My NYC Blog

Wednesday afternoon I was scheduled for a 3:30pm ultrasound/sonogram of my left heel at the Hospital for Special Surgery, located on 70th Street between York Avenue and the FDR on the Upper East Side. While the actual procedure took less than 20 minutes, the travel time was over an hour and half…each way. It took multiple trains (six total – three in each direction), and most of the time I was standing because I headed back to Brooklyn at the beginning of rush hour. So, in summation: total travel time = over 3 hours, total appointment time = less than 20 minutes. And in my NYC life, this was normal.

April 17th marked the five-year anniversary of the day I moved to New York. Because I have lived in, suffered through, and loved this magical shithole for over five years now, I feel it is time. I’ve got the street cred. Yup, it’s time for my NYC blog.

This city has made sweet love to me with its many wonders and violently assaulted me with its ironic sense of humor. I have been hit by a car. I have seen people poop on the sidewalk near my home. I have seen Susan Sarandon, like, fifty times. I have worked for Martha Stewart. I have met that guy who walks around with a cat balanced atop his head…more than once. I have seen freaks and geeks and hipsters galore. I have had nervous breakdowns on park benches in the rain while homeless men watch me cry. I have had multiple MTA-induced nervous breakdowns, during which I have questioned my purpose in life while sweating on a train platform for long chunks of time, waiting for a train that may or may not ever come.

After I moved here, I started meditating. I started seeing a healer. I fell in love with energy work. I became a Buddhist. During a lightening bolt moment of clarity, I discovered my true calling in life was to be a writer as I walked through the turnstiles of the downtown Spring Street E/C train station one September night in 2006. I discovered an intense love for pilates through my passionate and talented pilates instructor, Patrizia Tombesi, who at 7 o’clock in the morning has pushed me to my very physical limits and demanded in her Italian accent: “Pull from your vagina!!”

I have gorged myself during events at famous places like Tavern on the Green and Mandarin Oriental, and I have been so broke that I could not afford to buy a pretzel from a street vendor. I have met amazing, brilliant people and I have met horrible, idiotic people. I joined a theatre company full of fascinating artists who have changed my life. I lost a lot of weight. I cut off all of my hair. I got more assertive. I developed a love for falafel. I learned that cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery are not worth the hype, and that the best coffee is usually sold by that guy in the metal box on the street corner and not at Starbucks.

But one of my greatest NYC accomplishments was a feat so remarkable that it alluded me for at least the first 1-2 years. When I first moved here, I was beyond impressed that my dear friend Jen Katz knew exactly where to position herself on a subway train so that when the train reached her destination she would already be right next to the exit she needed to take. “How the hell does she DO that?!” I would ask myself. It seemed magical to me. I thought it was a skill I would never be able to master.

And then I did.

At the beginning of my long journey home after my ultrasound appointment, I had one of those great NYC experiences that remind you why you put up with the hellish daily struggle and why there is nowhere else in the world like NYC. I got on the 6 train at 68th Street and it was packed. We were being held at the station, and the conductor kept coming over the PA system and giving us updates. And he was AWESOME. Apparently another 6 train was stalled down at 14th Street, and all downtown 6 train service had been delayed as a result of that one train. After he had apprised us of the situation, he came over the PA and said:

“Attention ladies and gentlemen. If there is any way for you to get to your final destination by transferring at 59th Street to another train, I highly recommend you do that. Even if it means taking an express train too far downtown and then coming back up on another train. Because it’s a hell of a lot better than what we’re gonna do for you. So when we get to 59th Street: abandon ship! Abandon ship! Abandon ship at 59th Street!!”

The entire train was laughing. People of every ethnicity, of every socio-economic group….people from all walks of life crammed together in this train totally lost their shit. We were immediately bonded by the experience of being a New Yorker. And it felt great.

