The Intimacy of the City

A New York Look

Walking around New York City today I was struck by how differently we experience other people on the sidewalks of a city than we do in the towns of New Hampshire. 

To a significant extent I know my neighbors by their cars. One neighbor drives a big Jeep and a Ford F150 pickup truck, and that is the way I experience him mostly, seeing him drive by in those big machines. I was surprised, standing, talking to him at a neighborhood party, how small the man is. On the sidewalks of New York, you see people unattached to machines or other accouterments.  A woman walked by in flip flops and shorts so brief you saw the under lips of her buttocks. People are exposed. My grandmother would have been scandalized: she described a woman who was wearing shorts which ended above her knees as "practically naked."

My mother grew up in New York City in the 1920's and 1930's. She wore gloves and a hat when she walked out of her apartment.

Not A Second Glance

New Yorkers in the hot summer now wear so little and outfits arresting enough to make me stare and wonder if I'm getting to be as fussy as my grandmother. On the other hand, a glimpse at the blog, "Shoppers of Walmart" suggests others may see  exposed body parts  and find them as jarring as I do.

You Don't See This on Park Avenue

New York women now wear workout leggings which amount to little more than a second layer of skin as they walk along Lexington Avenue.  In the summer heat, I can only assume the material is breathable or those women would be broiling from the waist down. Above the waist, there is precious little to trap the heat in sheer T shirts. The level of restraint American men show on the sidewalks is remarkable, as few heads turn or eyes follow these quasi naked women walking around in the Naked City. You can see the Talibund and ISIS would be mobilizing the morals police quickly, if they ever took control of the Big Apple.

On the other hand, maybe it's all about context. On Christopher Street, in the Village, you are not fazed by eccentricity. In Wallmart, there may be a different expectation. You bring your kids to Wallmart.  

At the Beach, no problem; At Walmart, problem

Whatever the expectation, it is clearly different in New York City than in Exeter, New Hampshire.  People walk around sidewalks in Exeter and Portsmouth but their numbers are small, the scale is small and they are generally headed back to the protection and insulation of their cars.  You see people along Rte 1A in Hampton, walking in nothing but bikini's, but you can smell the salt in the air and hear the waves crash, so that's different. 
Three miles up Rte 27, around the Old Salt,  and everyone is fully clothed, and, of course, they are getting in and out of their metal conveyances, walled off. When they are out of their cars, they are like astronauts doing space walks--you know they are tethered and will be sucked back into the protective confines of their machines.  

It's that connection to the automobile that presents a wall to the sort of automatic intimacy people experience just walking down the avenues in the city. New Yorkers are said to be abrasive, unfriendly, anti social. Actually, quite the opposite is true. New Yorkers are the ultimate in "social." They live in such close proximity to one another they are like people in the elevator, they keep their distance and they look up at the ceiling or at the numbers on the panel, but they tacitly acknowledge each other in a very functional way.