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Ramones 53rd and 3rd Ramones
A new set begins: A few listener emails in response to the question: What first made you want to move to New York?
Comment: From Listener Maria: I've got no songs to suggest, but I thought I'd share that I haveoften thought that I moved to New York because of the years of SesameStreet as a kid.
Comment: From Listener Wendy: I started coming to NYC as a child during the late-1970s, when I was a weegirl. My Mom brought me to Chinatown on a regular basis, usually atnight. It was a particularly scummy time for NYC, and in Chinatown, itoften smelled terrible. I loved it. I liked the variety of darknessendemic to NYC - dark in a way the suburbs weren't, darker it seemed, butwith lots of twinkling, buzzing, flashing lights. But no sky. All thescenes in Taxi Driver where Travis Bickle is driving in his cab at night -that kind of night.I moved to Vermont when I was 17. I liked it there. But as I navigated myway through my 20s, every time I read anything about NYC, especiallyanything food-related - like Russ & Daughters, Chinatown, Murray's Cheese,The 2nd Avenue Deli (RIP), I got very nostalgic. I moved here for a lot ofreasons. The final reason that sent me and the U-Haul here was theknowledge that something bigger than myself, bigger than Vermont, waswaiting for me here.And now I'm the Cheese Snob, taking over the world of cheese, in Manhattanand beyond. I moved here because it was the right thing to do. But that Channel 9Million Dollar Movie thing is pretty awesome, now that you mention it.
Comment: From Listener Jason: Another thing that attracted me to NYC was News 4 New York, especiallytheir coverage of the West Village Halloween Parade at the end of theusual 11 o'clock broadcast on Halloween. It was the creepiest thing Ihad ever seen, especially being from the suburbs, but it wasincredibly attractive as being the place where people were having funand could do anything they want - bigger, rougher, and scarier thanever - and all at the same time being in as rough and scaray a city as itwas in the early 80s.
Comment: From Listener Johnny: I think of it often, it has a yellow banana on the cover: The VelvetUnderground's first album was a great advertisment for me to move to NYCback in 1984. I wanted Femme Fatale to break my heart. I wanted to actually SEEwhat the poor girl would wear [to] all tomorrows parties. I wanted to wear tightblack jeans and pointy boots and be an artist. Just like that.Simple.As far as entering the city if you come down the major degan (95?) and you seethe confluence of bridges, five or seven, the harlem river parkway connnectinglater to the GW bridge, there is what looks like a Roman aquaduct, even.. Wheredo all those bridges lead, no one knows for sure.. but I never get tired of thatfeeling of passing under them on the way to the island of Manhattan...
Comment: From Listener Rebecca: Why did I move to New York? Because it was a groovy option, sort of like the Oz thing and the Million Dollar Movie thing, I guesswe get to know cities through the sweet lens of the movies; all of itpresented to you exactly as someone else sees New York full of musicand particular lead charcters that best exemplify New York and ofcourse, street scenes where lots is bound to be seen even by everydayfolk-- though this isn't the reason I moved, it was one of the reasonsthat deep down made it better to move here than to stay in buffalo:the last scene of Arthur where trashy Liza Minelli walked a verypathetic and drunk [Dudley Moore] down the steps of a church and they'relaughing and not looking all that together (like how other moviestried to make you think of New Yorkers as fashionable and quickwitted)then everything looked wider the way movies used to do at the end andthey drive away to the song 'When you get lost between the moon andNew York City' a song that always used to scare me because where thehell was between the moon and New York City? And also make me sadbecause it was obviously a love song but it was in a minor key?Maybe. Not sure.Either way, I liked that a lot, even as a little girl.
Comment: From Listener Steve: Movies [like]West Side Story, Midnight Cowboy, James Bond too, for some reason, probably the glam factor.Music [like] Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery and jazz in general, music recorded at Cafe a Go Golike Blues Project w/ Al Kooper, Lovin Spoonful w/ John Sebastian.
Comment: From Listener Andy: Spike Lee movies.
Comment: From Listener Jacob: I'd wanted to move to the city all my life, but I realized exactly why whilelistening to a late night radio show one night back in Maryland when I was inhigh school. The now defunct WDCU played a song which I have never heard sinceand which I've been unable to find despite having looked extensively, entitled'When You Leave New York You're Going Nowhere.' Any chance you've heard of it?The singer sounded a bit like Joe Williams.
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