New Yorkers in Exile

Being a New York City resident, being a denizen of this town, is such an identity unto itself that the debate over what makes someone a "real New Yorker" has and will continue to rage ad infinitum. 

For me, however, you never feel more like a New Yorker then when you leave it. And you REALLY don't feel more like a New Yorker until you start living somewhere else.

I lived elsewhere for four years in college and I never identified more as a New Yorker than in those years where I was in exile from the city. And apparently this is a common phenomenon: many born-and-bred citizens of NYC who have moved elsewhere, who are "in exile" for reasons good and bad, have made it clear that they feel the same way.

Some famous exiles are people like Larry David, the brilliant comic-mind and co-creator of Seinfeld. If you watch him on Curb Your Enthusiam, you see the rich Brooklyn-native bumbling his way around Los Angeles, a New Yorker to his core. This reminds me, in a very different way, of what I wrote about the movie Heat, a great crime movie set in LA but starring two great New Yorkers (Pacino & De Niro) -- they never seemed more like New Yorkers to me than watching them in this movie where they are both in exile in a strange wild place, far from home.

It reminds me that  no "real New Yorker" ever leaves NYC -- you take the city with you, its ghosts and memories exist within you, its roots to your identity gets stronger, and it makes you New Yorker wherever you go.