When 9/11 happened, I was not yet a New Yorker. I was working as an actor at the Barter Theatre in Virginia, and some of the other actors there were New Yorkers who had come down to perform in the fall rep. I was in a 10 out of 12 rehearsal that day (a tech rehearsal right before the show opens where you rehearse for 10 hours in one day), and during each break everyone would go out into the parking lot and listen to the news on someone’s car radio. I remember how desperately the NYC actors wanted to be in NYC that day. And I remember not entirely getting it. To me, NYC was the center of danger that day….why would you want to put yourself in the middle of it?

But now, I get it. I so get it. Because once you live in New York and suffer through its daily trials, it becomes YOUR New York. It’s almost like the agony and trials of pregnancy and childbirth – because you suffered and sacrificed for that child, that child is yours and no one else’s and you would die for that child. Even if that child is an ugly little monkey who rubs poop on the walls.

I did feel connected to New York before I ever came to live here. My mother was born and raised here. Generations of my family have lived and died here and literally helped to build this city (three of my immigrant ancestors died as a result of digging the subway tunnels). My granny, who moved from NY to the South in the 1970s to live with my family and never lived in NY again, was still talking about NY and how much she missed it when she died at the ripe old age of 93. This place gets under your skin. You pass it along from generation to generation. I have never felt threatened by New York, in part because I feel like I have so many ancestors here looking out for me that they would never let anything really bad happen to me. Since they’re my ancestors they probably have a very ironic sense of humor (hence the whole “getting hit by a car” thing), but when it really comes down to it I feel supported and protected by this city. So when non-New Yorkers talk about how dangerous and scary New York is, I think they’re being kind of hyperbolic and silly. Because my New York watches out for me.

On a cold and sunny day in March 2008, I went with a very dear friend to visit some of these ancestors. Many of them are buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Granny’s parents (the D’Andreas – including my namesake, Jennie D’Andrea) are buried in Old Calvary, and Granny’s husband (my grandfather) and his family are buried in New Calvary. We went to New Calvary. Here is a picture of me with my grandfather, Frederick Faltermann:

We never met. My mother never met him, either. He died in 1949 when she was an infant. “Baby Faltermann” is my uncle. He died during childbirth in 1937.

My friend and I found the grave around lunchtime, so we sat down and pulled out the bag lunches we had packed. While we ate, we talked about how we want to live the rest of our lives. We agreed that we want to make our choices in life based on love and not based on fear. It wasn’t until later that I realized: we ate lunch with my ancestors. I imagine they enjoyed the company. And if they could have joined in the conversation, I imagine they would have echoed our resolve. “Yes,” they might have said. “Don’t live your lives based on fear. You will regret it.”

So this is where I live. I live in a city that challenges me on a daily basis, but loves me unconditionally and supports me with some sort of cosmic magic. A lot of my non-biological family lives here, and a lot of my biological family is buried here.

There have been many people in my life who have expressed jealousy about where I live and have said things like, “Man, I would give anything to live in New York.” Those comments always make me cock my head to the left and smirk my trademark Jennifer Blevins smirk. Because those people just don’t get it. So for those people, and for anyone else who has ever wanted to live in NY but hasn’t taken the leap, I now offer you this piece of advice:

There will never be a good time for you to move to New York. New York will never issue you an invitation. You will never have enough money. It will never make logical sense. It will never be easy. If you want to live here, then you just have to do it. Much like a video game, New York will drop obstacle after obstacle in your path that you will have to overcome. But even though New York taketh away, New York also giveth. You cannot even imagine the abundance she will shower upon you. And the day you start calling yourself a New Yorker, you will have earned that shit. You will have earned it through blood and sweat and tears and MTA-induced nervous breakdowns and a constant, daily struggle and the love of a city that has become more than a city to you. She will become a person….a relationship in your life. And then you too will understand why New Yorkers not in New York on September 11th wanted to be in New York. And after that point, no matter where you live (and die) in the world, you will always be a New Yorker.

Explore posts in the same categories: Why I live here

Tags: ancestors, New York City, struggle

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