Mental View of New York

¶ … mental view of New York through words. It breaks down three aspects of New York by painting a mental picture of the skyline and the harbor, a homeless man, and a photo of Bergdorf's and ascribing New York characteristics to these three images.

New York Descriptive Essay

Massive, crowded, urban, gateway to America, the Big Apple, Gotham City, city of lost souls, and city of dreams; these are all words or phrases often used to describe New York. New York is the original melting pot and the first place that many see as they arrive in America. It has become an iconic image in the minds of many when thinking of America, the last stop for lost souls, and the epitome of excess and high living.

Standing on a rooftop overlooking the city, one sees mile after mile of skyscrapers. The architecture is as varied as the times in which the structures were built. The styles also reflect the various cultures of people who inhabit these buildings and the level of upkeep and maintenance points to the prosperity of the inhabitants. These buildings appear to be built on top of one another because they are so close together and the various heights and juxtaposition make the skyline look like a mountain range of building blocks. When viewed at twilight facing the harbor, one envisions the first immigrants making that first stop at Ellis Island, awaiting their chance at the land of opportunity and one can only imagine what the view from their position on Ellis Island must have been, how imposing, how magnificent, how daunting.

New York, the entrance to the American Dream for many can make or break the dreaming aspirant. As the song goes, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere…," is true for many who are striving for the best of life. Unfortunately, many don't make it. They fall through the cracks for various reasons and become homeless people on the streets of New York, a huge frightening place from their perspective. A city riddled with crime, throngs of strangers never acknowledging one another as walk the streets. Strangers always averting their eyes or staring straight ahead so as to avoid the look from the homeless guy in the wheelchair. How did he come to be this representative of the streets of New York? What is drugs, war, lost love, a lost career? Who knows, but he is now a rolling representative of the seedier side of New York and a representative of those whom can't make it there. Though filled with opportunity, it is also filled with people who missed the golden ring and slipped through the cracks, winding up living on the streets and begging for handouts to survive. This is the landscape that tourists are warned about and natives attempt to ignore by walking by them oblivious to their plight. This is not the celebrity singing cowboy street person who entertains, this is the homeless man in a wheelchair who represents man frailty and how close we all are to the streets. He is the New York that is hard to look at because if we look to closely we might find ourselves.