Thanksgiving looms, but the weather refuses to get cold. The temperatures dipped little by little from August heat to a mild October chill, then stayed there. I find this unsettling.
This school year has found many ways to be strange to me. NYU is in the midst of a housing crunch. Dorms near “campus” are needed for incoming freshmen and upperclassmen. That means sophomores like myself get the shaft. Most of my friends were placed at a brand new dorm on Broome Street, far away from classes but at the interesting nexus of Chinatown, Little Italy, and Soho. (At this time, Soho is still vaguely interesting. Hard to believe now, I know.)
I did not land in Broome Street. I landed in 26th Street. This dorm was originally intended for the exclusive use of NYU’s dental students. Out of necessity, it has been drafted into the plan for dealing with the overflow of non-dental students. This arrangement that pleases no one.
The dental dorm is a charmless Brutalist slab near First Avenue, a few short steps from Bellevue, New York’s biggest and oldest public hospital. This proximity makes for some lively nearby foot traffic, particularly in the wee hours on the weekends. And Bellevue is not my only interesting neighbor. One day I come home from classes, turn on the news, and see Ti-Hua Chang (the victim of all of NBC-4 News’ thankless tasks) reporting on an incident at a methadone clinic down the block on Second Avenue. I had no idea there was a methadone clinic nearby, because methadone clinics rarely put up shingles outside their front doors. Go one block north and you find the Straus Houses, the last projects on the east side between here and Harlem.
All my friends get cannolis and dim sum, and I get Manhattan’s last crummy neighborhood. It isn’t a dangerous neighborhood, just crummy. Unscrubbed, down in the mouth, just this side of hopeless. The architecture is so ugly that anyone who lives in it can’t help but feel they’d been dumped here. Everyone I see on the street looks unhappy to be where they are, be they medical student or methadone enthusiast. Even in this disturbingly warm November, it always seems gray here. At least I will only be here for one school year. Others don’t have the luxury of coming and going with the semesters.