wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

I arrived in NYC for the first time in 1982. At 22 years old I bought a backpack and with a couple thousand dollars in my pocket, made my way to Califoria by thumb(I'm a Canadian). I fiinally ran out of money after three months and arranged a shared car delivery with 2 German travellers I met. It would get us to New York. My parents had money waiting for me there at a bank. The day I arrived my wallet got stolen from the glove box in the car while we were taking in SOHO for the first time. I was turned down at the local youth hostel because I had an advantage in speaking English that other foreign travelers didn't have. I borrowed money from my German friend and found a room at the YMCA. At the bank later the next day I showed up to recieved the money my parents had wired but had no ID. After having called my Parents in Toronto, I was thoroughly quizzed and brought up to speed by the bank manager. This guy really set me straight on some of the "dos and "donts" of being in New York City. It was was a very stern but welcoming gesture which I greatly appreciated. I felt I made my first important crossing into learning street awareness and an eye opeening side of the culture in this giant of a city.
I returned the following year to visit a girl I met while travelling. This time I was much better prepared and had nice clothes and plenty of money for going out to museums, dinners and shows. Both times were adventures I'll never forget.
That first time I had one day and one night in Manhatten that I was broke(before I went to the bank)and I had met some really great fiends. A girl who was returning from travelling in Africa(she took me to the MOMA) and a young guy from Paris(He slept a night in Central Park just to prove it was OK if done right). The three of us discovered a late night dance club in some back ally. It was an amazing place and totally off the charts.
I was lucky I was robbed in a way. I explored the city in a way that couldn't have been bought.

I came to New York forty five years ago. I was a very naive young woman, barely speaking the language. It have been a very tough life. I became a clothes designer. Left the industry to go back to school to earn a BFA and a MA degrees. Taught clothes designing. Went into Graphic Designing with Macintosh computer and taught the subject at the best schools in the city. Went to train the art departments of the BBDO, an advertising agency in Barcelona and Madrid (where I was born) and returned to the city in 1991.
I retired early and began to really enjoy the city. When people ask me if I'm an American, I correct them by saying "No I'm a New Yorker." New York is a ready made city for my personality.
I was lucky to find a rent controlled apt in the West Village when I was a student which allows me to live in a beautiful area and remain in the City.
The city has become very crowded and almost bilingual. I don't know anybody who speaks my mother tongue, but if I wanted, I could speak it instead of English once I stepped out of my home.

As a kid I used to visit my grandparents on Long Island and my parents would always bring us into the "City". I moved to NYC in 1988 from Rochester NY to teach. I was only going to live here for a couple of years and 20 years later I am still here. I lived w/ my grandfather at first on LI and commuted to Brooklyn until I got an apartment in queens. My first experience on the subway I said to myself, You just traveled through Germany and Switzerland by train and got around you can ride the subway. If you get lost people speak english and you can ask for help. I no longer teach but still work in the early childhood field. I love the diversity NYC provides and the fact that I can get anything at any time of the day. The city never shuts down. When I travel to other cities to visit family and friends I last about a week and then I need to get back to NYC. I like that even tough I own a car I don't have to drive it every day that I can just hop on the subway/bus or taxi to get where I need to go. I love that I can see/hear all kinds of music for free or little money. The one thing that has made it possible for me to continue living in NYC is that I live in Hunters Point/LIC. I have lived there for almost 14 years and there is a wonderful community of residents who are artists, muscians and long time residents. I have a great group of friends several of us transplants who live in the neighborhood. But the best part of living in NYC is that I found a way to be able to row on the Hudson River!!! The worst part of NYC is that it has lost alot of its grittiness.

I came to NYC in 1981. About a year after I arrived I was walking along a downtown street when I recognized Philip Glass, who then was just getting known in the downtown music scene. We chatted as we walked along and he asked me whether I felt at home in the city yet. I said that I had to admit that no, not yet. He said, "Well, I think it takes about two years." In my case, I'd say it took about five or six years.

