neighborhoods

The neighborhood.  In NYC, neighborhoods define your daily life. Where you live, where you shop for groceries, where you do dry cleaning, where errands are done and even where you dine.  No doubt all city dwellers are constantly moving around in and out of each others neighborhoods but it is interesting how the hood defines where you go.

I have literally moved one and a half blocks from where I was and have found that this slight movement has changed my personal traffic pattern.  Places that I never went to lunch before have become my constant haunts.  I take different routes to go places. 

Neighborhoods define people in NYC.  There was an article today in the NY Times in reference to all the New Yorkers on the Supreme Court and the nominee who is also a New Yorker.  Each of them are from different boroughs and neighborhoods.  Each of those places define who they are and who they have become. 

This past weekend when Emily and I were driving home from Boston, we drove down the Saw Mill Parkway and drove by Chappaqua, where we lived for a few years.  I asked Emily to think about how she might have been completely different if we had never left to return to the city.  Probably different in some ways and in others not at all.  If we had returned to the city and moved uptown instead of downtown, that could have been different too.  

Who would have thought that one block would make such a different in my daily life?