Taking a Bite of The Big Apple – or The City by the Bay
For the past two days, I have been “hunkered down” on my couch, in my sweats, with my TV on, eating nothing but bread products and drinking beer. I have been watching rounds and rounds of “Sex and the City” and “Friends” reruns that date back to the late 1990s and take place in this fabulous wonderland called Manhattan. What is my attraction to the big city, and could I cut it?
Rewind a minute – I grew up in a city, The City, to be exact. I grew up in San Francisco, a top tourist spot, one of the most beautiful metropolises in the world, and the center of the world according to all San Franciscans. Situated on the tip of a peninsula, like Manhattan. Full of tall business-filled buildings, like The Big Apple. Full of entrepreneurs, fashionistas, bankers, tech geeks, and people of all shapes and colors, just like the City That Never Sleeps.
However, my life was filled with Catholic school uniforms, playing on bikes in the street, younger brothers and still-married parents. Nothing about my childhood prepared me for fashion-setting, being tough on the Subway, and walking miles on concrete in heels! “Friends” shows us a NYC that is full of people struggling to have normal lives and get what they want and live in a nice place and hold on to a relationship, and deal with weird neighbors, and keep enough distance from their families, and just BE. “Sex and the City” portrays NYC as a mean, addicting swamp of bars and men and hot shoes and clothes.
Neither of those environments are what I can say appeal to me now. I’m a simple school teacher, who enjoys days off and a certain pair of sweatpants that I got from the Dance Team in college. San Francisco, DC, LA are more my speed. I don’t think I could cut in The Wonder City, and I’m not ashamed to say it.
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