I moved to New York City two years ago, in May of 2017. I was moving from Baltimore, and more specifically from my parents’ house, where I had been living for a couple of months. At the time, although I knew that being back in my childhood room was only temporary, the thought of spending so much concentrated time with my parents, after living on my own for four years at Wake Forest and for a year in Baltimore, was difficult to accept. I am an independent person, and was chafing at the constant conversation and questioning that living at home brought. There were no thrown dishes, or full-blown tantrums, but the fighting and rude comments had been steadily increasing as the months went by and so, by the time spring rolled around, I was ready to go. I wanted out of Baltimore.
Back then, in the spring of my second year of true adulthood, it was moving that appealed to me, in its most generic form. I am convinced I would have been happy to move anywhere, so long as it involved change and the idea of a personal challenge. Even admitting to a slight rewriting of my own history, there was certainly an element of restlessness in the move; I wanted to do something different, and being back in my hometown, with my parents, was anything but that. I was moving to New York, but New York didn’t feel all that important to me.
I was not like others who move to New York from elsewhere, I told myself. Those people wanted to come to New York itself; they were excited about the subway, late night foods and nightclubs. They were the people who intentionally moved to the Lower East Side because it was “close to everything,” and at that point I didn’t care too much for everything when it meant brunch and dark, crowded bars. As a 24 year old, I knew what awaited me in New York – had spent weekends Ubering to hell and back for the promise of a good time, jostling through crowds to get a beer – and I didn’t feel particularly excited for any of it. I had an idea in my head of what it looked like to want to go to New York, of the type of person who would want that, and I didn’t feel anything like them.
I was actually moving to be with my girlfriend, Anne. At that point, Anne and I had been long-distance for as long as I had been out of college, and if there was something I wanted more than to escape Baltimore it was to get back in the same place as Anne. A year younger than me, Anne had still been at Wake that first year, so the city I was in didn’t matter much, but after she moved to New York all I could think of was moving. Like most who grow up in Fairfield County, Connecticut, there was never any question of which city Anne would return to after college, and with no concrete plans of my own it was only natural I would follow her to New York when I could. I continued to work for about a year in Baltimore, half heartedly entering and exiting the job-search a couple of times before finding a finance role at American Express at the end of April.
So I moved. In my memory of the move, all the deliberation has vanished. I simply found a job in the city and made the leap, so singular was my focus on being with Anne. I honestly don’t know how other people choose the cities where they live as adults, but for me, there was no cost of living analysis, or consideration of the weather; I didn’t ask anyone I knew or give thought to the job market. New York was just a move. I did it for Anne and for this abstract notion of change (i.e. no parents, no hometown), and also partly because I had friends living in the city at the time, and potentially because I felt I needed something bigger. What that was, and how New York was supposed to provide it, didn’t seem to matter too much, but I definitely had a sense that leaving home would coincide with a breakthrough of some kind.
Being from Baltimore, a city that has long been in the shadow of not just New York but Washington DC and Philadelphia, I hated telling people where I was going. Some people got uncomfortable, for whatever reason, and said things like “oh I could never handle all that energy, good for you!” and “the subway is just too confusing!” I felt kind of embarrassed, both for them and for my city, that New York was making us so insecure. All of these people were perfectly successful, cultured – whatever positive attribute you like – but the idea of someone leaving for something else put them on the offensive. I was reminded of friends who wait for others to order before choosing a drink. I wanted to make them feel better and tell them how little I cared to be moving to the Big Apple.
