New York Grit is Art
When it comes to New York everyone is all very much in love with the idea of being in love with New York. Lets face it, it seems like a very cool place to 'like', a very absolutely funky sort of thing to say "I love New York"....Oh and to have secret spot all of your very own, to know it so well you can list them. Indeed with Sex in the City carefully ground into us and all those publications telling us its cool, well who wouldnt think it was this covetable thing?
Indeed, the fact that it is meant to be so very cool makes me rather in love with the idea of not finding it ever so cool. However in its crazy, unfriendly, greedy, hot pot routine, New York is very much a rather admirable thing.
When art is about anything you want it to be, a dirty brick or a painting the artist sweated & died for, for me New York is art. Its mess and its imperfections. The coldness and I float about on some mission or rather, charging in fact, about soaking it in as I go. The last thing I would want would be for a local to actually recognize me as an ugly sad tourist....to spot me loving their grimy streets and toothless grins, or worse, cooing at the Empire state. Which in fact does make me coo, just a little bit. 
Emily Grice
New York City Feb 2011
