NYC: Then, Now, Forever?
A "perfect weekend" quest (?) across acts and decades
It is a weird weekend to send a D.C. newsletter - so I am sending one about NYC. I am writing this newsletter from our guest bedroom bed, because I can. And also because I just got back from a week of combo business and pleasure in NY (if I didn’t see you, I am sorry - there is truly always next time) and the only way to recover myself from the heady mix of caffeine, martinis, salty, crunchy snacks, zero personal space and constant walking without proper arch support footwear is to fall into horizontalness.
Now, contrary to this opening paragraph - I did have a great time and it got me thinking how finally, after years of visiting (to include a few years of sort-of-part-time living there back in the mid 2010s), I feel I can be in NY of what feels like my own terms, vs the city’s terms.
So, here, partially inspired by my friend Morgan’s amazing recent newsletter (which has, sort of, to do with age and fun and managing both) and
‘s NY love letter (where he spends 10 days just DOING THINGS with.abandon) - a mini sentimental journey of me and the city.
Prologue:
I arrived to United States to go to art school in Savannah, Georgia in January 2021 and visited NY that very spring break. While this sentence implies privilege and a certain can-do attitude and glamour, it actually involved a school sanctioned driven-up-in-buses jaunt painting murals in church rec-rooms and sleeping in a dormitory and never leaving the 10 block radius around 34th street. Still, I LOVED IT. The Murray Hill of it all. Everyone seemed tall and fast walking and wearing their clothes like a suit of armor or something. They all had places to go and people to see. “Sex and The City” already existed in the world and we’d watch it every Sunday in the dorm room of a pretty fashion major girl from Santa Barbara that had her parents pay for premium cable (I would eventually move in with her off-campus, sealing my SATC privileges through graduation, in a genuine early stage of adulthood power move), but that world felt a billion miles away (even if it was just a few stops on the F train south or north, depending on what SATC mythology you subscribe to). Still, I felt I was always going to find my way back.
Act 1:
Then, after I moved to D.C. (a “good Northern starter city,” I told myself) with my fancy Masters Degree in Architecture, which only got me a decidedly unfancy $29,000 a year starting salary, the NY trips became the very opposite of that first trip. This was the final era of complete non-technology marred abandon when it comes to going out. The internet was young-ish, the first iPhone had not dropped yet, the word hashtag didn’t exist. We were free. The patented step by step approach to NY tended to be this:
Step 1: See there’s a concert you want to go to (at indie venues like Pianos or Union Pool or Arlene’s Grocery) happening.
Step 2: Figure out if you can swing the concert ticket (typically $10-20 - paid at door to avoid service fees) or better yet, if we knew someone in the opening band or at the bar or the label who could put us on the list and the $30 round-trip ticket on the Chinatown bus.
*If * the fiscal stars align, text some friends to do some reconnaissance on couch availability (having friends with non death-trap couches in major cities in your 20s is the equivalent of having friends with guest bedrooms in your 30s, and vacation homes in your 40s).
Step 3: Then you and a friend get on that bus with absolutely ZERO luggage - maybe a little tote with a toothbrush and deodorant (we believed in aluminum level protection back in 2000s). You chat or listen to your ipod the whole time up.
Step 4: You arrive, beeline to Forever 21, buy an outfit for $5 or less from the sale rack, take the train to your friend’s couch location, change, use each other’s make-up (Wet’n’Wild is the baseline, Maybelline is the step up, Clinique is for people whose Mother’s take them to department stores when they visit) and hairbrushes and whatever else like total savages, spray your completely unwashed, unbrushed hair with dryspun spray (Bumble & Bumble if someone was feeling flush, otherwise whatever was cheapest at CVS) and head out
Step 5: Dance, befriend bartenders, get drinks bought for you, get your photo taken by Cobrasnake or Ambrel or whoever is making the rounds, make-out, do “the move” (a dance routine guaranteed to procure more free drinks), and repeat.
Step 6: End up at some afterparty or wherever, no sleep at all.
Step 7: THROW AWAY that Forever 21 outfit (a true definition of fast, disposable fashion), get into your clothes from the day before, get back on the bus, keeping fingers and toes crossed that you don’t throw up en route back.
