Motivation Factors

New York is a great place to feel the hurt of economic disparity. The difference between rich and poor is nowhere as evident as looking from the tall luxury high rises that populate the Manhattan skyline to the trash and lull-water in the gutters of Brooklyn.

Not to say that the streets of Manhattan are paved with gold, although it probably feels like that to some people, once they've reached a certain tax bracket. Nor is Brooklyn a poverty-stricken wasteland. Undoubtedly, there are places in Brooklyn that are pricier than Manhattan. When living in the middle class, though, it's easy to see how different the lives are of the very rich and the very poor. I share space with all of them.

When you live in a poorer area of town, though, you don't get the same kinds of privileges as the wealthy. When you enter into Manhattan, you're seen as something of an outcast. You don't fit in. You don't go from eating Jamaican Beef Patties at three in the morning to sipping martinis at the W Hotel the next night. Or do you? Some of us manage to straddle the economic barrier once in a while and take part in the simple pleasures that both sides offer.

Yet, in other arenas, you don't get the same kinds of opportunities in Brooklyn or the outer boroughs as you would in Manhattan. People don't offer the same niceites, the same novelties, or services. It's an attitude thing. And it's different from the Midwest, where the disparity is not so clear. Living area is much more spread out, and so the rich don't often see the poor, and vice versa. The middle class is instead much more prevalent, at least in places where I've lived.

After a long day of watching the Beijing Olympics and appropriately eating Chinese food, I thought it might be nice to run to a grocery store and pick up some ice cream to cap off my already disgusting and gratuitous calorie intake. Buying ice cream at 9:00 on a Sunday night, an event that was regular for me in college, and would be easy to pull off anywhere else in the United States, proved to be a little more difficult now, since I live in poor town.

In the Midwest and other areas, too, 24-hour grocery stores are everywhere. It's not hard to find one. Where I live now, though, the closest grocery store to me closes at dark, apparently, forcing me to obtain my ice cream by other means. The only viable option left to me, save traveling hither and to a major grocery store several minutes away, was to check into a corner store, forcing me to pay for an ATM withdrawl and settle on my choice of ice cream. In the name of convenience, why can't I just get my ice cream when and where I want it? It's just not that easy any more.

For that kind of convenience, I'd have to live in Manhattan. It's much different living in Brooklyn. You have to allot time, money, and planning to getting the things you want. You can't just expect to find them, like you could in Manhattan. You just don't get the same things. You don't get the same kind of preferential treatment in Brooklyn as you would in Manhattan. instead of getting service, you get served.

Yesterday, for the first time since living here, I was deliberately called a "cracker". It didn't bother me, I actually thought it was kind of funny, but it's just one of those things that's an annoying reminder of where I live, and provides a little motivation for trying to get out of my current location and move closer into that tax bracket so envied by everyone who's not in it.