miss Irene on Saturday night/Sunday morning. It’s true—I’d managed to live through Hurricanes Andrew, Wilma, and even Katrina sleeping peacefully. Yes, we lost power; yes, we packed up all our patio furniture and put it in the garage; yes, we were sweltering hot in the dead of a humid Florida October and I remember distinctly lying on the Mexican tile (which absorbs cool air) in my house wishing the air would just magically turn on and we’d all be saved. But those were Category 4 storms and above. Irene, as it approached New York earlier in the weekend, was merely a Category 2—small potatoes in comparison. By the time Irene hit New York, it was a Tropical Storm; in Florida, that’s like a sneeze. We’d be going to the beach to watch the waves at that point.

I understand, of course, that in South Florida we are mentally and physically prepared to withstand such storms and the situation is quite different for New York. Trees up here are not as thirsty as they are in Florida, so when there’s too much water they simply pass out and fall over. Drainage systems are not the same, I’m sure. The list goes on. At the same rate, though, if those houses in Key West’s Stiltsville, perched precariously above the water, can weather storm after storm after storm, couldn’t New York City?

I was firmly entrenched in my beliefs. Friends from New York who had never experienced a hurricane called and texted in distress. Was it really going to be that bad? No, I said, without fear. A bunch of wind and rain. Nothing staying inside wouldn’t cure. My confidence was catching, and I was grateful that I was able to set some minds at ease.

I stayed confident until around around Saturday afternoon when, after repeated calls from my mother, from friends outside of New York who feared for my safety, and reading the Mayor’s office Twitter, I began to worry. See, I don’t have a television in my apartment, and I’ve never been much for the news (judge away), so I only knew snippets of what was going on. As I sat down to finally check out some of the details, I felt tiny bubbles of fear beginning to float toward the surface of my brain. I tried to burst them, but they just kept appearing. What kind of Floridian are you?, I thought to myself. But I realized they were the same fear bubbles I got when I was at home during a hurricane—I was never fearless, by any means. But being scared was never going to do anything. You had to roll with the punches, put your patio furniture in the garage, and snuggle up to some Nabokov with a book light when the lights went out.

Since I didn’t have any patio furniture or a book light, I decided it would be a good idea to get some candles (I knew by the time I went out, at 1pm, all the flashlights would assuredly be gone), some non-perishable foods, and…what else did I get? Oh, right. Nothing.

I left home, and there was a line in front of the hardware store near my house. Masking tape Xs began to appear on window after window. I scoffed, having never in my life owned hurricane shutters and never doing anything to my windows but closing the blinds. People roamed the streets with umbrellas searching for necessary hurricane gear. The air was sticky and wet, and after a while I didn’t know if I was sweating or if it was the air.

The non-perishable food shelves at Duane Reade were bare, as were the diaper, battery, candle, and condom aisles. New Yorkers know how to prioritize. I grabbed some tasty apocalypse food—beef jerky with no corn syrup and white cheddar Pirate’s Booty—but couldn’t find any candles. Eh, I’d try another store. All the pharmacies were out of them and I began to worry. I only had two candles in my apartment, and I knew that these stupid fear bubbles would subsist a little bit if I could just get some damn candles. Eventually I found some fancy and not so fancy ones, along with some canned salmon and Chef Boyardees and headed home, satisfied.

I tuned in to the Mayor’s office Twitter and NY1’s weather Twitter while working on an article and got all the updates I needed. The storm was supposed to start hitting around 9pm and be the worst between 2am and 2pm. I braced myself. Directly against orders, I sat next to the window in my apartment—I knew I would feel most unsafe if I couldn’t hear anything. If it got really bad I would just move.

But it never did. Nine pm passed and I heard some wind whooshing outside. Two am arrived and I heard some more. I fell asleep eventually, but I kept waiting to hear the slap and screech of wind and rain against my window that I knew a real, big hurricane will make. No such sounds arrived.

I woke up the next morning and looked out into the street—some leaves covered the wet ground…and that was it. I checked online for some news and found that many parts of New York were unscathed, but quite a few were not so. There was flooding, uprooted trees, more damage I’m sure, but nothing the city couldn’t really handle in the long run, I think. Frankly, I had seen far worse. I mean, almost all New York transit was up and running a day later. South Florida was out of commission for two weeks, if not more, during Wilma and Katrina. New York did not get the worst of this storm. Unfortunately, other parts of the East Coast did and they need our hopes, good will, and help more than we need our complaints.

