"Aging means giving up, de-accessioning, and knowing that wealth and worldly achievement count for little. Like urban life, it makes you feel a nobody. Paradoxically, it also makes you feel alive.
Conventional wisdom holds that New Yorkers, like Parisians, are snooty, too busy to be approachable. Walking with speed and determination, they cannot be stopped. I have never found the stereotypes accurate. Manhattan is a series of small villages. It replicates itself every five blocks or so. The shoemaker, neighborhood market, barber shop, dry cleaners, liquor store all become part of one’s daily drill. You make friends in the shops.
There’s an urban fable, the kind of thing you see written up in The New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town.” At the redoubtable Fairway Market on Broadway at 74th Street, the reporter overhears a woman examining string beans, entranced by their quality: “Such beans, I’ve never seen such gorgeous beans.” She then turns to him: “Have you ever seen such beans? You can’t get green beans like these where I live.”
Thinking that perhaps she has come from the Bronx, New Jersey or even farther way, he politely asks: “Where are you from, Madam?”
“I’m from 85th Street.”
For a Long Life, Retire to Manhattan - The New York Times
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