‘The city’ only refers to *one* city, and that’s NYC, baby
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
These are the words that pass through my head when my peers say they are visiting “The City.”
I grew up about two hours from New York (keeping in mind that traffic means that everywhere is an hour from The City), and my parents were both New Yorkers immersed in the art and punk culture of the nineties. Suffice it to say, I love New York (I never did buy the tourist t-shirt though).
When I was very young, we would go every year to see Santa at Macy’s a la Miracle on 34th Street, go to dinner, and see a Broadway show. I am beyond aware that this was an incredible privilege; but no matter why I was in the city, even if it was just for my father’s work or to go to the airport, I was definitively unequivocally happy.
The quote that I began with, as you may know, is part of the poem written on the Statue of Liberty. My father has quoted it countless times to me while in New York, so I never lost sight of that despite the glitz and the glamor and magic of it all, it is still the very much alive, beating heart of the cultural melting pot that we have here in the United States.
New York is “the golden door” to the American Dream; it will always be more looking up to my Jewish ancestors at Ellis Island, getting on the subway with a mariachi band, and going to Brooklyn for Italian food from families who could not be prouder of their restaurant; than it will ever be Times Square, the Met Gala, or overpriced sushi.
We come back to the issue at hand: the reason why you are reading this piece. I have qualms with the definite article. Throughout this piece I have shortened New York to “The City” capitalized because it is deserving of it.
Occasionally, since I have moved, I hear the words “The City” only to realize (with, I’ll admit, a great deal of contempt) that the speaker means Boston. Now, I say this with no disdain towards Boston, It is a lovely city that I have only had good experiences in, but there is no way I would use the definite article. I asked Fran Lebowitz, a popular, sarcastically dry writer and New York commentator for her thoughts, and her quote says it all: “Boston is a city.”
When I first proposed this piece, a number of my friends told me I sounded elitist and pretentious, that I was insinuating that New York is “the best” city and that all else is a sad comparison. This is not what I am trying to convey.
I am not here to pass judgment on what I think the best city is, and even if I were, I’m not even sure I would settle on New York, as everyone values different things. I am not here to tell all of Massachusetts that they are wrong or ignorant. New York is not necessarily the best city, but it is The City, the heart of American urban culture.
Phrases like Chinatown and Little Italy were popularized there (although, for clarity, Chinatown was a name first used in San Francisco.) It symbolizes America’s history of being a melting pot of immigrants, so much of city culture was made in New York.
Hip-hop was invented by the Black community of the Bronx, a music and culture that has gone on to reach across the entire country, if not the world. Broadway has been the home of the most notable theater in history for centuries; I would argue it is the most famous theater destination since Shakespeare’s globe.
As home to 8.336 million people as of 2022 and just about every culture on the globe, New York has shaped all of American culture as an iconography of America that everyone recognizes.
So, is New York my favorite city?
Yes, it is. Do I think it’s the objective best city? Of course not.
But as the iconography of The American City and the culture and connotations that come from that title, no place will ever beat New York, giving it the rightful claim to the definite article.
