A new year is upon us. Although the new decade doesn’t technically start until 2011, we all know it starts now . . .
And all I can say is: Thank God whatever the 2000-2009 decade is over. At last. I was just thinking about waking up on Jan 1st, 2000, mildly disappointed that the Y2K didn’t happen, in any form, with absolutely no notion of what was to come . . .
City of strangers 
it’s over it’s over it’s over….
and to begin the new year, a question I have wanted to ask…
city of strangers – that’s from Company/ Sondheim, right?
one of my favorite songs, one of my favorite musicals…
Hi co,
Sorry about the delay in getting back – was away this weekend.
Alas, I have to disappoint – the title of this blog is not from any musical or song.
Rather, I thought it up when I was still in London a year and a half ago. I’d been away for over ten years and hardly recognized the city and wanted to do a blog to capture what was left below the ‘city of strangers’ London most definitely had become.
Unfortunately, I came back here a month or two later, bounced around between London, New York and Toronto for a year or so, then more or less settled back in NY last spring, the first time I’ve lived here full-time in six or seven years . . . And all this to and fro-ing could explain this blog’s erratic nature . . .
So I guess NY is the new ‘city of strangers’, and this blog is about me getting to know New York again.
I will have to look up the song/ musical though to find the reference. There is a novel that just came out called ‘city of strangers’ which I haven’t read.
Let’s hope for the best for the decade to come . . .
Tim
It’s a bit dated with the “call my service…” but even as a native this song feels like home to me. And I remember as a just kicked out of house – bumming around teenager feeling so lost in a city I grew up in – the ocean of people and the intense isolation. but then again… being 17 no matter where you are it feels like that.
Sondheim
COMPANY
Another Hundred People (my mistake on the title…)
Another hundred people just got off of the train
And came up through the ground,
While another hundred people just got off of the bus
And are looking around
At another hundred people who got off of the plane
And are looking at us
Who got off of the train
And the plane and the bus
Maybe yesterday.
It’s a city of strangers,
Some come to work, some to play.
A city of strangers,
Some come to stare, some to stay.
And every day
The ones who stay
Can find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks,
By the rusty fountains and the dusty trees with the battered barks,
And they walk together past the postered walls with the crude remarks.
And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never
know.
“Do I pick you up or do I meet you there or shall we let it go?”
“Did you get my message? ‘Cause I looked in vain.”
“Can we see each other Tuesday if it doesn’t rain?”
“Look, I’ll call you in the morning or my service will explain.”
And another hundred people just got off of the train.
It’s a city of strangers,
Some come to work, some to play.
A city of strangers,
Some come to stare, some to stay.
And every day
Some go away
Or they find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks,
By the rusty fountains and the dusty trees with the battered barks,
And they walk together past upholstered walls with the crude remarks.
And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never
know.
“Do I pick you up or do I meet you there or shall we let it go?”
“Did you get my message? ‘Cause I looked in vain.”
“Can we see each other Tuesday if it doesn’t rain?”
“Look, I’ll call you in the morning or my service will explain.”
And another hundred people just got off of the train.
CO – Thanks for the lyrics. Now I know. I think I’d heard of Sondheim, as part of the general cultural burble of 70’s NY (and America) I grew up with, once, twice, thrice removed.
Tried to find the song on youtube, but the closest I came was ‘The Best of Soundheim’‘Another Hundred People Just got off of the train’ comes in at 4’10”, though not for long . . .
Well, I can relate to being a teenager alone in the big city since I left home at fifteen or so. Smaller city, mind – Vancouver – but we’d just moved down from that little town I mentioned so at the time it seemed a very big city indeed. New York couldn’t have been an easy place to be a kicked out of the house 17 year old girl, not easy at all . . .
Best,
Tim