On Monday, I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood instead of going to the gym on my lunch break. I work in a 'shiny' area of the city, full of high end retail stores. It's probably my favorite neighborhood of all with the crisp, clean smell that gently wafts from the doors of the high end shops, the artful ads, the smartly dressed business men and women walking in a streamline fashion.
It's not the preferred neighborhood of most people I know, though. You see, New York (or Manhattan specifically), is just a bunch of little neighborhoods squished together on one tiny little 34 square mile island. There are countless names - some of them familiar, like Harlem and Times Square, some of them better known to New Yorkers, such as Murray Hill and Tribeca, and even some yet that many New Yorker's wouldn't be able to locate on the map like Manhattan Valley or Turtle Bay. Each has a unique personality developed through the shops, the restaurants, the real estate prices, the inhabitants, and the entertainment, just like any other town. Except these are not towns - these are neighborhoods of sometimes only a few blocks. So, despite this being the 'big apple', there's nothing all that terrifying about moving here from a small town. You just need to find the neighborhood where you belong and make it yours. The rest of the island's neighborhoods are simply like neighboring towns - great to take advantage of and visit but not necessarily home.
I had started out with a point I had wanted to make, but I like this better. Let me just finish this off with a statistic, though, that I learned in my buying class last night:
The average 30 year old woman in Westchester County has 3.2 children.
The average 30 year old woman in Manhattan has 0.8 children.
Not surprising, but fascinating nonetheless.
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