A Goodbye to New York City
Today we’re leaving New York. It’s not the first time I’ve left this city and because of the love I feel for it I depart knowing there is a good chance we’ll be back again.
This was technically my 4th time living here.
The first was in the summer of 1999. 20 years ago this month I started an internship at The Today Show. My older sister Raquel was living in Park Slope at the time. If I recall correctly she had a one bedroom for $800? 8th Ave. Eight near the F. It would be my first train line.
I spent the summer traveling from Park Slope to Rock Center. Working on the 13th Floor. I stood on the monologue mark at SNL. I sat behind the anchor desk at Today. I wanted to be a reporter.
I left that August thinking I’d be back but it wasn’t until I turned 30 almost exactly 10 years later that I returned. This time to Harlem. To a tiny apartment I shared with some strangers who had two daschunds they refused to walk and opted for pee and poop pads instead. Not to mention the boa constrictor. The apartment constantly under construction. A bathroom with no walls so you could see the studs and the exposed wiring dangling precariously as you bathed. It was awful.
I didn’t stay long but moved quickly to Flatbush, Brooklyn. Martense and Flatbush. Right near Erasmus High School and Church Avenue. I ate my weight in jerk chicken. I spent a lot of my time walking in Prospect Park. I loved that neighborhood. I quite honestly loved being in the minority. I appreciated the exposure to other cultures and life and the ways communities cooperate and lean on each other. I was there from 2010 to 2015. I got married. I got divorced. I moved out.
My third trip to New York began in 2016. I had only been gone a year since my divorce. I was 37. I was floundering. A friend mentioned that she and her husband were leaving their rent-controlled place in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. I moved back with my sister and her wife who had just moved back to the States after a long time in London. My parents helped me drive a truck load of our stuff and we moved into the top floor corner 4-bedroom apartment. It was $1600. If that sounds too good to be true it’s because it was. Not long after the building manager evicted us.
Around the same time my mom died suddenly. I moved briefly back to Baltimore and simultaneously grieved and moved my things back to Baltimore.
About a month after she died my cousin mentioned that she had a friend who was also living in New York and if I felt like meeting her for a drink she was around. We started seeing each other. After a few months of long distance dating between New York and Baltimore I got a call from my friend J who offered me a job in, you guessed it, New York.
With that I returned for this fourth time. Only this time I had my first experience of living in Manhattan. 56 and Lex followed by 46 and 2. Two extremely convenient albeit uninspired neighborhoods. The nice part is when you’re 38 you couldn’t care less about your neighborhood being quiet on the weekends.
We’ve loved every minute and tried to do everything we possibly could to take advantage of our close proximity to everything New York City has to offer.
Many people don’t like New York. They don’t like cities in general. The people. The noise. The traffic. The diversity. The smell.
I’m not one of those people. I love New York. I’ll miss New York. I’ll always appreciate what living here has meant and done for me over the years. And it takes a special city like San Francisco to pull me away.
