Things we've learned from New York with 'Girls'
"You're from New York, so you're already naturally interesting," Hannah (Lena Dunham) told herself in season one of Girls . Although she had not been born there, but in East Lansing, Mich. for her as for many Americans (and some citizens of the rest of the world), New York always meant to be very cool, the coolest.
“If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere”, New Yorkers or aspiring New Yorkers are often said to be, and that's what Hannah believes: it's the only city where she could become “ONE voice of ONE generation”.
Now that the sixth and final season is here (oh no!), Will she manage to become the successful writer she wanted to be? Whether she succeeds or not, in these six years, Girls It has shown us a New York that we did not know and had nothing to do with the glamor that another group of women, Carrie Bradshaw & Co., discovered for us more than a decade ago.
There's another New York outside of the 'Sex and the City' halo
** BROOKLYN EXISTS **
Ok, maybe we already knew that. But sex in new york told us that New York began and ended in Manhattan and to think of Brooklyn was to think of Mordor, Girls discovered that Brooklyn was the new Manhattan. The neighborhood in which to live and enjoy, and not only if you are a millennial wanting to take on the world, but without a penny to buy even the crumbs. Besides, Brooklyn held many surprises.
Two girls with the Williamsburg Bridge behind
THERE IS LIFE BEYOND WILLIAMSBURG, HIPSTERS
Hi Greenpoint. What came before: Girls or the Greenpoint boom? It's hard to say. The success of the Lena Dunham series almost paralleled the discovery of Greenpoint for the bored hipsters of Williamsburg and even the boredom of the word and the hipster concept . Hannah lives in Greenpoint, the Polish neighborhood north of Brooklyn, with slightly cheaper houses (at least five years ago), cool bars in old industrial buildings, cool restaurants and views of Manhattan.
Greenpoint's Grumpy Cafe
**HOLIDAYS ARE IN BUSHWICK**
The other Brooklyn neighborhood that the series discovered for us. Cooler even than Greenpoint, so cool that when you arrive, you don't understand why it is. But like Jessa, we believe that “The best party in the world is always the next one” , so, just for that, it is worth getting lost among the old factories and the graffiti of the neighborhood in which it is Roberta's (another discovery of Girls : quality pizza) and find that warehouse where you will have the best party of your life… until the next one comes.
Roberta's, the best pizza (and with a garden)
**BE CAREFUL WITH SLEEPING IN THE METRO AT NIGHT**
They say you're not a real New Yorker until you fall asleep. You've never been on the subway one night trying to get home after a good party or one with a traumatic ending, like the one Hannah comes to at the end of the first season. Sad and alone, she got on a train from the F-line , she snuggled in her sadness and woke up in Coney Island : the southernmost tip of Brooklyn (a little over an hour's drive from her house in Greenpoint).
Oh, subway anecdotes...
**IN NEW YORK YOU DON'T GO TO THE MOVIES, BUT TO EXPERIMENTAL THEATERS AND PERFORMANCES (THE RAREER, THE BETTER) **
From the interpretation of the terrible murder of kitty genovese , a 28-year-old woman who was murdered outside her apartment in Queens without her neighbors doing anything about it in 1964. A terrible and very real Rear window. To strange tours of the city, unclassifiable exhibitions, and insufferable concerts in inhuman bars. Hannah's New York is nowhere near the Metropolitan Opera, or Broadway... Well, just because of Adam's success as an actor.
Yes, Hannah also attended a Kitty Genovese crime play.
HIPSTERS ARE EVIL
They are to blame for gentrification and turning New York into a succession of cute coffees. “New York is dead” , as Ray's partner says in one of his two cafes in town, where Hannah worked for a while. Y Shoshanna has the great idea: turn Ray's into the anti-hipster bar. "The time has come to sell coffee to people with jobs." Bravo!
The anti-hipster hipster cafe
NEW YORK WILL ALWAYS BE COOL, BUT YOU HAVE TO GO OUT FROM TIME TO TIME
It is part of the life of every New Yorker: escaping from the city and discovering with surprise what they call nature ( beyond central park ) . Those getaways include upstate weekends in little cabins on the mountain to visit antique shops (as Hannah and Marnie do in season six), or even going to Montauk , even if the beach gives you allergies.
Oh, the fresh air... out of Central Park
"NEW YORKERS ARE DEFINED BY WHAT THEY HATE"
It is the great phrase of the beginning of the sixth season of Girls. Hannah says it, of course, in one of those getaways from New York: sitting on the beach in Montauk, at sunset, she discovers that “it is easier to love than to hate”, as her surfer flirt (Riz Ahmed) calls her.
Cocktail in Montauk
IN NEW YORK EVERYTHING REVOLVES AROUND YOU AND YOUR NETWORKING
Hannah isn't the only selfish person in New York. She's a trend of the city . To achieve that success for which they move there, they have to think more about themselves and that all the relationships they make can have an end to that success, or can be a means to achieve it. Everything you do, you will “for the story” . That's why Hannah spends her life meeting people who, most of the time, won't help her at all. "[All my friends in NYC] are so busy pursuing success and defining themselves that they don't know how to experience pleasure," says Hannah in this last season, in that sunset.
Follow @irenecrespo\_
Everything you do, you will do "for the story"