Skye's Derive
February 19, 2018, by Skye
My starting point was on E 12th Street between 1st Ave and Ave A, somewhere that I wasn’t too familiar with, but I had friends that lived in the area and the fact that I was in an area with numbered streets made it nearly impossible to get lost. It was also daytime when I started my derive. It was 3:36pm. It was also very nice out— weirdly nice for February, but I’m not complaining. I marked my starting point on my map and opened the derive app to get started.
The first card was already weird and got me out of my comfort zone. I was to “find a nearby place to sit. Watch the world go by for a while, taking note of who passes.” Being as I was in the middle of the sidewalk in front of apartment buildings in the East Village, there wasn’t really anywhere to sit. So naturally, I sat on those little fences that border the very few trees that line the streets in Manhattan. People definitely thought I was weird, because it’s not everyday that someone just randomly sits on those things. They’re not very comfortable either. I was looking at 1st Ave and saw that there were a lot of cars around for 3:36 in the afternoon— too early for rush hour. There were less cars on E 12th. Makes sense because 1st Ave goes uptown and 12th St goes west to east. I heard a crowd of kids yelling and turned towards the noise, noticing that there was a school across the street. Like I said earlier, sitting on the street is weird in the East Village, let alone New York City in general, so of course people were staring at me as they passed by. The two exceptions was the one person that randomly said hi to me and the other person that almost walked into me because they were looking at their phone.
The second card told me to find sound. Being in New York, there’s sound everywhere so that wasn’t hard. The sound that I focused on were the kids yelling, cars honking, and cars passing by. And dog feet hitting the sidewalk. The next card was hard and took me a while to complete— the app told me to “look for the numbers 1-25. If you’re feeling audacious, go up to 50.” Here’s a list of what I found:
- 1 st Ave
- Zagat 2 017
- License plate number HMY 3 1 4 6
- Is it okay to use to do the whole two birds, one stone thing with this? Hope so.
- Oyster bar happy hour begins at 5 pm at Hearth
- License plate number 3G 6 2
- Cab number 7 E71
- A business stating that they’re open until 8 pm
- A business stating that they were established in 1 9 99
- A pizza pie for $10.99
- The same pizza place had a $1 slice special beginning at 11 AM
- A business’s phone number 2 12
- E 13 th St.
- Building number 4 14
- Truck number 15
- Apartment unit 16
- Police-car number 5 17 3
- A tattoo shop stating that no one under the age of 18 is allowed to come inside
- Building number 19 9 on Ave A
- A nail salon that advertised $20 for a mani/pedi
- A business’s phone number 212
- Another phone number 22 8
- Building number 4 32— that counts right? Number 23 was the hardest to find.
- A business stating that they’re open 24 hours
- Aura readings for $1 25
I followed the next few cards and they were pretty standard. “Head in the direction where you see the most clouds,” “Move along. Make sure someone notices,” “Follow the tallest building for seven minutes”. The seven minutes card was interesting because there aren’t that many tall buildings in this part of Manhattan. I learned that I was following a six floor residential building with a hair salon on the first floor called Tsukimi. As I was standing on the street taking notes, I kept hearing birds and a plopping noise. Of course, the plopping noise was the birds pooping, so I scribbled down my thoughts quickly, moved away from the birds, and moved onto the next card. The next card also happened to tell me to “find a nail salon. Walk in and take a few deep breaths. Depart and move westwards,” so I walked into Tsukimi and took some deep breaths. They all looked at me weird and asked if I needed anything, but I just left as the card instructed me to. I had to walk westwards, and as I did, I nearly ran into my ex— so now I’m annoyed at this assignment— but I ran across the street before he could see me.
The short buildings of the East Village interest me because when people think of New York City, they usually think of these enormous skyscrapers that look like they’re touching the clouds. And for the most part, there are maybe ten buildings that are actually that tall, and they’re all very new. Everyone’s imagined New York City reminds me of Whitehead’s “City Limits”: “You start building your private New York the first time you lay eyes on it. Maybe you were in a cab leaving the airport when the skyline first roused itself into view.” I don’t remember the first time I went to New York and “built [my] private New York,” but I remember sitting on a Greyhound bus with my mom and seeing the city skyline come into view from New Jersey when we were on our way to move me in freshman year. I remember seeing the Freedom Tower and the Empire State Building, and I remember freaking out because while I had gotten accepted to NYU nearly a year before I was finally able to move in, corny, but it was finally happening now. Whitehead said that, “It’s the early seventies, so everything is filthy. Which means everything is still filthy, because that is my city and I’m sticking to it,” so for me, New York is the skyline from New Jersey, because it’s my city and I’m sticking to it.
What also makes the East Village stand out in comparison to other Manhattan neighborhoods is the fact that the people that live here are from all over the world and you can see that reflected in the variety of cuisines that are offered at the restaurants in this neighborhood. There’s Ukrainian food, all types of Asian food, and Latin food too. This is what Shannon Mattern refers to as the “media city”—”the ‘media city’ is frequently conflated with the ‘global city,’ which is global primarily in that it is a privileged central hub in overlapping international networks”.
Card 8: “Follow someone with a camera until they take a picture.”
Card 9: “Find some grass. Toss some blades in the air and move in the direction the wind blows the grass.”
Card 11: “Find a body of water. Document it.”
Card 17: Find a one-way and walk in the opposite direction.”
Card 18: “Take a photo of something or someone old. Continue in the direction of the sun.”