What I find great and amazing about New York City and some ranting and raving.

I am a native son of New York City, I have tried in the past to live other places but I never can do it. There is someting unique and amazing about the energy of New York that no other place I have ever visited has. If you leave the city for any period of time, especially to a slower more laid back place, you wind down and your pace slows. Once I went to Jamaica and was there for a week, the lifestyle there is very mellow and you naturally slow down. I remember coming back to New York and feeling as if I was moving in slow motion upon getting back, once that energy gets into your soul you crave it, it is so strange.
I enjoy walking all over the city, I used to take a lot of photographs but I don't anymore. I need to get an old 35 mm camera again, I am old school all the way and am not into most new techonoligcal gadgets. Part of the allure of the city is, you never know what's around the next corner, you could see a guy with a huge mohawk and 10 piercings in his face, a movie star or someone you haven't seen in ten years. I went out to the East Village friday night to meet some old high school buddies for drinks, as I walked down St. Marks Place, I missed the old East Village, punk rockers with leather jackets, big boots and spiky mohawks and the punk girls with black eyeliner and piercings all over. I missed the junkies on avenue B and the filth and empty lots. This has all been replaced by young twenty something student types searching around for what used to be there, the vibe is gone. New York has gentrified almost completely now. I found it funny that I saw two girls from my poetry class however on my walk, what are the odds of that happening? And within two blocks of each other on top of it. I had a great time with my old friends, I drank too much though and thank god I cut myself off after my fourth shot of Grey Goose and 4 large Asahi beers and a corona. You have to know your limits or you will be a casualty of war and no one wants that.
Another interesting site on my travels on friday. I was downtown walking towards the R train on Broadway, there is a small hotel on Chambers Street there. I saw a large crowd of people standing on the sidewalk across the street from the hotel. Everyone was looking up at a window so, of course, when you see a large crowd you stop to see what everyone is looking at. I won't go into the grim details but there was a couple going at it in the window, drapes open for all to see, only in New York City or maybe Paris too. Apparently, there skills weren't too impressive, because everyone seemed to be laughing. I guess this isn't too shocking, I have seen so many things and so much growing up here, that nothing shocks me anymore. Maybe that is the problem living here, you see so much and experience so much that life becomes almost routine in some sense. When you walk outside in any neighborhood, your senses are diluged with sites, sounds, smells, experiences, voices cascading all over, traffic noise, airplanes, helicopters and sirens. I have gone to visit relatives in small towns or in the country and I can never sleep, it's almost is as if the silence has a noise all its own and it becomes deafening. I need the hum and noise of the city. The country is nice if you like bugs and the possibility of a serial killer stealing into your house at night and killing you. I can't stand crickets either, they drive me insane and I can't sleep with them around. My aunt leaves her home unlocked in the country, something no New Yorker would ever do. I have no trust, how can you?
New York can be overwhelming to tourists, I have several friends who live other places, that can't come here, they just can't deal with the size and scope of New York, I find that to be a shame. To be honest, I can't deal with the smallness of small towns or the suburbs, I don't think I could live in a suburb or small town, i'd go nuts, there's not enough things to do, I guess you become used to it if that is where you grew up. The same could be said for someone from a small town who couldn't take the size, complexity and sheer volume of New York City.
On another topic sorry for jumping around but i'm going with it here, I have a friend who is single, he has been trying to date after not being on the dating scene for several years. Dating is hard in New York City, due to the sheer number of people and possibilities. It seems as if there is always someone new around the corner, you are never satisfied and always wondering if there's someone better that might come along. Some women only want to date successful, powerful men, they lust after material possessions and that is ok I guess but I find that sad, because all those things are temporary and meaningless, in the end. I guess to each his or her own, there are a lot of cool great women out there so don't get me wrong. I just detest the ones that lust after these type of possessions and relationships. I read an article a while ago that claimed that close to half of the city is single, which would put the number at somewhere in between 3-4 million people. Hard to believe. New York can be a lonely place for a single person. While there are people everywhere, due to the rat race and social issues, we are all closeted in our little worlds. We have our facebook pages and myspace, but how many of those people do we really hang out with or talk to with any frequency. I have about 90 facebook friends on my page. I talk steadily to less than 10 of them and probably have hung out with less than 5 in the past few months. I don't know if this goes for everyone I can be ant-social at times and I am sure the stats are different for some. My point is that all this techonology in my opinion keeps us apart rather than brings us together. Maybe this is the new world we live in, the time of love letters and actual convesation has been replaced with twitter, facebook, friendster and text messaging. No one seems to have the time to actually talk to each other, except on cellphones which I detest. Is it all about instant gratification these days? Who knows, I feel bad for my friend, I am sure he will find someone but I am not sure how he should go about it. Maybe craigslist, match.com or the like, where you are just a face on a page being perused by others and hopefully chosen for your hobbies, sculpted features and abs or bank account size. I know this sounds a bit pessismistic, but I don't like what I am seeing in terms of where technology is leading us. Let's hope I am wrong and things change a bit. I am thinking of getting rid of facebook and all of these types of sites, maybe dropping off the grid for a while, it is appealing.
Can you really drop out like in the sixties anymore? I guess it's possible but it must be a hell of a lot harder, we all have to be consumers in some aspect don't we? Well this post is all over the place and I am sorry about that, sometimes the mind swirls and you have to just go with the flow. More to come soon and so it goes.