Trying to put people in New York

[beccaelizabeth]

Avengers: Stark Tower is above Grand Central Station where the real MetLife building is.
So if I want people to randomly bump into an Avenger on the street, somewhere near their tower makes sense.

I have in my head a picture of the character I'm trying to introduce doing charity collection in a park in lots of sunshine, and meeting Steve, who is of course interested in all good works and stops to chat.

So google maps has a little bit of green park outside the public library a six minute walk away. Okays. Green and sunshine. And books, so Steve has a reason to be there.
Huh, there's the lions, I know that place.
That was in the Spiderman movies.
... I think I just dropped the little google streetview guy exactly where Uncle Ben got shot. *blinks*

Wiki says that green bit is frequently the most densely occupied urban park in the world. New character wants to bump into a lot of people, so that would work.

What I don't know and haven't a clue how to google is where charity people tend to congregate in New York. Do they need permits? Do they get moved along a lot? Are there places people tend to hang out and explain things earnestly to passerby? Does America have an equivalent of Big Issue salesmen?

This is why I prefer to set stuff in Norwich. I know exactly which corners you'd find Big Issue people, charity tin people, people with clipboards, and buskers of varying degrees of skill. At least I do around the market. And I know that Morrisons usually has charity people around the doors, sort of alternating with electricity or insurance sales people, and sometimes people stop for a chat but it's unusual. The same thing wouldn't happen in the other supermarkets even, so I can't just generalise to other countries.

Also: Education.
If someone is going to stop and have a Serious Talk about Social Justice, carrying a beat up backpack of a type suitable for laptop computers, what hoodie are they wearing and where do they study?
There's socio economic implications to all the options in Norwich, and I haven't a clue where to start figuring out the equivalents in New York.
Like, mature student in a City College hoodie... is actually probably not on a sociology degree course, the color coding is mostly for the vocational people. And the UEA has a shop that sells all sorts of things with UEA writ on them but I don't tend to see people wearing them around. Hmmm, maybe they need generic hoodie and holding a college branded folder. They give those to all new students even at CCN.
ANYways, instant clues to this person, I don't know how to make them.
Where would a newly political very earnest mature student of modest means be going?


Obviously I could just skip to the fight scenes, but I got stuck imagining the first glance.


... I was planning to not even write this thing, but I appear to have at least 5/6 of a plot, and it seems stuck in my head. *shrugs*

Comments

[melannen]

Colleges: not an NYC resident, but from my general knowledge of American universities, it depends *g*

The equivalent of City College, with lots of part-time and returning and 'unconventional' students, and where you end up if you live in NYC and are choosing based entirely on lowest cost, is probably CUNY - City University of New York, the public university system for the city - and having something labeled CUNY would immediately give that impression. (They also have a tradition of liberal political activism.) They have a bunch of different campuses/colleges though and I don't know enough to tell you which one would be most likely.

[beccaelizabeth]

Thanks :)
... I just spent some time poking wiki and CUNY websites, and have concluded that I'd need to learn substantially more about US education to form an opinion on colleges.
But there's one place called Hunter. Which is a cool name. So I'm tempted to go with the cool name and go lalala on the context.

[kickair8p]

I live in Tennessee, the last time I so much as drove through New York was about fifteen years ago. There was a recent meta post about how there aren't any shopping malls in NYC, and they're proud of that, so don't have Darcy visiting/living in the Avengers tower and hitting the local mall. But that doesn't help much with your question.

There's a writers' (pro&fan) resource comm that I often find useful for stuff like this: http://little-details.livejournal.com . They were very helpful when I needed to know where a character could find the nearest streetwalkers to a given location in Chicago (including current pricing and normal business practices), for example. It's moderated (so it's sometimes a while before queries get posted), and the mods will post queries for people not on LJ. It's pretty well-tagged, and you should be able to see the posts even if you're not a member: http://little-details.livejournal.com/tag/usa%3A%20new%20york%3A%20new%20york%20city .

~

[beccaelizabeth]

I had forgotten little-details. Been too long since I actually wrote anything. thanks :)

[philippos42]

Chicago has had those guys selling newspapers on the streets. I've never been to NYC, but it's possible they do as well.

Oh, look, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Issue says,

"Inspired by Street News, a newspaper sold by homeless people in New York,"

so, yeah.