Missing New York City
November 12, 2002 by David BlackmanI've been in a New York state of mind ever since the leaves started changing color and the weather has been the type that television weathermen and hopeless romantics call crisp. So much so that I unearthed my old Billy Joel albums and felt like I was skating in Wollman Rink in Central Park. In San Francisco, theres the Presidio where you can go to escape the city. Trees everywhere, and the city looks like its a million miles away. In New York, we have Central Park the skyscrapers surrounding it inhibit its ability to really isolate you from the urban environment. Its still a wonderfully surreal place, trees all around you and, above that, gleaming steel skyscrapers and stodgy brick towers.
I know I came to California to get away from it, but New York is still home, and its still where my allegiance lies. Its still where my team plays (lets go Mets!) and where my subway runs and where I can pretty much navigate anywhere in the city. I can tell you the best place to get a canoli (Nicks Pizza), the best diners (Gee Whiz and Burger Heaven), the best Chinese food (Sammys Noodle Shop), the best place to get a slice of pizza (actually, its getting to be impossible to find a good slice of New York style pizza in New York, but there are a bunch of places on Bleeker Street that are pretty good).
There are things out here that I just dont understand. Back home, the subways run 24 hours a day. The trains run infrequently late at night, and the stations can get kind of seedy, but the trains always run. So when I would go see the Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight, and stumble back out into the real world at 3 a.m., there was transportation back home. And its cheap and reliable and makes some amount of sense.
We also believed in only having a limited number of well-connected public transportation systems, as opposed to the Bay Areas conglomeration of a dozen different disconnected, disjointed systems that dont actually go anywhere. In New York, when you get hungry, theres always a round-the-clock coffee shop or diner open within walking distance. In a college town, I cant understand the lack of these fundamentals real pizza places, hole-in-the-wall Chinese take-out joints and 24-hour diners. It just doesnt make sense.
I've been trying to explain to people what a real pizza is like. Its a large, fairly flat thing. The outer crust is thick and puffy, and the inner crust (the part that the cheese sits on) is incredibly thin. Ideally, the bottom of the pizza is crisp, and the slice can be comfortably folded in half for easy eating. Dominos is not real pizza by any stretch of the imagination. Doesnt anyone else find the cheese medicinal, the crust greasy, and the entire enterprise a little too sanitized and McDonalds-like? People get oddly defensive about Dominos, but its not like theyre a local family-owned pizza place that needs the business.
My quest for a real slice of pizza hasnt been very fruitful, so I've redirected my efforts toward the pursuit of good Chinese food. A couple of days ago I missed dinner so I could order take-out but then forgot about it. And by the time my growling stomach reminded me of the problem, all the Chinese places were closed or not delivering. Unexpectedly, a girl in my dorm offered to drive me in exchange for a fortune cookie, the pleasure of my company and the excuse not to do work. So I'm riding in this girls car, late at night, going to go pickup Chinese food, talking about our families, doing a very made-for-TV-sitcom collegesque thing, and I'm seeing myself as an insecure 10-year-old from a camp photo on my dads desk. It wasnt even that big of a deal I could still carry on a conversation like the 18-year-old I am (as of today, woo-hoo! cigarettes and porn for everyone!), but the experience never feels real when I'm second guessing whether or not I'm mature enough to be having these experiences.
Just about everyone I know is bothering me to write about them in my column, so in an effort not to look like a total tool, lets just say I'm thankful for all the incredible people I've met here so far. My parents tried pretty hard to discourage me from going to school on the West Coast. They knew it was a losing battle, but they tried anyway. My dads words of wisdom to me went something like this Cornell, MIT, CMU, even UMich; if you break your leg, we can get in the car and drive like crazy and be there if you go to Stanford, youd better find a good support group real quick.
Well, I've found a great support group out here at the Farm. From the people who lend me their notes or pickup the handouts when I sleep through lecture to the people who not so subtly kick me in the shins when I fall asleep in I-Hum section. I wouldnt be surviving right now if it wasnt for you all. So there, an implicit shout-out to everyone in my karass (for those who havent been enlightened to the teachings of Bokonon from Kurt Vonneguts books, a karass is a team (of people) which unknowingly executes Gods Will). Have you hugged your friends today?
David Blackman is an undeclared freshman who is still desperately searching for that perfect slice of pizza. Know where to get it? E-mail him at blackmad@stanford.edu.
David Blackman is an undeclared freshman who is still desperately searching for that perfect slice of pizza. Know where to get it? E-mail him at blackmad@stanford.edu.
