Living on the NYC Fringe

The basic definition of "fringe" is the border or outer part of an area or group. It's the tassles around the rug, the frame around the picture, the person or thing at the very edge of the photgraph, the inside of something that's almost outside, someone or something peripheral to the main host, the mainsteam.

It's being a part of something -- but barely. 

In New York City, all of us probably feel like we're living on the fringe, whether it's our neighborhood, our communities, or our jobs. To live in NYC is to live on the edge, so of speak.

This is a city of, by, and for the fringe.

But when you read these two stories you realize how some people in this city truly live at the fringes of it, both literally and figuratively. 

First, this big story about the residents of Broad Channel, a neighborhood of islands in Jaimaca Bay -- between JFK airport and Howard Beach on one side and the Rockaway Peninsula on the other -- where people live in houses on the water, get around in boats, and are devoted to a quiet, simply life while peering across at the skyline of Manhattan, inhabiting a different world. The people of Broad Channel love and are completely devoted to it but climate change is challenging life there. The water levels are rising along with more frequent and nasty storms, and life in Broad Channel is under threat. How people are adapting to it in this "fringe" of NYC will tell us a lot about how much climate change threatens not just Broad  Channel but the city as a whole.  

Second, this fascinating profile of a young playwrite who is so devoted to his craft that he is literally staging plays in people's living rooms. In a city teaming with talented and creative people, who crave an audience for their work, this writer -- who is well outside of the mainstream of NYC theater -- is willing to go to the people, hunt for an audience. Instead of waiting for them to come to him, he goes to them. It's arguably a "fringy" way of being a playwrite but it shows you how far some people will go for the love of their art.

So I admire and respect those New Yorkers who live and work on the fringe of the city -- in some ways, this is a fringe blog, a weird outlier of the NYC media world. And I think that's cool!