For the most part I preferred those people to my family, who were constantly beaming at the idea of me spreading my wings and forcing my move into conversation at every possible opportunity. It would be one thing if they had been self-sufficient in their pride, if they had been able to describe my move on their own, but they were constantly forgetting what part of the city I would be living in and where that was in relation to either 1) Broadway 2) Central Park or 3) the Soho restaurant they’d eaten at four years ago, and so I was constantly having to step in and provide details to friends and neighbors. As anyone who has moved to New York can attest, a conversation about moving to the city invites unwanted suggestions of reconnecting with pretty much anyone who has ever been in your life: old teammates, third cousins, and your mom’s coworker Lisa’s son, all of whom live in an unnamed borough and work at an unnamed company but with whom you are told you share a lot in common. In those moments I wished I were moving to Boise, or Tulsa, if only to eliminate the chance some loose acquaintance of my parents decided to ask me any follow ups:
“Did I tell you Emmett’s moving?” “That’s great, where are you moving?” “Boise.” “Oh, nice. Anyway…”
I was generally pretty surprised at how much of a homebody each Baltimorean I knew turned out to be when it came to moving cities. It felt at times like I was rubbing people’s faces in my escape from the “backwaters” of Baltimore and at other times like they were rubbing my face in my own stupidity for leaving. I instinctively knew that Baltimore and New York were very different but apparently did not appreciate that fact enough, and with each subsequent conversation I began to feel more and more as though this move was supposed to mean something more than it did. My reunion with Anne was the only thing I could really think about, and so I entirely missed the part where I was supposed to feel excited about my great leap into the unknown; I was supposed to yearn for the energy and promise of New York. To me it all felt so disassociated from the city itself, but to others I was making a great leap. A personal, professional, maybe even spiritual one. I should have recognized that.
That was largely my mindset in May of 2017 when I arrived: a sort of blasé excitement. I came to the city and just existed in my new environment. My new job began and I took the subway there, made some poor lunch choices early on before I knew better and felt compelled to be social afterwards with college friends. I made the idiotic decision to walk from my office in Battery Park to Soho after work one night in a new pair of stiff dress shoes, losing what seemed like an inch of skin off the back of my heel in the process. I explained to colleagues and friends for the thousandth time where I was living (East Village, south of Union Square, on 10th Street, between 3rd and 4th Ave), how long my commute was (25 minutes) and was told in response that “wasn’t too bad”. To me it didn’t feel too bad, given it was pretty much the same as my commute into downtown Baltimore, but typically I just agreed and listened to war stories of more carefree days spent going out in my new neighborhood.
I began to recognize that this, these unglamorous exchanges, were very much a part of New York. It seemed as though everyone should carry around a special type of ID or name tag, indicating: College, borough, neighborhood, job, roommate situation, and whether or not they are from New York. To that last point, I learned that New Yorkers answer the question “are you from New York?” by saying “born and raised,” as though there is something different about being raised here than simply living here a long time. I often felt as though it were used as a justification of sorts for sour attitudes and grisly demeanors. “I was f***ing raised here, goddammit, cut me some slack!”
A month or so into my new life, I began to feel self-conscious about my existence in the city. I had not really seen much of anything. My movements across Manhattan fell within a diagonal band from the teens on the east side to the water by the Staten Island ferry. I had met my cousin for dinner in the West Village, and I’m sure Anne and I had gone out to eat a few times. I’d been to a few bars I wasn’t crazy about as well. But in the end nothing felt deliberate; I felt like I might as well be eating in the lobby restaurant of a Radisson, or shopping at a strip mall. I was missing something about the city that others – at least imagined others – were somehow getting.
I think consultants and salesmen probably feel this way about the cities they visit. They may spend a few months in Chicago, or LA, and feel pretty knowledgeable about the neighborhood where they stay and the restaurants where they eat, but nothing feels deliberate (or maybe everything feels extremely deliberate). They get off the plane, go to a client’s location, Uber back to the hotel, and go off to some Michelin starred restaurant they’ve always wanted to try. They feel they’re absorbing the weight of the city around them, but after five months they come home for good and feel as though they were never there.
