New York City

La mejor descripción de Nueva York que he leido hasta ahora, sacada del libro "American on Purpose: the improbable adventures of an unlikely patriot", de Craig Ferguson. El tipo es un presentador en la televisión americana, un tipo "Buenafuente" aunque las comparaciones son odiosas, y en este caso Buenafuente es el que sale peor parado. La cuestión es que escribió un libro en el que explica por qué emigró de Escocia a América, como dejó su adicción a las drogas y el alcohol y como se convirtió en el presentador del Late Show que presenta en la actualidad. Parece simple, el típico "libro de famoso" que no aporta mucho, pero no lo es. Es divertido de leer, emocionante, sincero, y además está bien escrito. Y entre las buenas cosas del libro está esta descripción de la primera vez que el autor visitó Nueva York, cuando era un adolescente. Ahí la dejo:

Now that... that was love at first sight. I loved it then and I love it still. Even now, overloaded with sanitized bullshit Trump glass towers and condo-yuppie pseudoculture, it is still a complete mindfuck. As a Scottish schoolboy that first time, New York City was the Big Rock Candy Mountain. It was smoggy, bright-hot, filthy and wonderful. It was Disneyland, Oz and fucking Jupiter. It was noise and smell and lights and people looking like they were in a movie. Fat cabdrivers chewing wet cigars and talking about the exotic sport of baseball, unbelievably sexy women in outfits that Scottish girls would not have dared to wear even on a carnival float. Individuals wearing colors I had only ever seen on soccer uniforms or sectarian parades. The people themselves were different colors. Black people, brown people. (...) We took the elevator to the eighty-six floor of the Empire State Building and looked across Manhattan. North to Harlem, east to the river and all the airplanes landing and taking off in Queens, west to the Hudson and south to the colossal new World Trade Center towers.

We took a ferry to Liberty Island and climbed to the head of the statue. (...) We stood in Liberty's crown and looked out over the harbor, as the guide droned on through the heat about the poor and unwashed masses yearning to be free.

I made a promise to myself and I told my dad.

"One day I'm gonna liv in New York, DA"

He nodded and did that half-smile thing of his, but he believed me.