Let me tell you about New York City. The streets are often crowded and there is a shop, hotel, restaurant, or bar at every turn. The skyscrapers make seeing the sun a chore depending on where in the city you are. It is wonderful, not in that it is beautiful or glamourous but it fills me with wonder every time, wonder why people would choose it and wonder about whose idea it was.
The first time I came to New York, just as we turned somewhere around 33rd Street, I saw trash bags on the street in heaps. I knew right then, New York is Lagos State with better transport infrastructure. Having lived in Lagos and still overcoming the emotional injury from that, it was difficult for me to like New York or even want to experience the place. I have judged it ever since for all the reasons I have now come to believe people love it.
Recently, I had to stay at a Hotel in Midtown which was very different from what I was used to – Manhattan and the Financial District. But, I have learnt that New York, like Lagos, has its charm. When you walk the streets close to Grand Central at night, you are filled with wonder about how much history sits in this place and how much dedication went into the city. I suppose I am looking at New York with different eyes because I have recently seen Hamilton – The 2015 musical but someone was deliberate about this city and what they wanted it to be.
New York City truly lights up at night and when I think about it, there is a richness I have not found anywhere else I have been in the world. When you ride the subway, it is like watching a play. So many things are happening at the same time and while everyone is the main character in their story, you are compelled to observe them like stage extras in a play, each one with a unique thought, experience, or gesture to give the show life. Every person so independent, yet connected like a tapestry, I have not seen it anywhere else.
New York is loud and I would not without much consideration opt to live in the city but I must commend all who do. For to see this much colour, hear this much sound, and be consistently forced to observe the stories around you is a thing that only extroverts could do. If the energy didn’t overwhelm me as an introvert, the age of the buildings which is evident in the plumbing at my midtown hotel, or the terror I feel when I enter the subway station – it looking so worn out, would overwhelm me completely. Even then, at night, when the storyteller in me comes out, I forget that I do not like New York because it looks better in the dark.