Things that don’t happen: any shape of culture, hotel rooms, nutrition (a lot of food choices include melted or, worse, “button cheese”). But things feel VERY FUN
Act 2.1:
30S! The decade began with being featured in a full page NY Times article entitled “Can She Party On In New York?” - so I are on a mission to prove that yes, I can make it there. Most of this part of your 30s and NY seem to be work related.
A friend (hi Kat!) rents a 2 BR apartment and lets me be her part time roommate. Some other friends move from DC for jobs and love and grad school and whatnot.
I start taking Amtrak instead of the bus. It feels like a very big deal.
I start taking meetings - big ones, small ones, medium ones. They all happen in places where no one you know lives: Flatiron and Times Square and Bryant Park and Upper this and that side.
I go out in Williamsburg and West Village and that small independent NY country that is Cobble Hill / Boerum Hill / Carroll Gardens where you can eat sushi next to Paul Dano and be in the same store as Marisa Tomei or Maggie Gyllenhaal.
I become sort of consistently invited to things, because being in NY part-time means you can be counted on to attend things part time. I go to: NYFW shows, movie premieres, gallery openings, photography galas, museum after hours (some of which, at the Natural History Museum you are in charge of - how about that!?!). I see people you love perform all kinds of art and it is actually a thrill, often.
It sort of feels like what you imagined Sex & The City would feel like (even if everyone is now watching “Girls” and “Broad City” instead, and the SATC movies are NOT GOOD) - I normalize the $15 cocktail in a fancy hotel and feel medium non-freaked out sitting next to John Waters at Prune and take the subway all over without any intimidation.
I learn how to pack in all black. I learn how to work the Sephora locations to always freshen up between meetings (a Caudalie face spritz and some good dry shampoo go a long way).
I get this NY, and sort of feel this NY gets me.
Act 2.2:
There is a 2.2 here because somewhere in the cusp of my early to mid 30s I fell in love with my now husband and started going to NY as a couple. “I” became a “we”. This, it turns out, is VERY DIFFERENT than going to NY as a single girl-you’ll-be-a-woman-soon type.
First of all - the #1 thing about my husband when I met him was that despite being in his 30s at the time himself, HE WAS AN ADULT. LIKE, ALL CAPS. A person who dry-cleaned things, and didn’t expect anything to be given to him for free and took cabs and when he asked me to come with him on a work trip and I asked if that may be weird in case he’s sharing a room with someone, responded with: “No, I have my own room, I’m an adult”. So, he changed stuff for the relationship NY & me were having at the time. In many ways, for the better.
We got good hotel rooms, and went on walks in Central Park with good coffee and made reservations at restaurants with adequate wing spans, where you’re not sitting in anyone’s lap and got tickets to thins. Sometimes we went on double date trips even. It was, well, nice and NY is very romantic with the right person (and he is my right person), and we are married now, so things definitely worked out - but it also made me feel like because we needed to spend all this time together early on, I sort of lost a handle on “MY NY” (tm) that I spent my decade and a half building up to. It felt, in some ways, like an end of an era for me and the city? A beginning of an exciting new one, for sure, but a farewell to things I remembered fondly and was maybe unwilling to let go of, youth wise.
I also did have my (Moonstruck themed, OBVIOUSLY) bachelorette party in Brooklyn and it remains in my mind one of the most perfect weekends of my life, partially because at the time I really missed being in the city only with my girlfriends. A town home was rented in Red Hook and it turned out that it was owned by one of the former editors of “Jane” and “Sassy” (IYKYK), we went to Lucali back when you could get 9 women in there without having to fight, and then proceeded to do a red sauce tour of Carroll Gardens - Frankie’s, of course, but also a bunch of teeny locals-only spots with good cookies and table red wine. It was HEAVEN.
which brings us to:
Act 3: 2025. End of May, early June
Friends, I am happy to report I/we have maybe cracked it.
The last few times Jason and I went to NY, we may have stumbled onto a path forward, that lets us both make the most of the city, in our own way and together.
