a new york all my own
Recently, living in New York has felt like loving someone that just can’t love you back, sometimes it flirts with you and then moments later you’re questioning everything. Five months out of the year it’s cold and grey, 2 months out of the year its hot, sweaty and unbearable, and all months out of the year it’s so unreasonably financially unsustainable. When you lay it all out you begin to question what the allure even is. I used to love it so unconditionally. It housed the vibrant and authentic, it housed immigrant families and diversity. Where it lacked in ease, it made up for in people. But, every year we lose that magic.
I started resenting everyone taking up space in my home, for changing it so drastically, for making it unlivable for those who made it what it is, and for making me feel like New York isn’t my New York anymore. They say I’m one of the “rare” ones; born, raised, and stayed in New York but the city hasn’t belonged to me in years; I assume many like me feel the same. I no longer have any grasp on it, it all just continues to change, my old spots don’t exist anymore, my childhood home is probably being rented to a couple who owns a $5,000 couch. I’ll take these long walks around my neighborhood and I can’t help but think that now it really is for the young, the rich, the ones who will stay for 5 years and up and go once they’ve soaked up all of what it has to offer.
I get sad anytime I hear someone say “this neighborhood feels like the real New York,” I sit there and think about how none of it feels like the real New York anymore. Frankly, those are the same people who actually REJECT the real New York, we see it when old-school shops go out of business and we see it when certain neighborhoods are frowned upon because they aren’t infested yet with yuppies.
But every year around the holidays when all the transplants have gone home, no mullets are in sight, no overhearing “profound” conversations by 22-year-olds, everything seems empty, and New York feels all my own again. It’s a little treat that I look forward to. I’ll walk around for miles in the cold, with gross Dunkin coffee because that’s the only place that’s truly always open and when I get home I’ll order Chinese takeout. It reminds me of growing up here and why I used to love this place so much.
On loving New York:
Modern Love Season 1 on Amazon Prime is all shot in New York and shares the sweetest true stories on love and on loss. I’m a big baby and these always get to me! Also, the intro montage is cheesy but cute but mainly cheesy and I love that too.
A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders is one of my favorite albums and the soundtrack of Queens in my humble opinion.
I watched Beba on Hulu and enjoyed it. It wasn’t amaaazing but would still recommend it. Beba is a documentary about an Afro-Latina with Dominican and Venezuelan ancestry growing up in New York. She looks back and studies her ancestry and opens wounds with those closest to her.
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown made an episode of eating cuisines from all over the world in Queens. Queens is so special and so was Anthony Bourdain.
On leaving New York
Miss Joan Didion makes it to another one of my newsletters but one of my favorite essays by her is Goodbye to All that about leaving New York. I have many favorite excerpts from it but I’ll leave you with:
“Nothing was irrevocable, everything was within reach. Just around every corner lay something curious and interesting, something I had never before seen or done or known about.”
