Jeremiah Moss's Eating The Other

Upon reading the first few sentences of the paragraph, one can easily assume E. B. White has inhabited New York once before. His capability in drawing three New Yorks established his familiarity with the city and its various versions. This is implied when he states, “There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts for its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter--the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something” (White). Coming from the perspective of the author, it adds an authentic value to his words and description of the types of people who live in New York. The individuals who exist in each of the version contribute to New York’s remarkable essence

New York City’s population is a little over 8.3 million people. 8.3 million people are spread out among five boroughs and each have their own set routine. Each one of those 8.3 million see New York in a different way becuase “You start building your private New York the first time you lay eyes on it” (“City Limits” 4). Some people are like Colson Whitehead who “was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else” (“City Limits” 3). Others may have “moved here a couple years ago for a job. Maybe [they] came here for school” (“City Limits” 3). Different reasons have brought these people together. They are grouped as New Yorkers, but many times, living in New York is their only bond. With on going changes and never ending commotion, it is hard to

A trip to 42nd street circa 1990 was certainly no destination fit for a family. Walls of graffiti adorn the peeling awnings of storefronts and theatres promise private dances and live nude women. Porn shops dotted the city block with colorful invitations to sex hotlines and signs prohibiting entry to anyone under the age of eighteen (Wollman 445). Decades earlier, during the Prohibition era, speakeasies and brothels lined the city, creating New York’s red light district. Today’s Times Square, however, bares no hint of resemblance to its former image of sleaze and mystery. Neon lights that once illustrated silhouettes of burlesque dancers have since been fashioned into the welcoming faces of cartoon characters. Signs visible

“It got to be easy to look at New Yorkers as animals, especially looking down from some place like a balcony at Grand Central at the rush hour Friday afternoon.” (Tom Wolfe). “O Rotten Gotham” argues that New Yorkers are in a state of behavioral sink. It would not be long before a “population collapse” or a “massive die off”.

Thomas Williams’ article in the New York Times titled “How Hipsters Ruined Paris” is an interesting take on the gentrification of Paris’s red light district. Williams begins his narrative with a description of the surroundings of the Northern part of the section of city known as ‘la Nouvelle-Athènes’. This section of the city is notorious for its seediness and for its importance to the history of modern art, two qualities that seem to always go hand in hand. However, Willams notes the grungy atmosphere and qualia that this Parisian neighborhood once held has been cleaned up and effectively gentrified. The number of regulated brothels in the district has gone down from 84 in 2005 to a mere 24 in 2016. Continuing with his description

Is New York becoming a tale of two cities or has it already claimed that title years ago? New York is said to be the city that never sleeps, why? Because there are shops and stores owners that are open 24/7 just to make that little extra money to support their family and there are others that only work 40 hours a week that provides enough for their family. In this essay I will argue how New York City has two stories to tell between making a living and going to school.

Mayor Koch is known for clean up the up New York City and creating it to be an area for tourist to visit. However, there a darker side of the transformation the city endured. Under Mayor Koch’s administration there was the belief that the only way to improve the city was to renew the neighborhoods and create an area that appealed to the middle class. However, in doing this the working class were the one getting hurt.

I will conduct 32 semi-structured interviews with a goal of speaking to16 black Chicagoans for each case study. For the House music study, I will focus on two groups to gather a larger understanding of how House music and The Warehouse operated as a safe space for black gay and/or queer males. Secondly, I will investigate The Warehouse as a space in which black heterosexual and homosexual communities collectively formed the larger sociospatial and cultural identity connected to House music that spread globally. I will interview eight black, male Chicagoans that identity as queer and/or gay who are between the ages of 45-65 years of age. This is crucial because my human subjects would have to be old enough to have attended The Warehouse, which existed between 1979-1984 or old enough to have engaged with house music between 1980-1990, when it was at its peak.

Don DeLillo’s post-9/11 novel portrays the uncertainty constructed by the city through the existence of Eric Parker, a “foully and berserkly rich” manifestation of the 1%. This is a reverberation of socio-economic power and self-destruction in 21st-century America, through a-day-in-the-life postmodernist portrayal of a capitalist asset manager. The fundamental premise of Cosmopolis here is to illustrate the rise (and imminent downfall) of capitalism, the threat of the 99%, the material pursuit of immortality, and the desire for technological transcendence through the seemingly invincible landscape of New York City in 2000, pre-devastation.