This tends to include:
one thing EACH which feels worth the trip in and of itself (last September, this was me getting to see the Pulp reunion concert, and Jason going to see Yankees in playoffs)
one thing we get to do together for the first time (think: Coney Island, etc)
ample time alone to do stupid stuff like sit around in bookstores and tiny stores (me) and wander around doing whatever Jason does
several movie outings to the many art house and historic cinemas
writing the following note on all our Resy reservations “we are both over 6’ tall, and would deeply appreciate a booth or a corner table” and if the place is small, making said reservation for early or quite late
taking the subway everywhere (the credit card tap vs having to buy a ticket is one of the great innovations of the decade)
and most critically:
Visiting in spring or Fall together, with a room with a balcony (I know, a little too fancy) and switching up neighborhoods - which entirely shape the kind of time you are going to have (and you can mentally prep for it) but eliminates the generational FOMO of feeling you need to be in 19 places at any one time) - an Upper East Side time can involve off-hours Bemelmans and museums and burgers at JG Melon, while a Lower East Side jaunt can entail parking yourself at Metrograph for infinite amounts of time, and getting a bar lunch seat at Estela at 11:45am, and really keeping an eye on the comings and goings of Dimes Square (which is many things, but definitely not boring).
Which brings me to this most recent outing. It had some highs, some lows, and was pretty perfect overall. It involved:
My pick: Going to see and in conversation at Pioneer Works, presented by McNally Jackson - sort of a superbowl for a certain kind of woman. I wish The Cut’s Lookbook was there though, because I had pitch ideas for them “The Men of Miranda July Talk” and “The Tote Bags Of Miranda July Talks”, chief among them. The talk itself was exactly the kind of enthusiastic, awkward, slightly insider-y baseball (our friend Sheila!) chat that makes for a good story, if not a great time. Plus, we got 2 signed books (squiggle squiggle), which some lucky 40something year old is going to get as a present this year.
Jason’s pick: Going to see The Mets (first time for us both). Now, I know absolutely nothing about baseball (and at this point am committed to not knowing anything about it ever - but I know a lot about vibes and pageantry and fan experience and I have to say: it was A GREAT TIME. Great people watching, great yelling/ribbing, great energy, just great. Highly recommend it.
Movies: we saw “The Phoenician Experience” on opening day (inside the immersive Angelika experience, for which we paid extra but not extra enough to get the shirt), “The Apartment” with peak Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine at Film Forum (much like seeing “Rear Window” at the actual movies for the first time, a game changing experience), and “Bonjour Tristesse” remake (with Chloe Sevigny) at IFC - which I am not sure was a necessary thing to re-do (the original is flawless) but felt the kind thing you do in NY.
Art: I personally stopped by Amy Sherald’s show at The Whitney (must see) and the James Baldwin mini collection at NYPL (saving the 100 Years of New Yorker for next time)
Bonus experience: we did also go and see “Glengarry Glen Ross” on Broadway starring Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr & Kieran Culkin but I hate to say this - it was not good. Watch the movie adaptation instead and/or dream about a time you were able to time travel and see Al Pacino or Joe Mantegna in it. I am here for the current Broadway attendance boom though.
We ate at: the NY outpost of Gjelina (very good, if you come EARLY you get to partake in the snacks/pizza menu with zero rush around you - which is great), Indochine (surprisingly good food actually, and still kind of a vibe in the sense that everyone working there is 6’ tall and on the lookout for a better deal), King, the Soho Eataly, Jams, The Corner Bar at Nine Orchard (it was a Lower East Side trip) where I urge you to order the tiramisu next time you’re in the vicinity, and breakfasted at Veselka, Russ & Daughters and The Waverly Diner.
Then Jason left and I got a day or so of running around to see people and shake hands, and visit (I counted) 6 book stores while traversing meeting to meeting
I wore all black linen and these satiny crunchy stratus pants from J.Crew the entire time and read Edith Wharton’s “Age Of Innocence” per your summer reading recommendations (the OG NY novel one may say) felt very accomplished overall.
When I got home, I both ignored the new season of “And Just Like That” (am I the only person who couldn’t even make it through Ep 1 of S1? And I tried to, 3 times!) binged the latest young-in-NY show “Adults” - which felt both a million miles away from how I live now and how I experience NY - but I LOVED IT. That’s the beauty of New York - it will never not be ready for its next act and new cast, while leaving room for everyone.
Lets see what happens in the sequel?