E.B.White's "Here is New York"

The oft-quoted thumbnail sketch of New York is, of course: “It’s a wonderful place, but I’d hate to live there.”

I have an idea that people from villages and small towns, people accustomed to the convenience and the friendliness of neighborhood over-the-fence living, are unaware that life in New York follows the neighborhood pattern.

The city is literally a composite of tens of thousands of tiny neighborhood units. There are, of course, the big districts and big units: Chelsea and Murry Hill and Gramercy (which are residential units), Harlem (a racial unit), Greenwich Village (a unit dedicated to the arts and other matters), and there is Radio City (a commercial development). . . and many other sections each of which has some distinguishing characteristic.

But the curious thing about New York is that each large geographical unit is composed of countless small neighborhoods.

Each neighborhood is virtually self-sufficient. Usually it is not more than two or three blocks long and a couple of blocks wide. Each area is a city within a city within a city. Thus, no matter where you live in New York, you will find within a block or two a grocery store, a barbershop, a newsstand and shoeshine shack, a dry cleaner, a laundry, a delicatessen (deli) (beer and sandwiches delivered at any hour to your door), a flower shop, a movie house, a radio-repair shop, a stationer, a haberdasher, a tailor, a drugstore, a garage, a tearoom, a saloon, a hardware store, a liquor store, a shoe-repair shop. Every block or two, in most residential sections of New York, is a little main street. A man starts for work in the morning and before he has gone two hundred yards he has completed half a dozen missions: bought a paper, left a pair of shoes to be soled, picked up a pack of cigarettes, ordered a bottle of whiskey to be dispatched in the opposite direction against his home-coming, and notified the dry cleaner that a pair of trousers awaits call. Homeward bound eight hours later, he buys a bunch of pussy willow, a light bulb, a drink, a shine -- all between the corner where he steps off the bus and his apartment. So complete is each neighborhood, and so strong the sense of neighborhood, that many a New Yorker spends a lifetime within the confines of an area smaller than a country village. Let him walk two blocks from his corner and he is in a strange land and will feel uneasy till he gets back. Here is New York by E.B.White 1949 (Pages 34-36)

***** The author’s idea about the simplified sketch of New York city is that it is like an organization of villages and towns. People are familiar with the structure of their friendly and amenity neighborhood that they are unaware that the New York city also follows the pattern that they accustomed. There are big districts, city skyscrapers and sections that shows the city’s characteristics. The city is composed into self-sufficient neighborhoods. The author used an example of a man’s operation to show how people adapt this town life. He could buy and get things he wanted in a series mission in their daily lives. It points out that people are satisfied of what their community provides. And it also points out that the neighborhood’s structure is very convenient and abundant. At the end, the author idea is that citizens of the sophisticated and enormous countries actually get used to the life in small neighborhoods that they spend their lifetime in a minor confine.