The layers of my New York
A multigenerational New York tale
I’ve always felt a profound sense of history wherever I am. Countless hours throughout my life were spent imagining the generations that passed through and those that are to come. Perhaps some credit goes to being a New Yorker. This city is the apex of different cultures being stacked endlessly into the most sumptuous layer cake that one could imagine.
I’m a fourth generation New Yorker. It feels strange to say, since much of Jewish identity is being taught that we have no home. There are many things in my life that make me feel as if I’m untethered to a path or identity, but home isn’t one of them. Even in my brief time on earth, I’ve seen how New York oscillates and shifts, and yet it is still home. I remember being a little girl on a walk with my parents and noticing a boutique bakery for dogs that was about to open. Yes, a bakery for dogs. Even then, I recognized the absurdity, but I didn’t understand the greater dynamic behind it. I continued to watch gentrification happen before my eyes. Soon enough, taxis were more willing to take me home from Manhattan. I saw the old timers in the neighborhood move on, selling their homes to younger, more affluent couples that wouldn’t even look me in the eye when I said hello. In college, I was told that my favorite restaurant in the neighborhood was closing. It was an incredible no-frills Dominican spot. None of us understood how they stayed in business, but their lease was finally up. I cried thinking about how that restaurant filled my soul with garlicky goodness whenever I was happy, sad, sick, lonely.
Just the other day, my father and I stepped into a bar for a cocktail right around the corner from where I grew up. It was très chic. There were stools bolted into the floors surrounding a refurbished bar with a copper countertop. The subway tiles on the ceilings helped round out its Prohibition era theme. 100 years earlier, it was my great-grandfather’s butcher shop. How strange to be sitting in this Prohibition era themed bar that was once a family business during the actual Prohibition. And we were now paying our rent in $17 cocktails.
I found myself trying to imagine what the shop looked like back in the day. The floors were stripped of any finish, worn with decades of use, revealing blackened thick planks. You could even see iron nails wedged deep into the the thick planks. I knew these were the same floors from the butcher shop. They were the same floors that my school-aged grandfather ran around on between meat deliveries. If those floors could talk…
When I went to school on the Lower East Side, I was wandering through the stomping grounds of my ancestors after they passed through Ellis Island. I always felt that my great-grandmother and I were existing in the same place, yet in different dimensions. My father would often joke about how she would call Rivington Street “Riv-INK-tin street,” and there I was walking down that very street, grabbing a cupcake from a bakery on my commute home from school. Everyday I would walk past Streit’s Matzo Factory, also on Riv-INK-tin Street. I’d peer into the window watching what seemed to be an endless conveyor belt of matzos. I don’t need to be the one to tell you that the building was leveled and transformed into luxury condos. But just when it feels like there is no turning back, one can smell the savory fragrance emanating from an almost ancient knish bakery. I can only imagine that same smell being a warm welcome on a frigid winter day back in 1922. Yona Schimmel’s bakery has been there since 1910. I can imagine it being one of the only constants on a rapidly changing Houston Street. It’s a neighborhood that has transformed massively, as most New York neighborhoods have, but the scattered gems of kosher pickles and smoked whitefish remain.
My mother often says “the only constant is change.” In fact, it should change. This city is living and breathing and needs to evolve with the times. At the heart of it, New York is a place that welcomes new beginnings, whether you’re coming from the Midwest or the Middle East. We may all have different perspectives, but we’ll always come together to make fun of our mayor. And most of all, we will always come together in times of crisis.
Thanks for reading, and if you’re in NYC, go visit Yona Schimmel’s for the best potato knish of your life.