“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”
- Tom Wolfe
So here's what's going down. Every time I go back home to Ohio I have people telling me that they are following my adventures in NYC on Facebook and that they just love seeing all the crazy stuff that we're doing. Because of this, I have decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to tell my story in not just pictures or status updates anymore but in actual words. I know, I know, I'm getting a little crazy here.
But honestly, I'm going to make my best attempt at making this a weekly (or daily, who knows) thing. I would very much appreciate it if everyone kept in mind that I am NOT a writer and this is the first time I've ever done anything like this. So please be nice. :)
I guess the best place to start is how I got here.
And by here, I mean Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Map time!
The red circle is Midtown Manhattan which is basically what everyone thinks of when they think of New York City. Times Square, Broadway, Grand Central and all that jazz are in that general area.
As you can see, we live quite far away from that area. In fact, it takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get there by subway because we live off the very last stop of the train.
But anyways, back to the story of how I got here. When I was a kid, I used to visit NYC with my family almost every summer and even at a young age I knew that I wanted to live here. I don't know why exactly, but I did and that has never left me.
Flash forward to 2009 and my senior year of high school. I applied to City College of New York and got in, visited and started to get ready to move. Then I got denied for loan after loan and it just seemed like it wasn't going to happen. And it didn't. I ended up being stuck in Ohio for three more years.
All I have to say about my first year at OSU-Mansfield is that I got all A's, never skipped a class and was very unhappy. However, the next year I started working in the shop at the theatre department and that changed my life. I worked on all of the shows and made some of my closest friends and it was exactly what I needed. During that time, I got the chance to stage manage and I found my true calling. I always knew that I was bossy and had been told that many times by my family but now I realized that I could be bossy AND get paid!
Now we come to 2012. I still wanted to get to New York and I knew that staying at OSU-Mansfield wasn't going to get me very far in a stage managing career. So I applied to New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn. This time, things fell into place and a very short amount of time later...
BOOM!
Living in New York City!
Almost a year later and I am still here. I have a finished a year of school with almost a 4.0 (still bitter) and I have just started working as ASM on Jesus Christ Superstar with a company here in Brooklyn which I am crazy excited about.
But still, every day there is something (or someone) interesting and new to look at and as lame as it sounds, I never get tired of just looking. My sister makes fun of me because when I get bored I will just walk and keep walking. One afternoon I ended up walking all of Central Park just because I was there. I'm sure that when you grow up seeing the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building every day, they don't mean anything to you. But when you grow up being taught that these are inspiring images of America, that notion doesn't just go away because you see them daily. Maybe I'm just a loser but it still blows my mind when I'm riding the train to my home and I get to see the Statue of Liberty in the harbor.
I mean, wouldn't this blow your mind if you got to see it every day on your commute?
Anyways, enough rambling for the evening! I promise that the next post will be more exciting! I just had to get down some basic info for this first one and from now on I can talk about some adventures.
May you have a world of wishes at your command,
Samantha C. Statham
