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So I am going to start what will hopefully become an ongoing series here. My NY. What is it? It’s little slices of the town as I knew it and as I know it now. Not all change is for the better, not all for the worse. But change happens. And from the outside NY is NY is NY and everyone has their notions of how things work here, how life goes and what it looks and feels like. I’m sure I have thoughts about where you live that don’t add up, too.

To start I feel the need to talk about where I grew up. Specifically, I mean. I was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Now, right away a lot of you will assume something from that:

I come from a rich family.

Which is actually not true. My parents got in early, bought an apartment and dug in the trenches before the area was anything special. When I was born it was a decent place to be, but nothing fancy. It was showing signs of maybe moving in that direction, but only signs. It was, really, the Inwood of right this second. Which might mean nothing to a lot of people, and far too much to others. But I can’t think of a better way to put it. And besides, that isn’t when I wanna deal with it.

Growing up, the Upper West was a mixture of the rich and the not rich, the snooty and the uncaring. Though, really, if you want to sum up the neighborhood I grew up in in a single sentence here it is:

It was the only part of town, besides the West Village, that could support Star Magic.

And so what, you might, rightfully, ask?

Well Star Magic was a crappy little store that sold both New Age crystals and little science geekery devices. It was the Discovery Store of its time with prisms, glow-in-the-dark stars, astronaut ice cream, space shuttle toys… all of that crap. Except it also had quartz crystals and fantasy jewerly and that end of the crazy spectrum as well.

This was not a store that would ever do well unless it met one of two conditions: The first was being near a lot of students. Well, the West Village store was right by NYU (and by “right by NYU” I mean anywhere in the West Village, because NYU is a hydra, but that’s a different episode of My NY entierly). The Upper West store was, well, on the Upper West Side. That meant disposable income. It meant kids. It meant people who were hitting their 30s and wanted to pretend they were still 22. These are all groups of people that will spend endless hours in a store finding just the right top to buy (the one with the prism decal and then you could spin it under a lamp and… not that I’d know) that day. Because there was always another day and another kalidiscope.

Oh, and wait, don’t forget the crazy people! The New age wonks who wanted to turn their lives around with the use of power crystals. Look, maybe that all works. I don’t know. I just know that when middle age Jewish women who are sick of their husbands buy up crystals to make their lives easier it ends up with me seriously doubting the workablilty of the concept. That could be just me though.

Anyway. So the area could support this type of madness. It was residential, with some shopping scarttered around, mostly along Broadway and some along Columbus, and no porn to be found. Porn came in, replacing cowboy boots (I shit you not) and the neighborhood tried to get it zoned out. Because they were too good for it, or something.

The porn store put up a sign at one point, fighting for their life, which asked a simple question: “If no one wants us, how are we making the money to stay open here?” It wasn’t long after that they were left alone. You know, they had a point. But that was the Upper West. You were allowed to go get a bagel at 3am, but only if you were willing to discuss bagels for an hour with people in the store. Because there was this false sense of community there, which never really existed.

Now, I go back there and it’s all big stores and less life than it had. The thing is, it’s also more honest now. There is no hiding behind the crappy little store that sold floral print dresses that fourteen people liked enough to buy. Now there’s a GAP. And the people in the area can feel better about going to the GAP and ignoring the store thery ignored anyway. They don’t feel the need to tell everyone what a great little local store it was, and then never go there.

No, now they can be what they’ve become. Uncaring, pushy harpies hell-bent on being the Upper West Side, though no one is yet sure what the fuck that means outside of what I just said. Way to go! Go team them!

This is why I never hung out there, growing up. Not if I could help it, unless I was going to the Museam of Natural History, which was a block away. Sure, that broke some rules for me. But come on, dinosaurs! And sure we had a Fairway, and Citarella and all these fancy stores that didn’t matter at all. Not in the least, when you think about it. There wasn’t a sense of neighborhood there. Not outside my building, and there it was just a case of people knowing who the kid was. Taa-daa, over. That isn’t neighborhood. That’s just sad.

So yeah, that’s what I grew up in. I didn’t hang out there though. I didn’t stay there and I don’t like going back. But it shaped a lot of things, and it shaped a lot of outlooks.

NEXT on My NY: Bars.