I have always lived in cities—in reverse chronological order and, interestingly, order of size: Brooklyn (NY), Boston (MA), and Worcester (MA). Every time I move to a bigger city, some people inevitably ask me about surviving in these places, as if millions of people are merely surviving in them. By “surviving,” they don’t mean how expensive it is to live in a city or any other kind of jokey definition of surviving. These people mean surviving in the literal sense. The following are two real examples of this happening to me.
I grew up in Worcester and spent my time living there in a suburban area but very much still in the city. If I wanted to take a bus somewhere—and I did exactly one time—I could. It’s the city (I’m not being defensive about this fact, it’s important later). Worcester is, however, smaller than Boston.
After high school, I moved to Boston to go to college and had lived there for five years by the time I graduated. While I was back in Worcester for my graduation party, a family friend quizzically asked how I would get food in Boston. …Huh? I had to let them know that Boston, like Worcester, had supermarkets. They told me that didn’t think a city (of that size) would have a grocery store. Off the top of my head, I can think of national chains like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s as well as regional chains like Shaw’s and Stop and Shop all having locations in and around Boston. New York City has a ton of super markets as well! It’s not all corner stores and bodegas.
I know supermarkets don’t seem very city-like:
- I doubt there are many movies portraying people in Brooklyn going into supermarkets. People bumping into each other in the supermarket feels like a thing from the suburbs, movies use them to symbolize settling down.
- People drive cars to the supermarket and a lot of people assume no one drives in New York.
- There aren’t any supermarkets in Times Square.
- Queens native, Spider-Man, doesn’t like to go grocery shopping.
Still, 1) there are supermarkets, even in the busy areas of cities; 2) there are plenty of less busy areas of cities that are more classically fitting of supermarkets; and 3) supermarkets might even be more convenient in cities, you can just walk into them on the way home from work. It’s less of a ritual for people in bigger cities.
The next anecdote comes from a few months ago when I was visiting home for the holidays. Someone asked me how living in New York was going and I gave my usual answer, “Good, good.” They told me that they imagine New York being covered in broken bottles. …Huh? Sadly, people aren’t just throwing glass bottles at each other constantly. Sure, New York has a bit of a reputation garbage problem but it’s not literally covered in trash. There’s more trash than one would like but it’s not senseless we aren’t decorating the city like the most messed up Christmas tree imaginable. Considering how many people live in New York, and I can’t believe I have to even say this, it’s pretty good at not being a total trash town.
I know a lot of misconceptions about New York exist. For example, I don’t fall asleep to the sounds of the subway rattling. I know movies have a standard ambient noise for what it means to live here but my day isn’t filled with the sound of a train whizzing by my window every ten minutes. Additionally, New York’s most famous attribute hasn’t been crime for a while now (in fact, crime has been going down in New York).
Still think you hate New York? That’s fine, I don’t care. This isn’t a love letter. It’s just a declaration that people live here and people would not live here if the streets had been paved with broken glass and there was no place to buy food.
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