“…the city’s sanitized streets have become a stage set on which New York plays itself, for an audience of tourists.”
After I read this, a quote from a New York Times article in December of 2007 in which Tom Wolfe was interviewed about the 20th anniversary of his book The Bonfire of the Vanities, I began to watch people, as if Manhattan itself were a stage.
Of course a writer like Tom Wolfe would be able to capture the essence of an entire city, and way of life, in just a short phrase. It’s uncanny how well it fits the entire attitude of New Yorkers going about their daily lives. When interviewed, Wolfe said that, were he to write his book today, it would be a completely different novel. While that may be true—the essence of New York today is a much more clean and composed façade—vanity is still at the heart of our way of being.
The past couple of weeks have been about reorienting myself in the city now that school is over and I have the time to live like a New Yorker again. While every trip has its purpose, the majority of my time is spent just people-watching.
Yesterday I was at the Met’s new Model as Muse exhibit, observing both the gallery itself, and the rest of the hoards milling around. It struck me, as it has many times in the past week or so, how easy it is to pick out those that don’t belong. The exhibit was mostly full of tourists. Real New Yorkers know not to visit the Met on a holiday afternoon.
I thought of all of those entries on Gawker and the Post that I read about the Met Costume Gala a few weeks ago for the exhibit’s opening. The crowd last weekend was slightly different. Not quite as glamorous, nor as put-together, nor as confident.
The difference between a New Yorker and a tourist is astonishing. It is a difference distinguishable by a simple cursory glance. On average, it amounts to about thirty pounds and a whole lot of attitude.
New Yorkers do seem to live their lives as if on a stage—performing for others, and for themselves. If you look at the photos of the Met Costume Ball, it captures New York at its best (and haughtiest). Those of us not privileged enough to be invited to the ball still act as if we should have been. A stroll across Central Park South around 6 pm the other day revealed finely tailored suits, with Blackberries as a permanent accessory, in sharp contrast to the tapered jeans and white sneakers of the Midwestern tourists that inexplicably pour out of the Plaza and Essex House.
And yet, to what end? We parade around in our pretty clothes and expensive haircuts in order to impress…our peers, ourselves, the tourists?
I guess it is only appropriate to bring up Shakespeare.
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Shane Ferro 