All these cowards are knocking New York City while it's down!
I’ve written before about my love for New York City, and lower Manhattan especially. I am obsessed with this city.
I love how it feels like a giant playground, it makes me feel like I’m back living on a college campus where everything is accessible (for the right price) and there are no rules. You can walk out of your apartment in pajamas to a bodega and order food. You can walk home at 7am in your party clothes and no one will look twice. I just love everything about living here.
And in the times of post-COVID (but also…still-happening-COVID) I keep seeing all of these articles about how “New York is a shell of her former self” and how people are packing up and moving out of the city and to that I say: COWARDS!!!
New York City is more than broadway shows and dining inside. I keep reading these articles about how New York is going to need “so much time” to recover and I keep having to bite my tongue from delivering history lessons to people. If there’s any city that can recover from something fastest - it’s New York.
(I thought we were supposed to #NeverForget, right?)
Yes, you can’t eat indoors. Yes, shows are closed. Yes, concerts are postponed.
But my god there’s still so much to do. Especially now! We can all complain in December, January and March (and even before COVID, those were prime complaining months) but right now things in New York are phenomenal and enough people aren’t talking about it.
Jaywalking has never been better.
New York City has always been the prime place to jaywalk, but with less cars in the streets, I find myself jaywalking in obscene ways. Streets are now sidewalks. You can’t find a cab to hail, but you can essentially walk in the middle of the road this month, so I consider that a fair trade-off.
Outdoor dining and sidewalk seating is expanding the European vibes of the West Village to encompass the entire city.
I, for one, hope that COVID means we will always have outdoor seating like this. People are getting super creative with rooftop space, sidewalk space, and like I mentioned earlier…street space. All the streets in Manhattan are essentially a “free space” right now.
I had brunch with Clara the other day in the West Village at this Greek spot that set up tables and chairs across the street from their restaurant at this tiny park that no one had claimed yet. The servers would take five minutes to walk from the restaurant to our seat, take our order, and then trek back to the restaurant to drop our order off.
It’s not perfect - of course - but it’s new and different and interesting and honestly a lot of fun.
It feels much more tight knit to live here than it ever has before.
People are actually being nice to each other. Like, engaging in conversations and smiling and all of that. The last time I heard of this happening was after 9/11 itself, and it’s the smallest silver lining of this pandemic that after the first few months of people politicizing everything and hating each other, we’re now in this stage of “all in this together now, I suppose”
People just feel…kinder. The people who have chosen to stay in the city and not move out have this feeling of closeness to them that I don’t feel with others.
I guess it makes sense to feel close to people who are going through a shared experience, but I feel that in a deep way right now.
I’ve been out on dates where people mention they might leave the city for a bit, and my heart always aches when I hear that. Granted, I might go down to Florida for a bit in the winter, but it’s not pre-meditated. I want to be here for as long as I possibly can, because it’s still the greatest city despite what’s happening right now.
I had a date with a guy last week who told me all about the underground dungeon and kink scene in New York. I had a goodbye dinner with Crisca and her friends at this fancy French restaurant and after ordering an $18 cocktail we saw a rat run by on the roof. You only get that in New York!
I was carrying a mirror to my apartment the other day and offered a homeless man $20 to help me carry it. He said maybe he was free in the afternoon (it was 11am when I asked) so I had to walk it back alone to my place pausing at every block to rest and you only get that in New York!
I woke up hungover yesterday morning and I left the apartment in a nightgown, bought some chips, and ate the chips on the sidewalk as my breakfast as people walked by with their dogs. I met my delusional old neighbor the other day and she kept telling me intimate details about her boyfriend during our first meeting.
These are all the things that make me love New York. It’s not Broadway. It’s not paying $53 for a fancy dinner in Tribeca indoors. It’s the small things, the energy, the landmarks and the city itself.
New York is not a shell of itself right now. It’s still here - you just have to view it from a different perspective.
Until the next one,
S