New York's kiosks amaze me. Not much bigger than airplane bathrooms, they somehow hold everything one could want. They sell more candy than I knew existed and more magazines than one person could read in a week. And this is only one-quarter of the merchandise contained in these tiny boxes scattered along the streets of Manhattan. Whenever I walk by one of these vendors, I always stare a little longer than normal, looking back in amazement and often running into another pedestrian. Today, however, I saw such a vendor not on the street but in a gallery. It was a piece of art by Jack Dowd, which we saw in Tribute, an exhibit honoring New York.
These little carts are like a mini version of the city itself. There is so much in the small borough of Manhattan that I am often amazed and overwhelmed at the choice, variety, and accessibility of everything. E.B. White said it best: "A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines." For instance, yesterday I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish after attending the museum. If I were to try to do everything on this list while living in upstate New York, it would take me more than two days and probably cost me more than 20 dollars in gas. In Manhattan, I was able to accomplish everything in four hours all while staying within two miles of my apartment. In fact, the only transportation I used was my own two legs.
Manhattan is huge but not in a spatial sense. They only way that it holds everything is by being extremely vertical and dense. I live on the 32nd floor, I work on the "13th" floor (also known as the 14th floor) and I get to work by traveling beneath the ground. At Hamilton, the tallest building is probably the chapel spire, extending just above four floors. New York, symbolized by those crammed kiosks, is very different from the country life.
