New York Stories #2

I get easily suckered into believing what television shows are selling me. Part of me really believes that you can move to New York and live in a huge loft in the Village and be an artist for a living.

But wait Billy, that soft-spoken, rational part of my mind says, how could you afford to live in a place that you could easily ride your bike around in while you work 20 hours a week as a waiter, spending the rest of your time being an artist type guy?

Because people don’t… they don’t want… people hate old buildings with tons of room, the petulant and immature voice of all that’s television bread states.

Truth is that an affordable place in New York City, in that city that doesn’t sleep, is most likely a small and dingy room in a tenement building, with quite possibly a bathtub in the kitchen, and in a shitty neighborhood to boot. Them’s the breaks.

I assumed that on moving to San Francisco I’d be spending my time in a glorious Victorian flat with my glorious and open-minded friends. Yeah, back in ’94 it was almost possible, if you didn’t mind living with 6-8 people. Shit, I mean part of me still seriously believes that if I moved back to LA, I could live in an adorable place right on the beach and be an actor for a living.

It’s almost like there’s this deal between television and NYC where the shows agree to put a happy, magical spin on the city, and then just sprinkle in enough crime shows to scare the shit out of any god-fearing yokel from Nebraska who gets the brilliant idea to move there.

City life can certainly be far more banal and sad, and quite often more dangerous and squalid than Friends makes it out to be. I believe late 70’s era Scorsese hits closer to the mark.

But then again, the ultimate point of television is to not depress you more than your own life and to convince you that you need so many things…


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: Two of Hearts by Stacy Q. Don’t ask…