My Love-Hate Relationship with Chinatown

All semester I've been working downtown at the New York City Civil Court which means I walk through Chinatown at least once a week. Since moving to New York, I've always had mixed feelings about spending time in Chinatown.

On one hand, it's a busy and energetic part of Manhattan with colorful storefronts, great restaurants, good vegetarian spots (Gina and I are all about this wholesale veggie foods place off of Centre), and really fun stores full of totally cheap, yet somehow cool, crap.



I find that I'm always pleasantly surprised when I try random things in Chinatown. Today I stopped in a store to buy sesame oil (best neighborhood in the city to get it) and tried a melon cake.


It was a chewy and sweet pastry that had nice hints of coconut, banana, and (you guessed it) melon. Really great - and I'd only be able to get it in Chinatown.


On the other hand, I feel like Chinatown has too many qualities that people associate with a big grungy city - there's trash and graffiti everywhere, most of the time the sidewalks are too crowded, you have people pestering you about buying shady merchandise, and there's this "off" smell that always seems to be in the air (especially in the subway station - I'm not the only one who smells that, right?).



Some days I just can't stand the atmosphere of the area and want to power walk through. On other days Chinatown is that nice slice of Manhattan that reminds me of why I love living here. I can't think of any other part of town with which I get so hot and cold.

It's a love-hate relationship but I still bring my family and out-of-town friends to Chinatown and Gina and I seem to be in the neighborhood quite often. I mean, where else are you going to go when you need to buy 10 I Heart NY shirts for $20?


Speaking of Canal Street merchandise, the entire store front between Centre and Baxter is now completely shut down and boarded up. What was once a busy stretch of shops selling cheap t-shirts and knock-off purses is now serving as an example to counterfeiters. These orange signs were pinned across the entire block.


It's kind of odd that these stores were shut down. I mean, any tourist strolling down Canal Street can find out in 10 minutes that these stores are selling knock offs. I wonder what prompted this...

Oh Chinatown...

[Oh and Catherine, thanks for the pics]