Eden

“Even though New York is the most amazing city in the world, teenage years here are intense and sometimes isolated. I guess people who move here experience this in a way too. I grew up with it and figured out how to deal with it. You could easily go without seeing people for however long you want, and you don’t have a next door neighbor who’s going to check on you. We have to distract ourselves somehow to deal with that. A lot of people skate, do art, graffiti. I had animals. I had a lot of pets, rats, birds, puppies and kittens, fish. A little zoo in here. Now I can’t because I’m in college.”

“I went to elementary school five blocks away from here. It’s a Chinese elementary school. We did line dancing for Chinese New Year. The big costumes and everything. It’s fun. You go into every store in the neighborhood and you ask for an orange. It is supposed to bring you luck.”

“Right now I’m a biology major. I go to college in Binghamton, three hours upstate. I’m really happy I got in, I loved my classes, but there’s nothing to do there at all. It’s just a college town. You go to a bar or a frat party and that’s kinda what you do up there. I bring my dog with me. He registered and gets to live in the dorm. That’s probably the only reason I’m still there.”

“It’s a bit of a cliche, but it’s true. People from New York are just different. The collision of all these different cultures has created something cool here.”

“Most of my friends don’t really care that much about college. I feel I need a degree though. I’m very conflicted. I don’t really know what I want to do at all. I don’t like thinking about the future. It gives me anxiety. I don’t like thinking about who I’m going to be or what I’m going to do. Art is what I do for fun. Hopefully that’s still going to be a thing in the future. It would also be great to be rich, obviously. (laughs)”

“Chinatown is a unique neighborhood. My mother is Chinese and grew up here and I’ve lived here all my life. It’s a pretty good sense of community. Even though I don’t speak Chinese, people recognize me. It’s like living in a different city. It’s louder, busier and people are yelling in another language. Some of the yelling is early morning when they get their stores set up.”

“One night, a few years ago, I was coming home and I was right outside the door. It was raining and this old Chinese woman who didn’t really speak English was holding a bunch of grocery bags and signaling for me to help her. I was like ‘Oh, OK, I’ll help this old lady. So I took her groceries and held her umbrella for her. Then she just squatted and started peeing on our back door. I was just like ‘WTF! People just do things differently here.”

“Because I don’t speak Chinese, I’m a bit of a black sheep in the Chinese community. If I go to the supermarket across the street, and I want to get four drumsticks of chicken, I’ll get cut in line multiple times by old Chinese women. They’re savages.”

There is definitely a lot of drama amongst New Yorkers. Attitude and drama. Everyone always has an issue.” – @edensparkelz

I live in a dorm called ‘College in Woods’ and it’s literally in the woods. It’s pretty great. There’s a lot of deer and trees. I’m the kind of New Yorker who, when I see a patch of trees I go like ‘Oh, wow. Forest!’ So going to Binghamton is kinda great.”

Q&A

Q: What neighborhood do you live in?

A: Chinatown on the Lower East Side, bordering Little Italy and Soho.

Q: Best thing about living there?

A: Being in the center of the city (Manhattan) means having easy access to every fun area because I’m so close to the bridges and a lot of trains. I have different kinds of friends all around the city. The other great thing is the extreme variety of delicious food options, cheap Asian food and snacks, dim sum, in contrast to bougie matcha shops and classic Italian restaurants.

Q: Favorite neighborhood in New York?

A: Just downtown Manhattan in general, especially the Lower East Side where I went to highschool. Some of my favorite nights are just summer nights running around the city. I also love to walk with my dog at strange hours of the night. He keeps the rats away.

Q: Favorite street to stroll?

A: Elizabeth Street is especially beautiful to me, particularly in the spring when the flowers blossom. There is also a community garden on the block that brings back childhood memories of when my friend had a plot and a ping pong table there in elementary school. You go through wildly different neighborhoods walking down my block for twenty minutes.

Q: Why?

A: I’ve lived here all 18 years of my life and realized that upstate New York and most of America lack certain things that make me love living here. I love so many neighborhoods for many different reasons, but this part of New York is truly mine.

Q: Favorite restaurant?

A: I don’t eat out at sit-down places too often, so I would say this Vietnamese sandwich shop on Kenmare that I’ve been going to practically since I was born. They used to make fresh sugar cane juice that my dad and I loved so much, then more recently I tried their Banh Mi and it was delicious.

Q: Favorite bar?

A: I like The Clockwork Orange. Half because I love that movie, but it’s also just a cool bar covered in graffiti that plays skate videos all night.

Q: Hidden gem?

A: My favorite place is a beef jerky spot, Malaysia beef jerky. I used to go there when I was little and I still love it now.

Q: How to be(come) a New Yorker?

A: Something that connects many New Yorkers is often the trauma, mistakes, and excessive partying that comes with being an unsupervised, naive teenager in a city waiting for you to stumble. It’s an often unintentional culture to get way too lit when you’re too young.

Q: Your New York soundtrack?

A: Recently it’s been The Motto by Drake, but usually I like Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin’s music for the colder and more depressing months of the year.

Visit Eden at home in a 3 minute video: quotedmagazine.com/eden

5 Things That Tell a Story About Eden

Cuban Art

“I’m a quarter Cuban. I’ve never really been in touch with my Cuban family, so it doesn’t show much in my persona. I like to bring things back from there when I go visit. In Cuba they have really good artists, so I have this in my room. It is to remind me of my background.”

Painting

“I’ve always been painting. It is relaxing. I don’t do any other relaxing activities but watching TV, so painting is good. It makes me feel productive I guess.”

Perfume

“I’ve been wearing the same perfume since middle-school. My friends tell me I smell good. It’s quite floral and makes me feel sophisticated.”

Four-Leaf Clover

"I found this in Brooklyn. It is extremely rare to find one and it means luck. I take this with me to school actually."

Dog

"I take him everywhere. I take him to school. He is super loyal and he doesn't really like anyone else than me."