PopcornJackTerry

My oldest nephew is going to be a senior in High School this fall. As such, ever since I moved back here in April, there has been a steady stream of mail with his name on it from pretty much every college that has a charter. (Some of them are smart enough to know who is actually going to be buttering their bread and they address their mailings to his parents.) Most days there is at least one from a school that one of my friends went to or I happen to familiar with so I give it a thumbs up for him, but honestly i don’t envy the position he is in right now.

When i was a kid there was no question: I was going to college, period. A four year degree was exalted as the ticket to the promised land. When my friends and I talked it wasn’t “if” but “which one”. Today’s world is seemingly a far cry from all of that, with many people saying there are better ways to spend your time and money than pursuing a bachelor’s degree, since they especially come with no guarantee of employment while saddling you with insurmountable debt.

A couple of factual notes before I continue. Fact one is that 76% of people who report having student loan debt owe $20,000 or less and not the six figures the media would like you to believe it is. Yes, 20k is still a lot of money, but for comparison sake my initial debt was $15,000 twenty one years ago and that was graduating early. In other words, the rate of debt has not necessarily been growing even as fast as tuition increases have been. Fact two is that even after paying off all of the costs of attending a four year school, that college graduate will still have earned a half a million more in their lifetime than someone without a degree.

Of course all that being said I wouldn’t suggest that anyone who doesn’t know what they want to go to school for should enroll in a four year school.That’s the boat my nephew is in. He’s not sure what he wants to be when he grows up, so how can he begin to differentiate between all of the information he’s getting.

I had just the opposite problem. I knew exactly where I wanted to go to school, and I even knew what school I wanted to go, even if I was too dumb to realize it right away. I knew that NYU was in the heart of New York City and that was the place to be. I also remember telling at least one friend the following: “NYU is my first choice, but I’ve been hearing about this Tisch School of the Arts which is somewhere in New York, so maybe I’ll check that out.” The dumbness factor comes in when I was told that Tisch School of the Arts was the fine arts college at NYU. Once that was made clear to me, that was it. I applied early decision, and the rest is history.

It’s a vastly different school now than it was when I first showed up there 24 years ago, and I’m not just referring to the astronomical price tag it carries with it. As a whole the university was primarily a commuter school with the majority of students adults who were taking continuing ed classes. The most noteworthy programs were the Stern Business School and Tisch. Back then if you were an acting student you had one of five studio programs to choose from. (That was part of the allure for me. Two days a week were academics on campus. The other three day were acting classes conducted at one of the major acting studios in the city.) Now there is something like fourteen different programs, and the acceptance rate has gone from something like 60% when I was a student to down around 10% or less.

Of course, the city was changing too. Back then we walked down 42nd street to laugh at the titles on the movie marquis: “Shaving Ryan’s Privates” and “Romancing the Bone” were two of the more clever ones. Now there are still movie theaters, but instead of four or five dingy theaters showing XXX double features, there is a 20 screen multiplex showing conventional movies. And if you can’t find what you want to watch there, just cross the street. That multiplex boasts 25 screens. Back then you could chase a cheap rent in almost any neighborhood if your persistent and a little lucky. Now, even the places in the outer boroughs that were affordable have been priced out. Money makes the world go around, money changes everything and money makes the decisions.

Right around the corner from my first dorm (10th St & Broadway) there was the St. Mark’s Church. I knew about it not because for any religious reasons but because there was a theater there on the second floor. That is, however, the extent of my knowledge about the place. I never once set foot in there. This isn’t to say that I didn’t go and see theater in some funky, out of the way, is this even really a performance space? type of places. Even did a show or two in places like that. What makes this place particular is the theater group that was there, starting at the same time I was finishing up my first year, 1991.

By now if any of my college friends are reading this they are saying “What? You mean you never saw any of Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric shows?!?” In fact, if I had to bet money on who might be the first to publicly say something to that extent, I’d go with a Negroni-drinking lawyer friend of mine in L.A. Richard Foreman and his troupe did experimental theater that not just pushed boundaries but acted as if they never existed in the first place. It was confrontational, it was unconventional, it was political and, from what some of my friends who went and saw any of it, it was often obtuse to the point of nonsensical.

Of course that’s only what some friends said. the others told me it was the greatest theater they had ever seen, changed their lives, confirmed their decision to go into theater, renewed their faith. More power to them. Even though it wasn’t my cup of tea, however, it was important that it was there, at least for what it stood for in general.

In the “Love it or hate it” battle that defines everyone in this county (as in you may be ambivalent about other things but when it comes to NYC, you either love it or you hate it. No in between.) people in the love it camp will point out that it is always an exciting place to be. There is always an energy, an excitement and you can always count on the next big thing coming from NYC. It’s been that way for decades if not centuries and it certainly was that way in the early 90’s. There were of course signs of gentrification already back then. in 1993, crossing 96th street on the West Side was almost unheard of, unless you were in a cab going directly to Columbia. By 1997 I was living at 105 and Amsterdam. Still there was that element, that truthiness that let you know you were still in New York Fucking City.

To say I don’t think it’s like that anymore is suspect on many levels. First of all, I’m twice the age I was when I graduated and 10 years older than I was even the last time I lived there. What is going to earth shattering to me now isn’t the same thing that used to rock my world then. The next big thing comes from the youth, and my nephew is far closer to that demographic than I am, and I slip further from it every day. There is also the fact that when I say “New York City” i have always meant “Manhattan.” There are four other boroughs, and one of them is making a case that it has taken the crown, which seems right when you figure that Brooklyn is Kings County. Besides, like Mark Twain’s death, so many things can be greatly exaggerated by the media. The same people that want you to think everyone has student debt up to their eye-balls want you to see the world their way. Just because it’s not reported on doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Some of that comes from the fact that I still get my information from traditional sources. The whole impetus for writing this blog came from an article in the New York Times, which gets delivered every day to my brother’s house here on the edge of civilization. The article was about the theater space at the Church of St. Marks and how, after 50 years of being a performance and workshop space for theater, it too fell victim to high cost of doing business and the theater company left. One silver lining in it is that at least they didn’t go corporate. The New York Theater Ballet took the space over.

Somewhere in all of this rambling there was supposed to be a point, and I think that point is that I miss NYC. (That, and I don’t want to apply for college.) I have to be careful with that longing, however. Am I missing it because it’s where I really want to be, or only because, as I sit here in my brother’s attic bedroom starting a new career and licking my wounds, I go all the way back there to look at where the two roads diverged in my wood, and the one I took has made all the difference and left me where I am today?

Funny enough I haven’t seen any mailings from NYU for my nephew. Maybe they expect him to be as good about paying off his loans as his uncle has been. (That was the joke I wrote yesterday. Today, right before I came upstairs to finish editing this, I checked the mail. Guess what was in there.)

Soundtrack time. I had a couple of different choices in my head, but in the end I’m going to go with my first option. If you asked me who I most identified as the voice of New York, I would pick this guy. The first verse really speaks to me and where I’m at. (The rest of it good as well, if slightly more typical of his style.) Here it is. Enjoy.