Aging In NYC: Photographer Captures Senior Life In The City

I was walking east on 66th street towards Amsterdam Avenue when I saw Virginia heading south. I stopped her and asked if I could ask a few questions. She smiled and was very accommodating. Virginia grew up in Rockaway and Bell Harbor, Queens, and that as a child, she had always wanted to live in Manhattan. Everything in the world that she wanted was in Manhattan.

Virginia is 79 years old and moved to New York City 55 years ago. However, at that time New York was still rough, so she chose to live in Brooklyn Heights. It was a nicer neighborhood but close to Manhattan. This afforded her the ability to take the subway to the theater and Lincoln Center where she could see the ballet she loved so much. She lived in Brooklyn Heights for 45 years. She had a friend who lived out of town and would come to New York and stay at a hotel near Lincoln Center for a few weeks at a time, and he walked home after the ballet.

Virginia, on the other hand, had to take the subway home late at night. Ten years ago, when she decided that she wanted to walk home from Lincoln Center, she moved to Lincoln Towers. Now, she walks home. There is not a neighborhood nicer than Brooklyn Heights, but it is not Lincoln Center. She said she wanted 15 things in an apartment and got 14. What's the 15th? "A southern view."

Virginia took ballet lessons when she was 11 and again in her mid-30s. She believed she was not very good although enjoyed it immensely. She also did folk dancing which she also loves.

Virginia never married and has no children, although she lived with a man for 15 years. She was a math teacher for 19 years at Brooklyn Tech High School from the early 1960s to the late 1970s. She left teaching to get a B.A. degree in computer sciences and became a computer programmer.

I asked Virginia if she feels ignored by the younger generation and she said no. She doesn't care if they ignore her. Eight years ago, she got a cell phone and it still hasn't been charged, and she has an iPad that she also has never charged. She reads the New York Times every day and likes holding the physical paper in her hands.

I asked what she doesn't like about Manhattan and she said "nothing. In my life everything is good." Virginia is someone who loves getting out every day so that she can to enjoy the ballet and walk in her beloved Upper West Side of New York City.

Herb Bardavid is a social worker with a passion for photography going back to his childhood years. When he was 12 years old, Bardavid commandeered his family's only bathroom to serve as a part-time dark room for developing photos. At his wife's suggestion, the Upper West Side resident chose to chronicle the lives of New York City senior citizens for a year-long photography project.

Bardavid, who's in his 70s, is inspired by New York City's elders who don't let their age get in the way of how they live their lives.

"Elderly people in New York City are sometimes invisible," Bardavid told Patch. "People walk by and nobody pays attention to them. So when I stop people they are not only surprised but also happy because people don't often talk to them."

Check out Bardavid's blog here.

Photos by Herb Bardavid