On the Fringe

When you’re alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go downtown
When you’ve got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, downtown

The first time I remember hearing those words I knew I was a city girl. It was a credit card commercial that shows a young woman in the city seeing her life change before her eyes as she racks up credit card debt and acquires such beautiful things. Such a simple commercial that used a simply classic song made me long for such a magical life I knew was only possible in the city.

All my life I’ve lived somewhat on the fringe of New York. Growing up in Central Jersey, the city was convenient, but not necessary. I remember a few trips when I was a kid to see Broadway shows, but my family was never one to spend a lot of time in New York. I savored those little trips seeing the lights and that feeling like anything can happen.

It’s so cheesy but it’s so absolutely true that New York is a magical place. Being on the fringe, it both dulls and illuminates the sparkle. Ironically as I approached college I thought I wanted to be a California girl. I fell in love with the idea of living by the beach and getting açai bowls after yoga, but California respectfully declined. I wouldn’t quite say I settled for New York—I was and still am glad I made the choice—but at the time I thought maybe it wasn’t the dream.

Spending my college years even closer to the city but still maniacally on the fringe (just extend the subway into Yonkers—it’s not rocket science), I fell deeper and deeper in love. It was by no means an easy relationship. I got lost and angry with its “simple” grids. The cost of living never failed to shock me. The challenges of breaking into any industry in the city broke me more times than can remember. 

But I found spots I loved. Enjoyed stretches of Central Park I walked between my internship and my boyfriend’s apartment. I ran into people I knew from this life or that one. I settled in and soon found myself at home in the city. 

And yet when I finally moved in, I still found myself on the fringe of the New York that exists in mine and the rest of the world’s imagination. In one sense, I do live in the “Real” New York—older building, rich culture throughout the neighborhood, grit. But this also means that I live in the affordable New York, which is relative.

I love my neighborhood, and I love that it retains its authenticity against the squeaky clean WeWorkified Manhattan. But the reality is you don’t get that same “anything can happen” feeling when you walk up my street. I often walk up my street and wonder, “Am I going to be stabbed?” (It’s not that bad. I have never actually felt unsafe in my neighborhood, but I have seen some rather unsavory things that would make a stabbing less than shocking.) 

Despite what my mother might tell you, when you walk through the parts of New York that you see in movies and on Sex and the City, you are far far less likely to be stabbed. And if you are stabbed, Lady Gaga’s doorman will probably call an ambulance for you.

All of this to say, the beautiful and dreamy and spectacular New York is real, but it is devastatingly unattainable to so many people. And thus, I have in some sense “made it” but I continue to live on the fringe of this magical city which presents a perplexing complex when faced with something like this pandemic

The photos of “empty New York” do not tell the full story. My neighborhood has been all but bustling as usual. Every time I go out I see people loading off buses, heading to the subway, going about their days mask or not. I’m not saying they’re all ignoring any orders to stay inside, I’m saying these are the people who don’t have that privilege. 

This is where they live—the last “affordable” neighborhoods in Manhattan, which also are the ones with the highest rates of infection on the island. Manhattan itself, the wealthiest of the boroughs, has the lowest infection rate. If the disparities weren’t plainly obvious, look at the ways the NYPD has already begun policing these different parts of the city. 

I’m no New Yorker. I’m a proud Jersey Girl at heart, and it is the greatest privilege to be able to live and be trapped in this city, even on the fringe. But I can’t help but question what it means to be a part of the New York community when the divides are this disparate. 

Now more than ever I wish I could forget all my troubles, forget all my cares and go downtown.

all that money

What are you going to do with all that money?

There’s been a lot of chatter about billionaires lately. Which itself is very funny to me because when I was a kid I couldn’t conceptualize what a billion dollars even is, and if I thought someone had that much money his face was on a Monopoly box. Now they’re this sketchy group of nerds that half the country is trying to take down a notch while the other half tears their clothes and gnashes their teeth at the thought. I’m not going to get too political here, but I have one question—what are you going to do with all that money?

It’s the question they ask lottery winners or Jeopardy champions on TV, and if you’re like me you probably have an idea of how you’d answer. That’s because if I were to be presented with a large sum of money, currently I would be saying “Well X amount will be going to my student loan servicers. Y amount will be going to my good friends at the credit card company, and with the $20 I have left I’ll probably get dinner.” That’s where I’m at, and that’s where millions of Americans are at.

But that’s just for a dollar amount that I can clearly allocate. $50,000 would be a life-changing amount of money to me today, but I can deduct line items from it and in a couple of days have completely depleted it. A billion dollars? I can imagine where I would get started, but after a week of house shopping and vacation planning I’d kind of be like okay now what? So when I see people like Bezos and Gates and all the others in the billionaires club with tens of billions of dollars to their name, I get itchy.

The point of money is to spend it, right? Because we designed our global society on this transfer of paper money for goods and services vital to life itself. Everything beyond what you need to survive is excess. And a little excess isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A lot of excess would not be that bad of a thing in my opinion, except when there are people who have nothing. It’s because of the state of wealth inequality and the sheer amount of poverty in the world that I really am wondering okay what are you going to do with all the money?

Bill Gates said in an interview last week, 

“Maybe I’m just too biased to think that if you create a company that’s super valuable, that at least some part of that you should be able to have — a little bit for consumption, and the balance to do philanthropic things.”

I think that’s one of the major points of contention over billionaires—people think “Bill Gates changed all of our lives with Microsoft, so he deserves all that money.” To that I say sure, credit where credit is due—but at what point is historical recognition, the eternal gratitude of humanity, and the sheer power of knowing you’re one of the brains behind modern technology not enough to compensate for your work? At a certain point the money that people like Gates accumulate becomes more than they could even spend on their own interests so why do they want to keep so much of it? They don’t carry their money around like a trophy. They’re not putting their literal cash on display for all to see. What is it for?

Money is not impressive. What do you get for being the richest person in the world? A pat on the back. Your name at the top of a list on a website or in a book? You will still be subject to the human condition. You can afford to have a better life than most people, and to these ultra-rich, I say go for it. You may have earned that at least! But the thing is—after you do all that, you still have so much left over.

I can understand one of these people saying “Well I don’t trust the government to appropriately use my billions,” as a reason to not want the tax. Because it’s a fact that governments can be corrupt and misuse tax dollars. But I also haven’t heard any of these guys offer up a better suggestion. Sure, Bill Gates does a lot of philanthropy. He even started a major initiative to encourage more wealthy folks to do the same, but it’s not enough. If you can change the world once with a computer, I don’t see why you can’t do it again with your money. 

There was this little period one time when I was a teenager where in the course of maybe two weeks my mom gave me $20 on two separate occasions, and both times I lost it. While I’ve rarely been in the position to be able to just “throw away” $20, much less $40, but losing this money was not detrimental. And to ration with my misfortune (or irresponsibility) I just reason that someone who needed it will find it. I was blessed to have the $20 in the first place, now hopefully someone will find it and maybe that will allow them to eat for the first time in a day. When you have enough for yourself, why can’t you take the gamble to see what someone else can do with your excess? Spread the wealth.