INTRODUCTION FOR SOHO FLANEURS!

WELCOME! We are the SOHO Flaneurs bloggers and we are excited to share our insight on what we have gained through exploring New York City throughout the Spring 2010 semester! We represent the culture and livelihood of the Big Apple and present our blog with eagerness and vitality!

This blog results from the collaboration of five very different girls who were randomly picked to work together for an urban life class. All five of us submitted a write up of all ten activities we did, as well as an assigned book report and even though we all had the same assignment our responses are very different. We walked around New York City discovering new places and even learned how to see a place we’ve known forever from an entirely different perspective. Most of the times we explored the city individually, except for activity eight for which we went on a group field trip in collaboration with another group from our class--"Urban Fever."

Although we’ve been working together for three months before the fieldtrip, walking around the East Village, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, and waiting together on an incredibly long line at the Brooklyn Ice Cream factory, strengthened our bond.
For this, we have included colorful pictures to share our stories behind our findings and to also give you the reader an idea of what our findings! Although, not all activities were illustrated with photos, we hope that you can envision our postings and appreciate the vastness and uniqueness of New York City!

Throughout the semester we learned how to see the city through different lenses and notice things we normally didn’t such as the number of people or eyes on the street, the diversity of a neighborhood, or the width of sidewalks. For three months we acted like tourists in our own city, trying to learn everything there was about it, but in the end we did just that and made great friends. We learned new facts about the city we live in and as a team we started to appreciate what our city really has to offer. When one person here’s “New York City” they think mainly of Manhattan and forget about the other four boroughs. Doing these different activities for class helped us realize all the unique things that all five boroughs have to offer. New York City will always be our urban home and so we each share this pride.