I showed Ric Burns my ridiculous tattoo and asked him about NYC's 400th birthday

Longtime readers of The New York Groove know that I've developed a couple obsessions in my time doing this blog, most prominent among them issues involving the city's history, with said obsession expressed in the form of trying to promote the city's birthday, getting extremely niche tattoos and buying inscrutable T-shirts. Last week I got to further that obsession, because when FAQ NYC did a live taping at the Tenement Museum featuring special guest Ric Burns, the hosts were nice enough to invite me as a pal of the podcast and as a guy who got a tattoo of the title card from Burns' legendary New York: A Documentary Film.

Fortunately, when I walked into the Tenement Museum in jorts in mid-October and showed the tattoo to Burns, he said was very honored by it instead of being really freaked out. He was also nice enough to spend a few minutes with me to weigh in on when the city's 400th birthday actually is and what New York's history means to us, the country and even the world. Then I asked him about my really stupid T-shirt and he was nice enough to consider what it could mean. And so, special for the Groven, here is that conversation.

New York Groove: Have we done a good job celebrating [the city's 400th anniversary] so far?

Ric Burns: No. It's funny, I think about that a lot. First of all, who has time? People have kind of gone, 'Yeah, let's do something. Oh I'm busy.' And then there's this funny way in which, New York can seem like the most important national, international, cosmopolitan area anywhere. And then every now and then, it falls back and it seems really parochial. And so I think when you say things like 400th anniversary of New York City, people go, that's kind of a local point of view about it. And people forget, when they start to consider those 400 years, that it's really been 400 years of what's the first national city, before Boston, before Philadelphia.