Author: Tyler Santiago

There are always changes going on around us whether it be the people around us or the neighborhood we grew up in and that we know of. Change is definitely happening constantly in New York. Every corner you turn you see construction happening, they’re either building new houses, building complexes, fixing up roads, or even adding new businesses but there is always something being changed here in new york. I live I New York and I see a lot of changes going on by my neighborhood like they’re building a new mall by my house and fixing up the roads on the belt parkway/southern state. There are a lot of things that use to be here when I was younger and that are not here anymore. Another change people would notice are overlapping neighborhoods, like there could be a nice neighborhood then when you turn the corner the neighborhood could change in an instant and have run down houses and dirty streets, and even you can see a strip of stores and there could be a lot of little self owned businesses and then you see a nice big store that looks out of place that you wouldn’t expect would be there. Changes and improvements will always be apart of the New York lifestyle.

The place I chose for this project is a pretty good example of a store that looks out of place and shouldn’t or not expected to be in that spot. I chose a 99-cent store next to a jewelry store on the corner of Lawrence Street and Helen Keller Place. First you exit out the Namm building from the 300 Jay Street side and turn right. You keep going straight for 2 blocks until you reach Willoughby Street, once you get to Willoughby Street you turn left and cross the street and keep going straight until you reach a jewelry store called Giovanni’s Fine Jewelry and next to it is a 99 cent store called 99 cent City.

When I think of a jewelry store I think it would be next to nicer stores or more well known stores in a nicer neighborhood. This is because when people shop in more well known expensive stores those people shopping will be more attracted to the jewelry store. When you see the jewelry store next to this 99-cent store I think how does the jewelry store get business when both stores attract different types of customers. The 99-cent store attracts customers that look for cheap or inexpensive items to buy, and when I looked in the jewelry store the jewelry was nowhere near 99 cents. Unless the person is looking for a jewelry store to go to or looking for that jewelry store because its close to them then I don’t know why it would be next to a 99 cent store, and the neighbor hood didn’t look all that extraordinary where you think a jewelry store would be. This is where juxtaposition takes place. Juxtaposition is when two places or things are seen together and have contrasting qualities or traits.

When in all of these different places peoples senses come in to play, like what you may see, hear, smell, and even what you feel when you’re in these places. The thing about senses they work different with every person, for example one person may see something that use to be there and another person may just see what is there now. In the novel City Limits by Colson Whitehead he said “Thousands of people pass that storefront everyday, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing.” Not one person sees the same New York as the next. When I was at the spot with the 99-cent store and the jewelry store my senses were going all over the place, when I looked around I saw a lot of people walking fast like they were rushing to get somewhere, but to put in consideration it was around 3 O’clock and people are getting out of school and work so people may have either been on there lunch break or rushing to get home because the trains are right there. My sense of smell was going on too because there are a lot of places to get to eat around that area and all of those different smells are rushing at you at once. When you stop and listen you hear all types of things like people talking on the phone, other peoples conversations the sound of traffic and its pretty loud because in this area it gets crowded with people that are coming from or going to work and coming from or going to school and it gets even louder because there is construction going on just around the corner from these two stores.

This is just a little example of juxtaposition in a huge city of different types of neighborhoods overlapping each other. Around every corner you’ll see all types of changes and people that live in that area may have different memories and stories of what they have been through in that area and another person may have a completely different story or memory of that area just because the different times they started either living or hanging around that neighborhood. Sometimes we may not want to see change in these neighborhood and we may thing things are fine the way they are but in actuality change is inevitable, there is always something that needs to get moved or replaced and everything has room for improvement, if you look at a picture of New York City from the 1960s to a picture of the city today they look completely different. This is what’s happening to our city and everywhere else other then New York we just have to except the change and just move on and hold on to our memories.