Posts tagged #East Harlem

If I Can Make it Here I Can Make It Anywhere

IMG_1652-February 05, 2019.jpg
“Noise is always loud, there are sirens all around and the streets are mean
If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere that’s what they say
Seeing my face in lights or my name in marquees found down on Broadway

Even if it ain’t all it seems
I got a pocketful of dreams baby I’m from New York!
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There’s nothing you can’t do, now you’re in New York!
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you
Hear it for New York, New York, New Yooork!
”
— Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind

Wednesday Thoughts

New York

The City and the State

Those of you who know me well would probably not have guessed that the next place we would move to would be NYC. But then those opportunities on the east coast rather than the west coast came and here we are. We are not the big city people, even though I am from the fairly big city of Stockholm. New York is the name of both the city and the state, and I bet that some people sometimes forgot about the rest of this state when they think about New York. During these past months we have gone through mice in the apartment, broken pipes and firemen in our apartment at 1 am in the morning. Even though all of these things happened within 2 months, I feel as if we lived here an eternity already. We live in the north east part of Manhattan, the area that is known as East Harlem, or El Barrio. Most tourists don’t go up here, because all the touristy stuff is mostly centered around southern Manhattan. I do think that every tourist should explore the northern part of Manhattan as well, just to get an idea about the life in New York (well I guess you could insert any of the least “famous” parts of NYC here).

Life is not always easy in the city, and nor has it really ever been since 1650 or so when New Amsterdam existed where Battery Park is today (even though Manhatta, yes Manhatta without a n, existed long before then). You only need to live here for a short time while listening to the local NPR station (WNYC) to understand who the losers and the winners are here. The everlasting question is whose fault it is? You’ll hear horror stories about walls and ceilings falling into apartments, mold, broken doors, lack of heat, and legionella in the water towers mixed in with outrageous rents. But New York is of course so much more than that, and there is always a whole suit of cultures and backgrounds wherever you look. Discovering all of these different places in New York, not only Manhattan, will take time, and that fits us pretty well right now since we will be here for a few years. We are not made out of money and I have started a quest for cheap and free things to do in the city. There are many many things you can do of course, and I will probably write more about our life here and what we do, favorite bars, parks, streets yeah just about anything. New York City is huge and many times people forget about the state New York. We want to try and discover more parts of the state while we are here too, not just the big city.

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Wednesday Thoughts, Life in New York and tagged 2019 Life Life in USA Life in New York New York New York Life NYC Harlem East Harlem Tourist Manhattan Manhatta Life in NYC.

New York - First Impressions

New York City Life

    We have now lived in New York for more than one month, and actually spent a couple of weeks here together. It was kind of a whirlwind before we were able to actually settle down here. I worked almost up until the actual move, we then packed our pod, packed the car (read tried to fit everything else in the car), and cleaned the apartment in Madison before we eventually left. Once we arrived about a day later, we unpacked the car, and cleaned the new apartment, and then went to bed. It turned out that driving in New York City, as in driving in Manhattan, wasn't so hard after all (although, W drove, I didn't so what do I know). It was a lot harder to find a parking spot. We spent one full day in New York together, going to Target and Costco, and then at 8 in the morning the day after, I was sitting on a plane to Nome, Alaska. Once I got back W had already left to Boston, and then to Alaska. So, we really didn't even live together in the apartment up until now, these past two weeks!

Manhattan

    You can constantly hear the sirens from ambulances, firetrucks and police cars mixed in with people honking, but they do quiet down during nighttime. Many New Yorkers are intense and very forceful. Kind of as if they forgot that there are good humans out there in the world. People are yelling at each other in the streets, in the grocery stores, yeah about everywhere. I wonder if there is such a thing as a happy New Yorker sometimes. The two first strangers in New York I met was on my way to Alaska. First the driver to the airport, who said he hated New York and New Yorkers, how he didn't think it was diverse enough. On the plane between New York and Seattle the woman I sat next to was moving back to Seattle, leaving her husband (although not leaving leaving, just saying he can come if he wants but I am not staying) behind in New York. She said she hated New York and New Yorkers, said she was sorry for me who just moved there. 

East Harlem aka El Barrio, Spanish Harlem

    We live in East Harlem, or Spanish Harlem which it is also called along with El Barrio. East Harlem has a large population of Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics. Back in the day, 1800's and beginning of 1900's East Harlem was mostly an Italian neighborhood, and today has one of the most exclusive restaurants in the US, an Italian restaurant called Rao's. The closest we have gotten to Rao's, well except walking by the restaurant, was when we purchased their famous tomato sauce at our local grocery store. As you can imagine there is a wide range of cultures that are merging in East Harlem, and with that a wide range of interesting restaurants that we have to explore. We have a really nice apartment with a guest room and actually two bathrooms (well the technical term is one and a half). We live very close to the subway and it takes about 20 minutes for us to get to Brooklyn bridge with the subway. We have of course spent many many days in the apartment, but we have also been exploring the neighborhood some. Every day has been hot, well hot to me. We have had temperatures in the 80's and 90's ever since we moved in, and our AC units have been running a lot these past weeks. Now the temperature is finally dropping and we can actually leave the windows open to create a nice breeze through the apartment.

Central Park and community gardens

    During the weekends we have been doing chores around the house and then gone to central park to relax. Central Park is actually a National Historic Landmark and has been put on a tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage Sites. This past weekend we went there and had a picnic in the afternoon sun. Central Park is my favorite part of Manhattan, of course who would have thought? Northern Central Park gets less touristy compared to southern Central Park (not too suprisingly). Other than Central Park there are a lot of other parks in Manhattan of course, and a ton of small community gardens that are run by the neighborhood communities and NYC parks. It is called Green Thumb and is the largest community gardening program in the US. The community gardens are run by residents in the area, and anyone can join a community garden. Of course, these gardens aren't open at all times, since they are run by the community, but you are mostly free to enter and look around if you happen to come across a garden that is open. We have one right by our apartment, which I will try to join!

Posted on August 23, 2018 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Life in New York, Nature and tagged Community Garden Garden gardening Central Park Park NYC Parks NYC Manhattan East Harlem Spanish Harlem El Barrio 2018 Life in NYC.