Now those of us who have been to Paris will know that images and songs are no substitute for the real thing, but I can see what the author was trying to say. Because I think that the same has always been true for me, only with New York.
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| Photo credit: Melissa Ryan (C) |
On some level I think I have always known about New York. When I was little, it was THE big city. It had a lot of yellow taxis and school buses, and tall grey buildings. It was Sesame Street.
As I got older, and watched more TV and read more books, I learned that New York was where all the businessmen wore suits, and all the homeless people were drug addicts, and people would kill you on the subway. There was always a traffic jam, the cops wore navy blue uniforms, and the mobsters always shrugged and said, "Fuggedaboudit".
Then there was "Sex and the City", every "Law & Order" franchise, and so many movies (old and new) that I can't even count them. I soaked it all up.
But if I had to pick where the love-affair with New York really began, it would have to be when I first watched "Breakfast At Tiffany's". I know, it's totally cliche. I never got tired of watching the movie, as much for Audrey's glamorous wardrobe as for the dashing George Peppard, and their romps around the big, yellow taxi-filled city. And it was many years until I realised - and ultimately read - the novella by Truman Capote. The movie and the book were so different, but that just added to the mystique of this town for me.
And when I finally moved here at the beginning of 2011, and if ever I found myself lonely (eek!) and at a loose end, I also wound up at "Tiffany & Co". Never with a danish and coffee of course; rather, I'd usually just head for the 4th floor and browse the sterling silver collection (anything more expensive would just be torture). I can't tell you the number of Saturday mornings or late Sunday afternoons that the Tiffany's flagship store on Fifth Avenue was my hang-out; a definite happy place. Tiffany's was, and remains, one of the few things that lived up to my early hype.
And if you can't afford jewelry, a telephone dialer, or an engraved Crackerjack prize, you can always read about places like Tiffany's. I recently finished a wonderful book called "Clara and Mr. Tiffany", by Susan Vreeland.
It's a true story that is set in New York near the turn of the 20th Century and opens with the frenzy of Louis Comfort Tiffany's stunning contribution to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair: his innovative stained glass window Chapel display. Louis Tiffany's father actually ran the jewelry side of Tiffany's at the time, so this story focuses on the company's glasswork business, and its heroine is the head of Tiffany's women's division, a strong and creative woman named Clara Driscoll. The story takes place at a time when Tiffany refused to hire married women, and any women who wanted to get married while working at Tiffany's had to resign their jobs. Clara ultimately has to decide whether she most values "the professional world of her hands, or the personal world of her heart". The story isn't all weepy relationship stuff, it's also a great insight into early New York - the opening of the Flatiron Building, stories about the Lower East Side immigrant slums and tenements, contrasted with the sheer excess and flamboyance of the Tiffany family mansions. Clara and her team produced the sort of stained-glass lamps that I absolutely covet, but have never owned. At least I got to see them at the Art Institute of Chicago a few months ago, and they have also been on display at the New York Historical Society and the Museum of the City of New York.
And so while I may not be Holly Golightly or Carrie Bradshaw or Detective Benson, I still find it gratifying to know that in New York, life very often imitates art.
