Dear Readers,
I never thought I would miss New York.
When I moved here five years ago, I hated the city. I thought my time here was temporary.
And yet, here I am, half a decade later, getting teary-eyed when I cross the Verrazano bridge1 and spot the familiar skyline splayed out in the distance.
I was gone for three days and I missed it! I missed it all– the rusting barriers of the BQE and the distinct smell of the hot summer streets. The trash on the sidewalks looked well placed. The gentle curve of the brownstone stoops. Even the way the people walked down the street made me feel some kind of way.
Against my better judgment, New York City has become my home.
Things make sense to me here. I know the rules. After returning to Brooklyn from a few days in Philly, my boyfriend and I can’t stop complimenting the traffic patterns. It might look like chaos but it is smooth and organized like everyone read the same handbook on how to drive like a**holes. Cars merge seamlessly and inappropriate behavior is addressed swiftly with a honk. No one turns on red and if you block the box, the wrath of the pedestrians is something to fear.
I moved to New York with a duffel bag and like everyone who moves here, dreams of making it big. What that meant exactly, I didn’t know. But I pictured light fame and some fortune. I figured I would get in, get big, get out and move to another city– like Madison, Wisconsin, or Bozeman, Montana. New York would be a short-lived experiment, two or three years max. Another tale to tell.
I read somewhere that New York is a city full of people who always think they are going to leave. Hang out at a Brooklyn house party for long enough and you’ll hear it. “Next year, we are going to move upstate, finally get that house we talked about” or “We are thinking of moving back to my hometown. It just makes so much sense.”
But I think the only thing harder than moving to New York, might be moving away.
As I write this, I am sitting in my apartment surrounded by more stuff than can comfortably fit in my UHaul and I can accept that maybe I don’t want to move away anymore. My boyfriend asked me, “Why, why does it feel like home now? You can have an apartment anywhere.”
I was puzzled over this all afternoon. What was it? It was more than just knowing where everything was. Knowing where all the best coffee shops in the neighborhood are doesn’t give you that aching feeling of being “home”. Just having an apartment does not make a place home either.
At the risk of sounding cheesy2, I decided after much debate that it does come down to community here. The accumulation of all the coworkers from my jobs. All the acquaintances I met at the house parties. All the baristas, bodega guys, and bagel shop employees who know my order. They make New York feel like home.
It is our downstairs neighbors who we have known for years and who will check on our cat/ plants/ apartment with no notice. And who, on many occasions, lent us their computer chargers when we forgot ours elsewhere.
It is all the people who show up for our OK Gallery openings.
Last Friday, before it started, we stopped at the bodega on the corner to buy some illegal street beers. The guys there have known me for years. They used to call me “the gambler” after my love of scratch-off lottery tickets. The guy behind the counter teased me for not buying one.
Later, at the opening, shortly after I was surprised by a friend who I hadn’t seen for a few years, I felt genuinely happy to be surrounded by such a nice mix of strangers, friends, and acquaintances. It didn’t hurt that Soho was pulling out all the stops. It was one of those late August nights that feels nostalgic simply by the way the light shines. And the cast iron buildings looked like a real-life Instagram filter in the sunset.
In the end, it is not the city that is hard to leave, but all the people who live here.
Love Letters to New York City:
Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That” is one of the most beautiful and accurate odes to New York City.
“I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years”
“Bodega Bathroom” the SNL skit sums up the essence of the bodega perfectly.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of New York City
What’s for Dinner?
Tonight’s dinner was Tacos with a good friend. Last night, Michael, my current boyfriend and sometimes roommate, and I got pizza from Brooklyn’s Homeslice Pizza. It is good pizza but tastes even better when left in the fridge for 24 hours and eaten the next day.
As always, thanks for reading.
Best,
Claire HarnEnz
This is the bridge that runs from Staten Island into Brooklyn. Originally, I wrote this to joke that Staten Island wasn’t part of NYC. If you know, you know.
Yes, I know these types of cliches are not accepted in most creative writing classes or magazine articles.
What a poignant, funny, and interesting share.
Love you, Claire
Emotions are good Claire! Turn the page.