I am no longer a New York City resident. This is how I feel about that.
15. Buying groceries at 4AM
This is as good a place to start as any. Maybe this was just me, maybe I didn't even do this all that frequently, but even really early on, this was one of the things that gave me that "Goddamn, I love this place" feeling. You're up too late, you need a soda or some milk or some soup or something, and you end up walking away from the bodega with a pineapple, just be-fucking-cause.
14. Watching NY games in NY bars
I will tell you a story. Once, I was watching a Giants-Vikings game at Mercury Bar on 9th. The Vikes had the block on lock; they'd picked off Eli Manning five times. The old guy next to me had the craggiest face I'd ever seen, and he was hitting on the 20-something Emory grad next to him by talking about his ex-wife. (They were still close as close, he begged her to understand.) I'll never forget what he said after the fifth interception--"Fuckin' Giants," he goes, "Born losers." They won the Super Bowl six weeks later. People get down on NYC fans--too hard, too much pressure, too fair-weather. I think it's a different story. They want to convince themselves they're rooting for the underdog. Nothing wrong with that.
13. Getting to know people you've never spoken to
For us, it was Gutter Rockstar--a scraggly, ex-roadie-type who played his guitar (terribly) for all the street to hear. Or Pigeon Kicker--a guy who looked vaguely like Tommy Davidson and kicked pigeons. Or the guy who masturbated by the basketball court every once in a while. Or the bouncer outside of Mixed Emotions, the most poorly titled strip club ever. Or the Sam-the-Eagle lookalike guy who always took the subway at the same time as me, even when I was late, or (god forbid) early. Or those Bryant Park couples you'd always somehow end up next to... and you never go, "I'm sorry, didn't we sit together last week during 'The Thing'?" 'Cause that would have been weird! It's like being the guy who notices the live lobster pinching the passed out drunk's toe on the A-train, and saying, "Oh gosh, what has gone wrong?!" It's New York. Nothing has gone wrong. Don't mention it. If you do, it all falls down.
12. Running by the river
All throughout my six years in New York, the best bet was always Riverside. When I lived up in Morningside, I'd cut into the park at 116th and head down to 86th or so; for the past few years, I'd run up from 47th to 86th... either way, that was always my place. I never got a gym membership; the treadmill idea just didn't seem right. There is nothing in the world like turning a corner through a clearing and seeing the sun explode across the condos on the Jersey shore. Not even kidding. And sure, the water smells like sulfur and pain--the pain comes from Jersey--but there's just something so perfect about that run.
11. Those things you never really intended on doing
I never went to the Statue of Liberty. I never climbed the Empire State Building. I never saw a Mets game. I never visited the Bronx Zoo. I don’t even think I went to the Central Park Zoo. The only time I was in FAO Schwarz was waaay back in 8th grade. It gets easy to wear these things as cynical badges of honor, but that’s probably taking it too far. It’s almost more like, “Well, I haven’t been to the Statue of Liberty… but I can pretty much guess, ya know?”
10. Adaptability
That's the thing about cockroaches, they know how to make do. Invent a new kind of Raid, the thirty percent of them that are immune to it will run off into some dark corner and breed like hell. New Yorkers--for all their anti-roach vitriol--are just like that. Our freezer door broke off, we jimmied it back on. Our toilet broke, we invented a way to flush it without the lever. They killed the 9-train, we all said, "Oh, okay." Buildings collapsed, cranes fell, bombs went off, kids got shot, we just turned the page and said, "Well, you know." Maybe this is not the best way to go about things, but I won't forget it.
9. The outer boroughs, goddammit
We had a long-standing and unfortunate dispute in my apartment about whether or not the outer boroughs were worth a damn. I can say, without qualification, I have had time(s) of my life (TM) in all five beautiful landmasses that make up New York City. I just want that to be known, and understood, and accepted.
8. Christmas
This is a horrible, horrible cliché, but it’s goddamn true. There is no better city in which to spend Christmas than New York. It just heightens every little emotion, every bit of cheer. It’s not just the iconic things—the Rockefeller tree, the mad crush of humanity at Macy’s—it’s dopey little moments… walking back from the corner with your Starbucks holiday cup, past the porn store window with mannequins dressed up as slutty elves… then, holding the apartment door for some mom carrying five thousand presents, saying your genuine-non-obligatory Merry Christmases, and heading on in, somehow thrilled that there are pine needles all over your too-tiny-common-room-floor.
--LIST INTERRUPT: ONE THING I WON'T MISS--
1. NYC Duck Tour Ducks
Oh Jesus, these scare me so much. I don't know why. I am not that scared of people in costumes, even big puffy, foam/felt anthropomorphizations. But there's something about that friggin' duck that would stand at the end of our block, almost daring us to pass… that just shivered me to the core. Anyway. I can’t say anything more about this or I will have nightmares.