I myself have experienced this traveling. I’m sure there’s a better way to say it, but it all boils down to preparedness: When I’ve prepared to travel somewhere, when I’ve done the research, I feel much more connected to the place than when I haven’t prepared at all. When I first arrived in Buenos Aires, at the start of my study-abroad semester, I knew nothing about the city. I stumbled around for weeks, eating overpriced chicken milanesa and empanadas, completely ignorant of the parillas and Italian restaurants I was missing. When I finally discovered a bit of that world (thanks to some great food blogs) I felt like a moron, like I had wasted a precious opportunity. Later, on trips to Peru, Thailand, Norway and Colombia, I made sure to keep my back pocket full of unique things to do. I had implicitly vowed to myself to never stumble blindly through a new place again.
It was with that backdrop, a month or so into my unfulfilled time in New York, that a coworker mentioned they were doing a 10K race on an island somewhere in the city. At that point I was only familiar with Staten Island and Ellis Island, and I was pretty sure they had referenced neither, so it seemed like something worthwhile, a good opportunity to see something new. I enjoyed running, and wanted to explore. I knew that endless surprises were supposedly awaiting me throughout the five boroughs, and here was my chance to discover one, so later, back at my desk, I searched “10K race island New York” and signed up for a 4th of July race on Governor’s Island. As it turned out, my coworker had been referring to a later race on Roosevelt Island, but as I was too embarrassed to acknowledge my slip up – or mad at myself for not double-checking the location – I said I had signed up for the same race and hoped we wouldn’t cross paths again (we didn’t).
The race itself was nothing special, but it was important because it brought me to Governor’s Island. On the morning of the race, I took the R from 8th Street down to Whitehall Street, and then caught a ferry to the island itself. Waiting in line for a spot on one of the boats, which were making off-schedule back and forth runs specifically for the race, I picked up my first New Yorker skill: Using headphones to appear unapproachable. It was painfully obvious that the neon- and spandex-clad people in running shoes were on their way to the race, but that didn’t stop a few morons from coming up to me and asking whether the line was for the Governor’s Island 10K, and by the third or fourth person I had put my headphones in and was staring intently at my shoes. I was pretty proud of myself.
Governor’s Island is a very unique place. It can’t be more than 500 yards away from the southern tip of Manhattan, and so the ferry ride is 90 percent boarding and ten percent actual travel. When you arrive, the boat unloads onto an upward sloping, funnel shaped path, which makes it feel like you are breaching the island. It’s the type of place that immediately conjures images of epic snowball fights or paintball wars. I didn’t absorb too much of my surroundings that day, but on return trips since then I have learned that Governor’s Island has a ton of things to do. There are a handful of food vendors, a Starbucks, a teaching farm with goats and chickens, old police barracks, a high school, abandoned brick mansions, a glamping site, lavender fields, hammocks, a junkyard for kids, Cooper’s hawks and hummingbirds, and every shape, size and shade New Yorker you could imagine. To me, Governor’s Island is most special simply for how much wonder it packs into its small size. It is only 172 acres, but if ten friends spent the day on the island doing their own thing I bet the overlap would be minimal.
After that day, I felt a bit of pride that the city was gradually becoming mine. I had been to Governor’s Island and my friends and Anne hadn’t. I described what it was in theory, but held back on things for myself: sitting on the porches of the old mansions, the towering height of the lavender, the immaculate view of Manhattan and how the buildings seem to grow straight from the island’s grass fields. It felt like mine, and while I wanted people to know about it and go I was happy to be the one sharing its secrets.
There was no come-to-Jesus moment. I was an experienced traveler by that point, and with the fading memory of Argentina having been replaced by more successful travels I simply recognized New York for what it was: a world class destination. I had been uninterested in the world-class nightlife, jaded by everybody’s competitive drive, and yet one trip to Governor’s Island and I was reminded of the sheer scale of New York. A city of skyscrapers and subway tracks, and yet here stood this isolated island I had heard nothing about, with so much to offer.