How do I feel about the way government officials handled the event? I think telling people if they didn’t evacuate they’d die was probably not the 100% best course of action, or true, as it turned out. But at the same token, if people didn’t think their lives were threatened, they wouldn’t move a muscle. Just in case they were threatened, it was important to get them to leave, so hyperbole I think was the only way officials knew how to deal with it. I think the city did its best to handle a storm it had never experienced before—evacuation centers, dissemination of instructions and information, and so on. In the future do think it will be different, though.

I think experiencing a hurricane in your own home (i.e., not your parents’ home) is a rite of passage in South Florida. Okay, so I was a little more north for this one, but I feel good to have gotten through whatever it was on my own. Would I do it again? No. Next time I’m having a hurricane party. There will be tequila. You can come if you want. If there is a next time, of course.

One Year

If you have not already noticed, today is the first anniversary of Miss Manhattan!  On August 14, 2010, I set forth to describe my Manhattan (plus) adventures, and I’m proud to have come so far, and of course to continue the process.

In a year, I haven’t just found my favorite spots in the city, but I’ve felt what it is to continually be inspired by the city every day. When people say New York is the city that never sleeps, they don’t just mean movement—New York never stops, well, being New York. The lights at the corner market will always be on, illuminating stacked tubs of unnaturally colored daisies ; there will always be “little skate fuckers (High Fidelity reference, anyone?)” in Union Square with their boards; deliciously chiseled men will always be running shirtless through Central Park; I will always be ‘accidentally’ shoved by a feather-haired old woman with a grocery cart in the cheese section of Zabar’s; there will always be friends sleeping on my couch after a night of debauchery on the Lower East Side. Some things you just learn you can depend on.

To celebrate my first year of living in New York, which was actually July 30, EH and I went out for Italian food then miraculously found a $5 bottle of wine at a store near my house and drank it on my roof. Happily, it wasn’t disgusting, and we were pleasantly buzzed as we headed to Fat Baby on the Lower East Side for bumps and grinds on the dance floor to some good, bad, and awesomely bad Top 40 hits. I was glad EH was able to come out to celebrate, as she was one of the first people I was able to hang out with in New York as a “real person,” i.e., a scared-shitless post-grad wondering how this whole New York thing was going to work. A year later, I am no longer scared but strangely blissful, floating about on a Manhattan high brought on by the sound of honking taxis, stilettos on the sidewalk, and the sizzle of gyro meat on a food truck at 3am.

I realized, however, that I made a very important step in earning the title “New Yorker” just this past week. On my way home Thursday night, I fell asleep in the back of a cab. In the midst of my sleep, I somehow knew how much time had passed, and knew exactly what neighborhood we were driving through (Murray Hill) on the way home (not Murray Hill), even with my eyes closed. I opened my eyes to test myself, and I was right. My eyes flickered closed and I smiled as the cab rushed through the neighborhood. When, even in the darkness of your mind, you can still tell where the hell you are in Manhattan, I believe you’re that much closer to earning “New Yorker” status.

And then there are days like today that make you realize even more how to be a New Yorker. I was never one for Sundays, finding them to be the days when you have to catch up and do all the work you put off the entire weekend; not something to be looked forward to, by any means. But today I worshiped at my temple (read: bought some fabulous new clothes at Bloomingdale’s) and then sidled up to Neil’s Coffee Shop with EmLa. We sat at the lunch counter on beige spinny stools, staring at the refrigerator case filled with pies, rice pudding, grapefruit and beer while we ate grilled cheese and tomato on wheat bread and drank coffee. The Sundays like these, when you may not do much but what you actually do makes you so happy, that’s what a New York Sunday is like. Some things about being a New Yorker you can’t seek out, per se—you just kind of stumble upon them and realize you’ve just learned another lesson.

There are some things that are so New York and “New Yorker” without even trying—white mugs and lunch counters and how wet your feet get walking up Lexington Avenue in the rain but you don’t even care because there’s no place in the world you’d rather get your feet wet. You’ll take off your shoes as you walk in the door, leave your umbrella out in the hallway to dry and sit down and write, because some days all New York can give you is inspiration and all you can do is honor the muse. Here’s to another year, and another, and another…