2 posts tagged “actress”
New York Magazine recently ran a piece called "Reasons to Love New York Now". As usual a very well written article, but it also made me start thinking about MY reasons to love New York now. After a year and half in the city, it is now the 3rd longest length of time during my adulthood that I have resided in any one place. So there must be a reason why I love New York now, right? I'll think about it and let you know.
In the meantime read some of my favorite reasons from NYM:
Because We Have Four, Yes Four, Presidential Wannabe
Because Nas and Kelis Make Marriage Seem Sexy (although Nas doesn't seem to be aware that Ruby Dee is still alive and kicking)
"C’mon over here, sugarplum,” says Kelis. Her blonde hair swoops up like meringue. She crooks her finger for her husband, Nas, to join us.
The two hip-hop stars grew up here—she in Harlem, he in Crown Heights and Queensbridge. Nas, the hyperliterate rap firebrand, releases Hip Hop Is Dead this week; Kelis, an R&B innovator, is the 21st century’s female Prince. And at this moment, in New York, the pair are in that sweet spot where a famous couple is also a kind of royalty—turning the city into their own personal romantic backdrop.
Because You Don’t Need a Plane Ticket to Go to a Foreign Country
As a New Yorker, you spend a lot of your time not acting like a tourist: not going where tourists go (Rockefeller Center), not wearing what tourists wear (fanny packs), and not doing what tourists do (waddling in slow-moving, sidewalk-clogging herds that suddenly halt for no discernible reason). Yet one of the great joys of living here is that we can all be tourists, all the time. A current ad campaign for Delta dangles far-flung destinations with the tagline “Cheat on New York.” But the thing is, you don’t need to leave the city to do that. You can cheat on New York with New York.
Because Even in the High-Rent Chain-Clogged Heart of Manhattan You Can Still Find a Mom-and-Pop
You cannot get a decaf caramel macchiato with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles at the Inhouse Nosh Cafe. In fact, horror of all horrors, they don’t have macchiatos period. They serve tea and coffee, in the standard hot and iced varieties, as well as toasted bagels, muffins, doughnuts, and all manner of chips, candy, gum, and soda. Then there are the house specialties, like the popular spinach pie (a lovely light crust), brisket sandwiches, blintzes, bialys, knishes, pierogi, grilled chicken in a pita, fillet of flounder, and the latest addition to the menu, vegetarian lasagne. Plus the egg salad is divine. All of this, and a morning-blitz counter staff of six, is crammed into a space no bigger than a studio apartment, festooned with handwritten signs that all but cry out, “We are an independently owned and operated establishment.”
Because It Takes Only 30 Hours to Turn Into Someone Else
Because No One, No Matter How Rich, Talented, and Beautiful, Can Win Our Love Until They Earn It
Because Even in a City of 8 Million People, You Can Still Be Alone
In the rest of America, people crave human contact. Buying a quart of milk may be one’s only conversation for the day, and clerk and customer stretch out the transaction with pleasant chat. In Manhattan, by contrast, the relentless crush of humanity makes solitude into something not to be rejected but to be embraced, even defended. When out-of-towners see us pass each other by with barely a grunt, they mistake our lack of small talk for coldness. Really, we’re exchanging a small, invisible gift: a moment’s silence.
Because Our Real Mobsters Are More Entertaining Than the Sopranos
Because Our Beautiful Young Actresses Can Actually Act
Yes, L.A., your stunning, supernaturally toned, and eerily tanned actresses may demonstrate their range by playing a midriff-baring dance instructor, a midriff-baring scuba diver, a midriff-baring stripper, and a leotard-wearing superhero (Pomona’s Jessica Alba). But our stunning, quite-often-pale-but-still-drop-dead-gorgeous actresses can actually act. In fact, it’s becoming obvious that the world’s best beautiful actresses either speak with funny accents—Winslet, Kidman, Blanchett, Mirren, et al.—or they’re New Yorkers: Streep, Moore, Portman, Connelly, Johansson, Mary-Louise Parker, and Thurman, for starters (Gwyneth, a New Yorker in London, and Rachel Weisz, a Brit in our Soho, diplomatically bridge the gap).
Because Our Socialites, Having Made It Here, Are Making It Everywhere
Because the Next Isabella Rossellini Lives Here (and Happens to Be Isabella’s Daughter)
Every day, impossibly gorgeous girls are plucked from midwestern malls and Russian cafés, Brazilian beaches and small Eastern European towns, and hustled to Manhattan. The burning hope is that theirs will become The Face, and its bearer the new belle of New York—and from here, the world. But this year’s Face belongs to a born-and-raised New Yorker.
Because There’s More to Do on a Single Street Here Than There Is in Most Other Cities
Because We Like to Watch