I no longer felt so much like a stranger in a far off land. I had been somewhere unique in New York and I wanted more. The city was mine to discover. The next weekend I went to the Met, because I had to start somewhere, and among an otherwise routine visit found a very pleasant fountain in the Japanese wing I would later show my Dad. I began to run up the east river path and discovered the dead end under the UN building, which was a great place to both turn around and feel extremely small in the world. I told friends that they had to see the giant public pool by Harlem Hill in Central Park; that there was a strip of murals in Bushwick that rivaled the Berlin Wall; that there was an oasis of hand-pulled noodles by Sunset Park.
After two years in the city I continue to crave these moments. I am part of mostly Manhattan-centric friend groups, so Prospect Park and the Grand Army Plaza were magical discoveries I kept to myself until I could convince someone to run there with me. The Frank Lloyd Wright room at the Met was like that. So was crossing the George Washington Bridge, exploring Fort Tyron Park, shopping at the J Mart in Flushing, getting Belorussian food in Brighton Beach and walking the Coney Island boardwalk. All were gradual discoveries I made to try to claim New York as my own.
Even so, after two years in the city, I still don’t feel like I belong. I am constantly caveating the enjoyment I get out of New York with all my perceived downsides: it’s expensive; the trash is covered with more trash; I don’t want to raise city kids; I need a car to escape on the weekends; where is the grass? I moan about the rusty, rotting subway, even as it ferries me to East Harlem and Roosevelt Island, and practically anywhere else I want to go. I ridicule all of the New Yorkisms, like “I feel like I was away all summer” and “that’s such an intern bar” and yet I was away for most of the summer and I absolutely avoid places with certain stigmas.
Two years and twenty plus visits (and another 10K) later, Governor’s Island is changing. There are many more locals and tourists alike, and the food cart infrastructure has expanded to support them. The Starbucks now has a very conspicuous sign alerting you to its presence, where before it had none. There is talk of a spa being built in an overgrown grassy field, potentially blocking one of the best views of lower Manhattan. On one of my latest visits, a fellow ferry passenger told me that the island had been sold to private interests. This was later debunked by one of the volunteers at Earth Matter, the teaching farm, but still I felt as though the city were conspiring to change this place I had discovered and was possibly coming to love.
Am I allowed to feel that way? I didn’t move to New York for the magic. I know that people do, that there are artists and bankers and hipsters who all move here knowing it’s the only place they want to be, but there was none of that in my decision to come. I came for a girl. Outside of that, I came to the city in order to leave another one. Where some seem so convinced, I was indifferent. After two years of indifference, however, I have to admit that I have found magic here. I am now, at the very least, a seasoned tourist in this city. Throughout the pulsing urban sprawl of New York, I have found small pockets of magic, places that I have come to know fairly well. In the Whitney, for example, it’s much faster to just take the stairs, but it can get incredibly hot during the winter so you are better off dumping all your layers at the coat check. You can run pretty much uninterrupted from DUMBO to Astoria.
But what if that changes? As I spend more time here I feel the paranoia creep in. “I’m becoming one of them,” I warn myself. I am starting to think that New York really is special, that it offers a lot to anyone willing to go and find it, and that dependence scares me. How am I supposed to respond to change in a city I’m reluctant to call home? With a New Yorker’s bitterness? With a shrug of my shoulders? Should I feel lucky to have seen New York at its prime?
This is living in New York. Changes that may span decades elsewhere hit us in a year, or six months. My favorite Thai place is my favorite until its swallowed whole by this hungry city and another restaurant takes its place. Governor’s Island changed in two years. It’s still the place I love but its newer, maybe better. That is an unsettling realization when New York is home. You want so much to feel like you’re growing accustomed to all of the nuance and then it’s new again, you’re back at square one and left with limbo where there should have been stability.
I would like for all the beautiful places I’ve stumbled upon in two short years to stay exactly where they are. I want to take my dad back to Russ & Daughters, and run back to that dead end platform by the UN. I hope, if I ever get back there, that I’ll still be able to run across the RFK Bridge. These are all ways I have been able to adjust myself to an unknown city and an unknown future. But without change this place would get stale. I love New York because of its infinite possibilities, its newness, and that comes from forever remaining a tourist in my own city.