We will be in Georgia 3 full years this June. We moved here for the house you can buy in the suburbs with grass and trees and a yard, the quality public schools, the safety and the milder winters. We did get all that, but with a price. I sometimes lament the fact that in exchange for all the benefit this suburb offers my kids won’t get to grow up in place that is worthy of their being defined by. I watch folks in our subdivision rocking front license plate covers that shout out our neighborhood and just shake my head. That’s one of my fears. This place cannot be allowed to define my children. They cannot strive to want a license plate of a homogenized suburb to define them like so many of the people around us whose primary goal is to blend in by acting and looking as much like the next person as humanly possible. No. Not for mine.
Judgmental much? Indeed. But understand, New Yorkers are insanely proud and territorial animals. Any kid from Uptown to Coney Island can tell you why their 12-48 sq block hood is the greatest in the known universe. And any New Yorker worth his bones can tell you why NYC > anywhere else on the planet. These things are fact. From pizza to haute cuisine, hip-hop to punk rock, graffiti to MOMA, Denzel to DiNiro to Old Timers Day in El Barrio. NYC is the fount from which all great things flow. And if you’re still talking you might just get mushed with Yankees Baseball.
Me, I’m from the single most shout out hood in hip-hop history. While I’ve cleaned up well and graduated to these affluent suburbs for the betterment of my children you can take the kid out of the hood but can never take the hood out of the kid.
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