Salad Days of New York City

Childhood in New York was blur of creativity and culture, diversity and drama.

I remember some dark moments - the inevitable outcome of such exposure and entitlement at such a young age. But mostly I remember a lot of light. The people I knew were interesting and outgoing, and we talked about important things and we went to beautiful places.

In our actions at least, the adage was true, and we grew up far too fast. Reflecting on it now though, we were very much still children during the years we spent running around town like a pack of drunken wolves.

I have been lucky in a lot of ways. One manifestation of my fortune was a complete education in a series of fantastic public schools. My high school was a renowned public art school, where my friends and I studied the fine arts at a level that now makes me envious of my jaded, teen self. We sculpted and painted and acted and sang, and we nearly all carried cameras at all times, and documented everything.

The following is a glimpse of my hometown through my adolescent lens. I have segmented the city into seasons, beginning in Summer and ending in Spring.

SUMMER

Summers in New York are hot and humid. Adolescent summers were spent tanning on Central Park’s great lawn and roaming the streets of downtown and Brooklyn.

Subway platforms sweltered, and over-airconditioned subway cars and restaurants froze your own sweat to shivering legs.

Summer nights are warm, and for young people trying to convene away from watchful parents, they were spent in parks and on rooftops.

Some summer nights a friend’s band would play a show at the Knitting Factory or in some unnamed warehouse in a far corner of Brooklyn or Queens.

On the hottest days of summer we would rally a group and take the train to Rockaway beach for the day.

Some friends of ours from school worked at the local taco shop and for a few hours we got to be by the ocean and feel like something other than city kids.

Each year, mid-June brought with it my favorite day of the year on Coney Island. The Mermaid parade was a dependable whirlwind day of glitter and dance and debauchery.

FALL

Autumn brought changing leaves and the start of the school year.

In 2009 it brought the city’s first Fashion’s Night Out – a night of fabulous events hosted inside of New York’s fanciest retail stores – meant to encourage shopping in the recession economy. As teenagers the night’s economic motivations were lost on us but the city-wide party surely was not.

Fall evenings and weekends were spent in the same manner as ever, loitering on stoops and around public parks.

In September of 2011 a movement began to grow, with its roots in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. Occupy Wall Street sent a wave across the world, and we would visit the park in the demonstration’s early days to linger and observe and photograph.

WINTER

In the Winter months we prayed for snow days, and when a snowstorm finally arrived we rushed outside to enjoy it before it devolved into dirty brown slush and ice.

On January 11th, 2011 a snowstorm arrived on the east coast, and the TV networks virtually guaranteed that schools would be closed for a snow day the next day.

When we woke the next morning, public schools remained open, but I recall hearing on the radio that only 30% of high schoolers actually showed up. Not among them, my friends and I got together int he West Village to play in the snow.

On cold snowy night we would pile into a house for cover.

In from the snow we warmed ourselves up on heated kitchen floors, or else huddled under the covers.

SPRING

Spring was always joyful and refreshing.

We were happy to be back outside without jackets, though the possible recurrence of winter lingered for a long time.

Warm spring rain sometimes caught us by surprise.

As always, roofs and stoops were staples of our daily routine.

And every year as springs came to a close and turned back into summers, months breezed by and seasons changed, my friends and I carried on and passed our playful adolescent days in the city that raised us.