Gotta Love New Yorkers

New Yorkers are a such a diverse and crazy bunch that calling anyone the "quintessential" or "ultimate" New Yorker is a quixotic exercise in futility. If you live here, and certainly if you've lived here all or most of your life, you are a salt-of-the-earth New Yorker full stop. 

Yet many still try. Many still try to affix this adjective to some of our citizens.

The most famous example, at the moment, is Fran Lebowitz. I've been watching her hilarious if also very skewed show Pretend It's a City on Netflix (already blogged about it) and, while she's brilliant, Fran's NYC is that of a literary affluent type, a denizen of Manhattan and cocktail parties and cultural institutions. She's certainly a great New Yorker but not the ultimate New Yorker -- just one of a bunch.

Another ultimate New Yorker would be a guy liked Ricky Powell who recently died. He spent years as a photographer for bands in the city, most famously for the Beastie Boys in the late 1980s and early 1990s as they were rising to fame. He knew Warhol, Basquiat, even a young Cindy Crawford, and he photographed them all. He was a New Yorker of the streets and downtown and the funky culture -- another one of the bunch.

But perhaps the ultimate of ultimate of New Yorkers are the mayors. For better or worse they define the id and intellect of the city -- at least for their times in office. Right now a whole bunch of New Yorkers are running for the job and, starting on January 1, 2022, one of them will wear the mantel of defining the city and trying to manage it. You've gotta love anyone whole looks at a city that's bigger and richer and more complex than most countries and says, "Yeah, let me run it!" 

See? New Yorkers are so varied, so all over the place, so different, than no one person can embody the city. But hey, it's fun to try!