The thing I love the most about NYC is that you don't need a car to have a great life here. Ironically, one of the worst things about the city is the traffic.

i am not at all pleased at the transformation of Leonard Lopate's show into YET ANOTHER version of The Takeaway (which I confess I avoid like the plague--too much posturing interspersed with trivial experiences related by callers upon request).
People's 'in-migration' stories are marginally interesting, but only just. Whatever has happened to WNYC's shows? First Brian Lehrer's show started being swallowed by these ME-ME-ME call ins, and now Lopate.
Producers, where are you?

I am an artist and came to New York over 25 years ago from Canada, because to me it was truly the capital of the world.

I am finding that the city is losing more and more of its vitality and uniqueness as the historic buildings are destroyed (at an accelerated rate under Bloomberg).

I work in the film industry, which I enjoy, but my days are dampened by a constant grief over destruction of our city!

Cathy
Brooklyn

I moved here 9 years ago from Boston, MA, because the opportunity for artists and creative people in Boston was very small. I am a photographer and writer, and have made my living since as a freelancer in both areas. What I love about this city is the amazing diversity of its people - and the ability to meet, learn from, and enjoy the cultures of people from all over the world. What has changed the most in the time I've been here is how "upscale" many parts of the city have become, and how focused the media and local government is on Wall Street and the real estate developers. Making money and tailoring this city to "luxury" incomes and tastes seems have to taken over as the prime focus here - up until recently. I am actually glad the economy is tanking as I am hoping NYC will become a more affordable place to live again, with the focus pulled away from Wall Street and back on NYC as an arts and cultural capital.

Although I was born and raised in rural Arkansas, NYC fascinated me for years before I picked-up and moved here in 2001. I felt I really belonged here.
I am a fine-arts painter, and I work a day job in music publishing business. I cannot imagine living anywhere else in this country.

Mine is a reverse NYC story. I've lived my whole life in the city, and never went to another major city until I was about 16 years old: I went to Boston; I kept asking people where downtown was and didn't believe their answer when they told me I was standing in it. I expected all cities to be like NYC, that is, towering and teeming.

newark is the "new" new york...

I was born in a DP camp in Bavaria, Germany in 1946 and my parents were waiting to go to Palestine. But there was war going on there, and I had a chronic health problem from birth. In 1948, Truman decided to let 50,000 from the camps in the US, and were among them. After staying three weeks with relatives in the Catskills who had a farm that later became a big resort hotel, we ended up in a rat infested tenement on what was then Stone Avenue in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, From there it was up and onwards to the Tilden and then Van Dyke Housing Projects, and from there to Flatbush and beyond :)

My husband worked for an Anglo American company and was asked to transfer here for a year. 11 years later we are still here! Not with the security of the company that brought us here in the fist place, but as freelancers taking one day at a time in this very nervous economy. There is always a trade off, the country you left versus the country you now call home. 9/11 made me fall in love with NY and New Yorkers, because for once you saw the underbelly of this city, in the most atrocious scenario everyone came together I suddenly felt like I belonged here.
We have two children, one who is back in London at University, who thought the grass was greener there, but who has soon realized this is where she wants to be and cannot wait to graduate and get back here.
This is where stuff happens...My kids have witnessed for themselves in the last 11 years, 9/11, the hugest economic downturn cause and effect of Wall St, and helped campaign for the most articulate candidate for president of America, who just happens to be black!
What history in their short lives New York has to offer!!!

My novel, Super in the City (from Bantam books), an urban caper about an over-educated young woman who becomes the super of parents' Greenwich Village building, is a love letter to the city. Here's one passage/valentine about the real New York City, as she imagines giving a tour to newcomers: "[I'd show them]...not the stifling department stores or the Empire State Building, but the excavated, 17th-century ruins beneath Broad Street and the spice markets in Jackson Heights. The hidden gardens behind the Church of St. Luke in the Fields on Hudson Street and the peaceful, abandoned stretch of Pier 40's western end, one of the few places a New Yorker could be alone outside. The ex-cons playing chess with the stockbrokers in City Hall Park and the sunset on the Brooklyn Heights promenade. The aquatic memorial of the Merchant Marine who drowned over and over, each time the Hudson River lapped over his head."(pg.58).
Thanks.