Alex, a Japanese-American photography student at NYU, compares his quiet California childhood to New York's chaotic energy: heavy traffic, unreliable subways, constant street noise. He's obsessed with Brooklyn thrift stores where jeans run $5-$10 and jackets $15-$20, occasionally finding Dr. Martens marked 90% off.
Today I will have an interview with Alex. He is a photography major in New York University. So you spent your life at California, right? Before you entering the college. And how's like New York City compared to California?
Yeah, so in California, I spent like all of my childhood in like the suburbs. So, you know, quiet and slow. And New York is— wow, it's the I mean, never bored. That's like the main thing. I hate being bored, and in New York I never have to worry about that. Most of the time it's like— it's like rush hour traffic was a city, you know? Everybody is angry and everybody is in a rush.
And like, traffic is very heavy.
Yeah, traffic is heavy. And you know, and like, the subway is always late and it stinks. Man, if you ask a New Yorker why they love New York, they'll give you lots of reasons why you shouldn't like New York, and then they'll tell you that's why they like it. Like, I— New York is is busy and noisy and annoying and inconvenient, and I love that. I just, I love that. Something's going to happen to you, and so you don't have to even make a plan.
So, okay, that's kind of like, maybe you think like boring in California or something.
I mean, not always. I think that you can, you have to but you have to make a plan. You have to go do something to have fun. In New York, you can just kind of do anything and it becomes fun. Like, you could just— like, you go to a park in California, like, people are walking their dogs, very quiet, nothing's happening. If we went to Washington Square Park right now, you would see, you know, random people dancing and like, they're playing music. Yeah, music. And people are selling paintings and other illegal stuff. And sometimes there'll even be like naked people walking around, right? So it's very like— but like you don't have to— there's no plan. It's just— and something happens, you know?
Yeah, I think so.
There's something interesting at the park. There's a good band. There's food, whatever. So I feel like New York is too noisy. There's a trick. So if a window is facing the street, okay, very loud. But the buildings are all built in the blocks, right? And so half of the windows face out to the street and half of the windows face in to like the courtyard. Okay, so if you have your window facing in, then it's much quieter. So like my room, for example, faces in. So not very noisy. My roommate, on the other hand, he sleeps with his— his window is like on the street. So, you know, 2 in the morning, like, you know, comes, you know, going down the street, people, people, people, 2 in the morning. It's hard to sleep. Yeah, yeah. You get used to it. You wear earplugs if you have to, but I do fine.
So do you have like any like preferred place to do shopping in New York City?
Yeah, so, well, I mean, okay, I like to go thrifting, so like a secondhand. Uh, okay, okay, like what you're doing later with—
I don't want to pay so much.
Yeah, so it's, uh, somebody's like used clothes and they sell it to a store and then the store sells it back at a very low price. So, you know, like, um, like a jeans are $6 or $10.
Yeah, America, so like we pay like always, we have to pay like $15 for lunch or dinner in New York. So it's very cheap. Like pants are $6.
Yeah, so, or like, um, a jacket like this would be like $15 or $20. Or you can get sometimes, if you're really lucky, you'll find, um Dr. Martens. It's a kind of boot. It's very expensive. They're like $300 for boots. But sometimes you'll get lucky and you can find a pair in your size and it'll be like $50.
Really? Yeah.
So like 90% off or whatever, right? So that's really fun. It's fun to go. And the shelves are really stacked through, so you have to look through everything and try and find all this stuff. Oh, you buy this clothes This wasn't thrifted, but I have another one of these jackets that is thrifted. This was a present, but I promise I go— no, wait, all my jeans thrifted, they were $10 each. I have jackets and shirts and pants that are all thrifted. They're like $6, $5. One of my favorite jackets is a thrifted jacket. It's great because the quality is still good because it's like these products, they last forever. People don't want them, so they sell them for like—
yeah, anyway, I think it's good for like environment.
Yeah, very good for the environment.
And so where is the place to do like, uh, buy those thrift things?
Yeah, so the best places to go are out in Brooklyn, so you have to kind of go pretty far, uh, like from the middle of New York City, from like Times Square, like like half hour.
Oh, okay. Oh, it takes like 30 hours, uh, 30 minutes from, uh, Times Square.
Okay, so not bad. Uh, and yeah, then that's out in Brooklyn. There's also, there's some stores, there's actually, there's a couple thrift stores like right over there. Oh, but the thing about it, just the kind of general rule is that like if you're thrifting, if you're shopping in general for anything, if you're On Manhattan, you're gonna pay more and there's gonna be less selection because there's more people doing more shopping and the prices are high. So if you go to Brooklyn, it's cheaper. The stores aren't as nice, but they have more stuff.
I see. Okay.
