New York, New York
Living in New York can be a pretty strange experience. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a movie because the activities that I participate in and the things that I see every day constantly crop up in movies. Take grocery shopping as an example. Since moving to here, I have come to depend on small neighborhood produce markets for all my food needs, as opposed to a supermarket like Safeway or Ranch 99. Instead of going on weekend shopping expeditions as I had done living in California, now I just grab whatever I happen to need while walking from the subway station to my apartment. Sometimes when I pick vegetables and fruits from the stands outside, I am reminded of that scene in The Godfather in which Marlon Brando is ambushed while he shops for groceries. On an unrelated note, I find it pretty amusing when the store owners, most of whom look Indian/Pakistani, always look at me up and down as if I'm going to steal their bananas, even when I'm in full professional attire.
A while ago, I saw the opening sequence of Armageddon while channel surfing. Boy did I feel weird watching all these landmarks in NYC getting wiped out by asteroids. There was Grand Central station, the huge train station that I walk through every day to and from work. Its train schedule boards were shattered by a hailstorm of meterorites. The Met Life building, which is one of myriad buildings connected to Grand Central and where I usually walk through to get to work, was leveled by huge chunks of rocks. When I saw that, I kind of gasped, "Holy shit, I go through that building every day!" The movie also showed other more well-known landmarks such as the Chrysler building getting obliterated, but I didn't react nearly as strongly because I don't have as strong of a connection with them since I don't walk through them every day. Two weeks ago on the hip-hop soap opera Platinum, Grady, one of the main characters in the show, had sex with his girlfriend in Grand Central. With that scene still in my mind the next day, I looked around and tried to figure out exactly where they filmed that scene. Of course then there is Law and Order, where the detectives go all over the place in the city solving crimes.
I don't know if people living in other photogenic cities (i.e. LA) feel the same way, but I definitely didn't have such strong reactions while living in the Bay Area. Maybe I have turned into a real New Yorker.
Living in New York can be a pretty strange experience. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a movie because the activities that I participate in and the things that I see every day constantly crop up in movies. Take grocery shopping as an example. Since moving to here, I have come to depend on small neighborhood produce markets for all my food needs, as opposed to a supermarket like Safeway or Ranch 99. Instead of going on weekend shopping expeditions as I had done living in California, now I just grab whatever I happen to need while walking from the subway station to my apartment. Sometimes when I pick vegetables and fruits from the stands outside, I am reminded of that scene in The Godfather in which Marlon Brando is ambushed while he shops for groceries. On an unrelated note, I find it pretty amusing when the store owners, most of whom look Indian/Pakistani, always look at me up and down as if I'm going to steal their bananas, even when I'm in full professional attire.
A while ago, I saw the opening sequence of Armageddon while channel surfing. Boy did I feel weird watching all these landmarks in NYC getting wiped out by asteroids. There was Grand Central station, the huge train station that I walk through every day to and from work. Its train schedule boards were shattered by a hailstorm of meterorites. The Met Life building, which is one of myriad buildings connected to Grand Central and where I usually walk through to get to work, was leveled by huge chunks of rocks. When I saw that, I kind of gasped, "Holy shit, I go through that building every day!" The movie also showed other more well-known landmarks such as the Chrysler building getting obliterated, but I didn't react nearly as strongly because I don't have as strong of a connection with them since I don't walk through them every day. Two weeks ago on the hip-hop soap opera Platinum, Grady, one of the main characters in the show, had sex with his girlfriend in Grand Central. With that scene still in my mind the next day, I looked around and tried to figure out exactly where they filmed that scene. Of course then there is Law and Order, where the detectives go all over the place in the city solving crimes.
I don't know if people living in other photogenic cities (i.e. LA) feel the same way, but I definitely didn't have such strong reactions while living in the Bay Area. Maybe I have turned into a real New Yorker.
posted by Gary at
11:42 AM
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