The subway emerging from Keele to Dundas is a location that shows beautiful graffiti that enlightens your day while you travel on the train. Keele demonstrates graffiti through the whole neighborhood. It adds color and shows the talent of the creative class. Keil (2008) argues that, “the real creative class is the poor-who use every day resourcefulness to navigate torn social safety nets, makes home in neglected neighborhoods and work in low wage service sector jobs” (Keil 2008). They bring forth the inner and outer beauty of neighborhoods with graffiti. They inspire the creativeness in developing the city. Without the creative class the city is a dull city. Kensington Market is an another example of a bohemian neighborhood that that portrays

But what if one were to look for evidence of a thicker, contested terrain? After having a glance of Inventing Times Square, I am impressed by how the author describes Times Square’s pre-development days. Each chapter adds another fabulous layer to Times Square’s rich history — not only the buildings, but also the social landscapes created on them such as the theater, the movies, the sexual shows, and the underlying processes informing all of this including developments in mass transit, real estate, zoning. There are all kinds of people all over this urban space, from major economy players to bootleggers, prostitutes, and line girls, who are all included as valid participants in the Times Square landscape. Times Square is always a powerful symbol, but it is never clear exactly what that symbol was at any given point in time, because the various participants contested its meaning. Same as the Penn Station, except those big operators, it is commuters, tourists, foreigners and all other New Yorkers that participated the life of Penn Station, who organized together to restrict those tycoons to do things only according to economical

New York City and its immigrants are the central topic in Garnette Cadogan's essay "How to Walk Around the World Without Leaving New York". Immigrants consist of Native Americans, Refugees, and Tourists who choose to build a life in the Big Apple. Diversity, adventure, and sense of home are just a few of the many offerings that the city provides its inhabitants. Improving my claim, I selected several examples from Garnette Cadogan's essay.

The San Francisco of the 1970s is a city immersed in the counterculture movement: It encouraged experimentation and tolerance for unconventional behavior, vices and eccentric politics. The culture rejected the principles of mainstream society and espoused living for one’s self. This philosophy of life attracted people from all over the United States to travel westwards to San Francisco. The promise of the counterculture fascinated people who were not satisfied with their current lifestyles. They came to the city in the hopes of reinventing themselves. Individuals sought to scape their past routines, to get away from the people and societies that burdened them. In the bohemian city, they aspired to find a place to belong. The characters in Tales of the City, by Armistead Maupin, convey these desires and frustrations in members of all social classes. The novel reveals the consequences that come with reinvention. As portrayed by Maupin, San Francisco signifies both a chance for liberation, and a life beset by secrets, whereby individuals are often haunted by their pasts.

Founded as hunting grounds, Soho, whose name is believed to be derived from an old hunting cry, has historically been known as a fashionable district (Noble). The days of masked balls, grand houses, and wealthy aristocrats of the 1600s had faded to the domestication of Soho, to becoming a center for the bohemians in the 1940s onwards. Today, Soho has moved from a place where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels could debate capitalism, to a sex-center where drag queens are advertised by name (Thornbury). In this essay, I will explore how Soho has evolved to have dual atmospheres living side by side. The dual atmospheres that will be discussed through descriptive language and ethnographic observation are the majority (tourist hub) and minority (local Soho). Atmosphere will be defined in the terms that help “in thinking about intensities of feeling and emotion that swirl through cities; they can imbue public spaces with a sense of collective well being, but also with a sense of unease or even outrage” (Koch and Latham). This essay will also argue how the majority atmosphere poses a threat to the minority atmosphere.

“I began to like New York,” Nick Carraway explains, “the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye” (Fitzgerald 56-57). It is that “flicker” described in The Great Gatsby that attracts “restless” men and women eager to be free from the scrutiny of the country and lose themselves in the city. Reinforcing Fitzgerald’s suggestions, Iris Marion Young, in City Life and Difference, wrote that the metropolis fosters “an attraction to the other, the pleasure and excitement of being drawn out of one's secure routine to encounter the novel, strange, and surprising” (Young 266). Unlike a life lived in the country, urban culture, structure, and crowds promote and even values instinct, and hence, a general sense of freedom. Becoming one in a crowd creates the opportunity of anonymity, allowing an escape from the boundaries of established social expectations. Two short stories separated in time by merely a half-century, Henry James’s 1899 “‘Europe’’ and John Cheever’s 1954 “The Country Husband,” are both set in the “suburbs,” yet both incorporate the city. Their authors are keen on establishing the suburban landscape as one of constricted emotional living. The protagonists’ experience is framed by tradition and scrutinized by others, and they are not free to express themselves. With the influence of the “city”-- New York as well as any other imagined European locations, past and present