It's a saddening commentary that most of my questions about New York City posed to our favorite New Yorker begin with a "You know that scene in Crocodile Dundee?" or end "you, know, like the Huxtables' neighborhood?"
Because I've never traveled to New York and because my impression of the city is heavily influenced by film, I'm totally ignorant about what makes up the real city. Mention downtown and the image of dozens of nyloned, sneakered feet walking down the street pops into my mind. The subway system? Well, to me it's a hybrid of a Run DMC video and the hellish place in Ghost where Patrick Swayze learns to move objects from a very angry Vincent Schiavelli (of course, the quintessential angry New Yorker ghost).
Coming to America. Ghostbusters. Trading Places. Big Business. Working Girl. Crocodile Dundee.
Compiling the list of films that scream "New York", I realize that not only is my perception of New York skewed by movies, but it's skewed by particularly mediocre or downright awful 1980s movies (Ghostbusters excepted, however). This, most likely explains why my free association of the term New York conjures up the image of shoulder pads and white Reeboks.
All of these films reveal that I'm just as clueless about contemporary New York as that middle-American who asks me where I keep my surfboard, when's my yoga class, and whether or not I know Jeff Spicoli.
Still, the tackiness of those 80s movies is balanced by other representations -- the magic of a Woody Allen movie, Moonstruck, and dare I say, The Godfather. My film choices are obvious, yes. But what's the point of offering sweeping romantic generalizations based on obscure choices?
I want to be a part of the Castorini family in Brooklyn. I want to have our very own bread shop (that, of course, has been in the family for generations). I want Gershwin to swell as I self-deprecate. I want to eat an orange from a fruit stand.
To me, living in New York equates with living in a movie.
I want to live in a movie.
In Take the Cannoli, Sarah Vowell writes about her obsession with The Godfather and her trip to Sicily to visit the village of Corleone. When she is treated as an outsider, she has an epiphany:
"How had it never hit me before? The whole point of The Godfather is not to trust anyone outside your family... If I were a character in the film at all, I'd be on of those pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders in the restaurant where Michael murders Sollozzo. I'm the tuba player in Moe Green's casino. I'm that kid who rides his bike past Michael and Kay on Kay's street in New Hampshire who yells hello and neither Michael nor Kay say hello back."
The truth is, in New York, I'd be the tuba player in Moe Green's band. I'm a Californian by birth and residence, someone who is about as cosmopolitan as a nylon fanny pack. I've managed to spend my first twenty-five years in California isolation -- unaware that Boston is in fact above New York City and that New Jersey isn't "near Michigan or something."
It's sad because it's true.
In about a month, Ben and I will set out on our first trek across America. We're going to right geographic assumption wrongs and along the way visit Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Providence, Washington D.C, Charlotte and of course, New York City.
Our ultimate goal is to see if we should leave California and experience life on the other coast -- preferably in a city that we don't have too many incorrect film-based preconceptions about.
Perhaps we'll settle in Boston.
After all, it would be good to hang with the boys in Southie.
