"There was something about New York—about its lights, sounds, streets, and ways. I can’t hold it. I can’t touch it. But I felt it."
We’re looking up through the camera lens at Russ Harbaugh ’06, about an arm’s length away.
"I felt the city in a French cafe on Seventh Avenue, watching the people stream by, and I kept thinking to myself, It’s such a perfect way to view the city, just sitting here and watching it pass before your eyes, and it’s so hard to describe something so visual.
"I got to thinking, maybe I’ll make a video."
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The view from that same cafe window opens Harbaugh’s Something about New York, his final project for Professor Rosenberg’s New York in Film and Literature course.
We peer through the glass as pedestrians in winter coats walk stiffly by and cars and taxis move in a constant stream of light. Our gaze is fixed on a parked car, and two bikes locked to a meter, all tinted gold by the street and store lamps.
The Little Giant quarterback and English major captures the city in images: shoes hang by their shoestrings over the telephone wire in Harlem; a subway flashes by the station and disappears in a black tunnel. Salon in Chelsea is "Open."
He captures it in sound: customers chatter at Katz’s deli; a woman street musician sings John Prine’s "Angel from Montgomery" in the subway station.
He captures it in words.
"It’s a great place when you’re a young person," Professor Robert Nelson tells him at CUNY. "The freedom to move around in New York is so great. You can get public transportation, if you want to go somewhere, you can get there.
"You are now in one of the oldest soul-food restaurants in Harlem," William Lessingbury, maitre d’ at Sylvia’s Restaurant tells him. The melting pot of people here is just beyond belief."
He also captures his classmates’ reactions to the city, interviewing them before and after the trip.
"I think it’s going to be huge," says Billy Whited. "So huge you can’t even pronounce the ‘H’!"
Jeremy Robinson says, "I traveled all over Europe my junior year, but I’m more nervous about going to New York."
"I’m interested to see what the pace is going to be like," Marty Brown says. "Am I going to be able to keep up walking down the street? Is it going to be really crowded?
"The boroughs were like their own little cities, their own cultures, which was really cool to me," says Jacob Rump. "I didn’t think there’d be so many little local shops, local restaurants, each with their own distinctive sense of place."
"People are rushing, on the go there; almost violently alive," Whited recalls. "You felt like you could be swallowed by the energy, by the life force of the people there."
Medical-school-bound Micah Reese explains: "The thing that affected me the most was the anonymity of the city. The city’s so large, and you can go anywhere you want, anytime you want, and nobody cares."
We peer out the window of the French cafe on Seventh Avenue again. A young man wearing a white ball cap and carrying a plastic shopping bag walks to a bike, unlocks it, and wheels it away.
"I’d be remiss if I didn’t say it changed me as a person," Harbaugh’s voice-over concludes. "To travel with a bunch of great guys and learn about them as people and friends in a place that is so warm to the idea of people was awesome. I’ll never forget it."