February 1, 2010: Ben Malbon

I wasn’t expecting it. That's for sure. It may well have been a mistake. A well-intentioned gesture, meant for someone else (I was wearing a silly hat, I could have been mistaken for anyone). But I like to think it was intended, because for me it was a decisive moment. It marked my transition from stranger to half-acquaintance, from visitor to semi-resident. 



I’ve been lining up at the same coffee cart on 6th Avenue & Walker, in Tribeca, almost every day since I arrived in New York. After ‘just’ two years I was offered my first discount (large coffee, two bananas, $2 – ‘The Special’, as we now call it). I thought that was as good as it would get. I exchange the same greeting every morning with the father and son team who own the cart, we talk about the weather, and occasionally about vacations just had (“where you been? was it good?”). Once, we even talked about Jay-Z, jumping into a black Escalade just next to us.

But this morning – Day 867 in NYC – I was offered a cinnamon donut on the house. I’ve frequently wondered whether I’d ever feel really at home here. I don’t think I ever will, New Yorkers assure me, “you never will”. But to me the offer of a one dollar donut on the house is a gigantic step on the way.



To live in New York is to live in a community of people who are strangers to each other yet, at the same time, somehow intimate. It’s the most anonymous of existences, constructed around glimpses of recognition, the subtlest of gestures and dizzying amounts of stimulation. Yet, in exchange, living in New York demands a part of you in return.



So it was always inevitable that this city would change me. But it has done so in unexpected ways. New York has disrupted everything about me, forced me to become more affable, to show more mettle, to open myself up more, to become comfortable as the outsider. I know I wouldn’t be like I am now if I was still in London. Certainly no free donuts.



Now all I need to do is to ask his name.

------------

For more on the @3six5 project, including all the very cool daily submissions so far, check out: http://the3six5.posterous.com/