The Glamour Of Big Cities

I haven't felt very art-y lately. Everything I draw I get a headache. So, instead, I'll post my opinion on something that's always bothered me. I am writing this as a kinda rant, so it hasn't been edited and I don't care. Its something that bothers me.

I don't make is an unknown fact that I was born in New York City. I lived, until I was 7, in the Bronx borough.

I do not like New York City. I won't say hate, since that's such a strong word, but I don't like it at all.

That is not to say I don't have good memories of the place. I do. I remember the Dona and her excellent cooking. I remember playing Super Nintendo at my cousin's. I remember the little bakery with the best carrot cake I have ever had.

New York City, for me, is a bit of a trap. Like a bug-light, it's bright lights and city life attracts thousands of people. Then they learn that New York City, for all her glory, is not at all how they imagined. Really, the most realistic portrayals of NYC come from Law & Order. Constant gang wars, tons of murders, constant police sirens.

I do realize there is a bit of an issue in that I was only a child when I was in New York. But I was forced to be a recluse, and I've always been smart and I realized that everything about New York City the movies and shows told me were lies. Yes, I realize I sound bitter, and, I guess, I am.

NYC can be the place of opportunities and glamour. But only if you're privileged. Only if you live in Manhattan. But while living there, I saw, first hand, that those opportunities were tightly locked against the poor. My family's best moment was moving, of all the states, to Michigan.

Where would I be if my family were still in New York City? Probably pregnant, in a roach-infested shithole, living with my mom and not being able to get into a college. My sister and I have discussed this at length. We both understand how lucky we were to move to Michigan.

Its why I defend Michigan, even though I wasn't born here. It got my family out of THAT. Out of apartments, out of the smog, out of the crime, out of everything terrible I remember. I learned how to ride my bike when I was 8-9 because I was never allowed outside in NYC. How sad is that?

This all leads to my apex of my rambling: "OMFG G.R./MICHIGAN IS SO BORING NYC/CHICAGO/LOS ANGELES/MIAMI IS SO MUCH BETTAR".

Are you serious?

I guess my bitterness is making it hard for me to think objectively about it. I suppose I sorta understand that need to go to a big city. But, at the same time, everyone I know who has lived in these big cities hated it. Then again, I guess my sources are biased. They were all the underprivileged. The people who had murders on their stoops, the people who never spent more time than they had to in the streets in fear of being murdered. Those who didn't go out at night, knowing it was an invitation to being mugged.

I'm happy. I have never felt so safe than here in this midwestern mid-sized city. Crime is low. Our ghettos are the suburbs in the big cities. There are trees everywhere. It doesn't smell like trash here.

I'm not against visiting big cities. But I am against people spitting on their home place without truly understanding that, sometimes, a quiet midwestern town is better than the siren-filled smog palaces of Big Cities.

For example, when I went to school in NYC there was a gang war between two of America's most dangerous gangs- the Bloods and the Crips. We were banned from wearing their colors to school. I was at an elementary school and there was always a cop searching through it.

Here? You can walk through gang territory and they won't even care. Over in New York? That's enough to get beat up and mugged.

I don't know, and I know I'm rambling. I just wanted to say that don't believe that NYC is that great. Because, and this is as honest as I can make it, my little midwestern city has been greater than NYC any day.

In my memories, whenever I think of New York City everything's this...like dull blue color. A very melancholy feeling follows those thoughts. Its...what I make of it, I suppose.

Sorry for the ranting rambling this post was.

And if you're curious no I have no desire to visit big cities like so many of my peers. Instead I want to visit the mountains of Colorado, and the marshlands of Florida, and the redwood forests of California.