--END LIST INTERRUPT--
7. How seeing celebrities never gets old (...until your friends start to get famous)
Nathan Lane’s regular order at Starbucks. David Hyde Pierce stalking Caitlin. Laksh making Judy Gold laugh in the elevator at BMI. The double-whammy of David Schwimmer and Noah Emmerich on Columbus and 72nd. The party that evaporated to go see Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana outside the Barnes&Noble on 66th. Tom pissing off Janeane Garofalo at the Wet Hot American Summer screening. And, oh man, the best one… running smack into Tracy Morgan on 50th: “I’m so sorry, Mr. Morgan!” “Think nothing of it! Be on your way!” (As far as the parenthetical goes… I kid, I kid. Sure, it’s a weird feeling when classmates end up on magazine covers. But at least you get to pull the whole, “Oh, him? Yeah, I knew him” deal. Which is nice.)
6. Becoming a local at a chain
No one really likes going to Duane Reade. It’s too bright, they sell Valentine’s Day shit in December, and the aisles are arranged in the most arbitrary manner possible. It’s easy to loathe this part of New York living. But you guys, how cool are the Duane Reade ladies on 47th and 8th. Spoiler alert: the coolest. Like, cool enough for one of them to have been convinced I was Pacey from Dawson’s Creek. To be honest, for a few minutes, she made me believe I was. Oh, and how about the stand-up fellas at the Subway on that very same corner? Heroes. Heroes, all of them.
5. Being in love
As if “Christmas in New York” wasn’t too much of a cliché already. (Talk about heightening an emotion…) Being in love in New York is tough, because you’ve got to play up to a certain level. It is not, for instance, like being in love in Portland, Oregon. In New York, you almost have to get wrapped up in it, in this crazy, spinning feeling of there-are-eight-million-people-here-but-all-I-want-is-you, so-let-me-take-a-taxi-through-the-rain-to-you, I-hope-you're-wearing-my-favorite-dress-but-I-will-settle-for-anything-as-long-as-it's-you. It’s not too hard to lose perspective—this is both a comfort and a cause for concern. Joan Didion wrote about the boundless possibility of New York; nowhere is that possibility exemplified than in New York love.
4. Brunch
The New York City Sunday Brunch is a lazy, boozy tradition as old as Sunday itself. (Probably.) The reservation that you always eclipse by about fifteen minutes; the friends who will “definitely be showing up in like, twenty—thirty tops—we hope…”; the menu which is always some variation of the same damn thing, wherever you go; the bottomless Mimosas, which hours later leave you pleading for a retroactive bottom; the bill… AAAH, the fucking bill, which you are now too gone to pay sensibly, so you throw in $7 or $50—one or the other, there’s no in-between. Yes. Brunch. Unforgettable.
3. Stoops
Living on the ground floor of our Hell’s Kitchen apartment made the stoop an inevitability. And a glorious inevitability it was. Pound for pound, there is no better hang-out-drink-a-beer-talk-weird-to-strangers place in the world than a stoop. If that’s what you’re into. If not, I dunno, man. Try a library, I guess. I’ll be on the stoop if you need me.
2. The fact that every street has some memory tied to it
My dad and I were pulling onto the Henry Hudson and driving north up the West Side; it was like we weren’t even passing streets, every two hundred feet was just the beginning of another “Oh man, remember that time…” This makes New York problematic. It’s hard to run from your own story if every single intersection, every subway stop is a reminder of something that happened.
1. The fact that all my friends lived there
In the end, it’s always the same. The best part of New York or San Fran, or Paris or London, or Cleveland or Tallahassee, or Perth or Peoria—it’s always going to be the people you lived with, the people who became your family. You won’t find the moments on the bus tours. (It’s a sappy thing to say, but after six years, I think I’ve earned my sap.) To me, New York wasn’t Times Square or Derek Jeter or the Brooklyn Bridge. It was running down and back the 72nd St. pier with Tom. It was every time Laksh cooed at that scene in Goodfellas where Paul Sorvino cuts garlic with a razor blade. It was falling asleep on Frank’s couch in a plate of Big Nick’s French toast. It was every “Jaws isn’t the name of the shark!” exclamation from Caitlin. It was playing snow-means-we-can-tackle football with Mike and Colin on the Amsterdam overpass. It was Rob walking over to McGee’s and saying, “Hey, what if we had a blog?” It was all the little things that could have happened in any city, but somehow meant so much more because they happened here, to us, now.
And now now is then.
Of course… there’s no law saying I won’t be back.
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