Author Archives: Philip Shteyngrob

I volunteer my time to help coach the unofficial hockey team of the high school I used to attend. I await further questions.

There are two sides to New York City: the side that tourists and outsiders see when they visit New York and the side that is only visible to those who live there. However, to see that side of New York not seen by tourists one must not only live in New York but also be a part of the city and experience it on a daily basis. To see the real New York is a feeling only rivaled by being a part of it, a feeling of exhilaration and elation.

New York City has always been my hometown and I’ve always felt pride when I introduced myself as a New Yorker. Whenever I met someone who lived Upstate and introduced themselves as a New Yorker, I always thought, “That’s not the real New York, you practically live in Canada” and sometimes said so aloud. And yet, I can now see that for a majority of my life, I was not a true New Yorker.

I was born in Coney Island Hospital on October 13, 1993 and lived in Sheepshead Bay until I was eight years old. In 2001 I moved the Brighton Beach, where I still live today. Occasionally I would venture out of Brooklyn with my parents for one occasion or another, or go on a school trip to Manhattan, but I mainly stayed in Brooklyn. My elementary school and middle school were fairly close to one another and I would follow the same routine of going to the same park after school day after day, month after month, year after year. Brooklyn was my whole world, and I did not imagine that New York was bigger than the neighborhood I grew up in. I did not see how much I was missing until I went to high school.

During high school I began venturing out of Brooklyn with my friends and exploring the rest of New York. We would walk across the Manhattan Bridge and wander around Manhattan for hours and walk around the different neighborhoods of Brooklyn until our legs couldn’t carry us any longer. Towards the end of high school we, my friends and I, began getting our licenses and with them we could see even more of New York: we ventured into Queens to see New York’s second Chinatown, and drove to Staten Island in the dead of winter to play some pond hockey. My eyes opened to what New York City truly was and how much it had to offer. I became a true New Yorker and finally saw the second side the city had to offer.

To be a tried and true New Yorker one must fully embrace the melting pot that is New York: go to Brighton Beach with the Russians, explore what remains of Little Italy in the midst of Chinatown, walk through the Korean neighborhoods in Flushing, go to the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan, etc… . A real New Yorker is one who can navigate the train system with the same ease as walking home from their local elementary school. To be a true New Yorker, one must experience all the boroughs of the City and always be on the look for new things to do.