Outside Stromboli Pizza on the corner of St. Marks and 1st, there is a stylish garbage can, splattered with a blue-green-red paintjob and has the following quote boldly sprawled across it:
When I moved here in this summer, I remember this caught my eye. I could not relate to the quote but something compelled me to write it down and save it. I felt discouraged by the words. Pressure? Survival? Hang in there? What did I need to hang on to? I had a college degree under my belt, a promising internship to kick start my writing career, and most of all I was soaring on passion and ambition. I shrugged off the quote. The “big city” did not intimidate me. I was never going to struggle. It was going to be a place where my dreams came true.
How fast time flies and how quickly my naivety vanishes. Six months later, I have returned to this quote, not out of curiosity but out of desperation for inspiration and comfort.
These words speak to me now. I don’t think De La Vega (who I have learned is a respected Harlem graffiti artist/photographer/ heralded for his inspirational quotes) meant “survival” in the context of danger we usually associate it with.
“Survival” in New York is a whole other idea. It’s about learning how to stay strong, keeping with the pace of things and doing everything to avoid getting crushed under the stampede of others running along on the same rat race as you. In New York, the competition is fierce. It is not a place for the mellow, for the humble or for a laid back Californian surf boy. People who come here are big dreamers; We are the passionate dreamers with a fervent drive and a set vision.
That is all peachy and invigorating, until you actually face the reality of merely living in this city. I feel everyone comes to this city with some kind of disillusioned fantasy of New York. Living in the city is not like any place I’ve had to live in before. It is a concrete jungle, the ultimate urban test for survival of the fittest. Just living – day to day to make ends meet – is exhausting. I get up, go to work, work, come home, and I’m tired. I want to crawl in my bed and forget about the day. But I do it over and over again because it takes a lot to maintain you in this city. I wonder how more than half the people, especially poor families, in this city who are less privileged and fortunate than me do it. The effort is tiresome and time-sucking. This is a city where dreams can come true if you have the time and don’t have the pressure of keeping your head above water.
It’s easy to get distracted by the city’s pressure and lose sight of your direction. But then again, New York has a certain magic that keeps you going, because on the worst of days you may stumble upon a dose of sidewalk philosophy to get you back on your feet…
