1980

New York, New York. The city so nice, they named it twice. According to HansMorris, "Life in New York is exactly like life in all other American cities." Similarly, Emily LisbergerVitale asserts, "Life in New York is about the same as life everywhere." What do the rest of you think?

Hans states his case: "I have been married for 12 years, have had the same job [Smith Barney] for 17 years, I have a boy (age 9) and a girl (6), a dog, and a Ford Explorer. Our kids go to great schools, play hockey and ballet, take music lessons, etc. We live in a brownstone on the Upper East Side (like the Cosby show). My wife, Kate, stopped working [two summers ago] after 14 years on Wall Street....[A] typical weekend with the kids can include a lot of atypical things to do. This may include just fooling around in the park, or going to the museums, or Yankee Stadium. An unappreciated aspect of New York, however, is an unexpected small-town character, albeit with big-city institutions. For example, our son's hockey team, the Cyclones, played at the Rangers game between periods (since the Cyclones are the local mites team), and he also was in the children's choir of the Metropolitan Opera last season (since they need local kids to perform in many productions). These are not as big a deal as it sounds; they are local events for people who live here. My job is providing investment banking services to financial institutions, and I work with many Dartmouth graduates in our group, and—unfortunatelymany of our best competitors are Dartmouth classmates."

Emily writes of life in New York with her lawyer husband, Tom, and their two girls, ages 6 and 8: "[The girls] walk four blocks to school (I walk those four blocks about seven times a day!). I bicycle in Central Park, we rollerblade in Central Park or elsewhere. I have never been hit by a car on my bike or blades. I have, however, been sworn at, jerked-off in front of, made fun of. I play tennis on a regular basis, basically anywhere I can—Central Park, Long Island City, and a lot up in Maine. Last winter [1995] I started skiing again for the first time in eight years! We rented a condo at a ski area about three hours north of here with Alex Frank and his family."

Emily continues: "I have a small cottage industry going making hats, scarves, and a variety of other items. My hats and scarves are in a store in our neighborhood! I love shopping for fabric in the city. I have lots of favorite places, unknown to most, where I find all kinds of unusual fabrics, trims, buttons, etc. We try to explore the city and use its wealth of resources as much as we can. We venture to Manhattan's Chinatown frequently; our favorite park is Flushing Meadows/Corona Park; the girls get a kick out of riding the Roosevelt Island tram....Tom's office faces the path of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade."

Emily concluded that she "could go on forever about the city, the multitude of doctors (no such thing as family practice, or how about finding an orthopedist who works on more than one set of bones!), the convenience of having anything and everything delivered, the desperate need of so many people, the horrendous traffic...."

Convinced and ready to move to the Big Apple? In the words of Dorothy, "There's no place like home."

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