New York

Work sent me to New York City in January, for an annual meeting. It’s something I’ve avoided in the past, but I was curious to see what New York City is like these days. The picture painted from the outside is quite grim, but if you learn anything from traveling it’s that the picture you get from outside a place rarely matches what is happening on the ground. If you really want to know what a place is like, you have to go.

I’ve lived in New York City for brief periods of time at various points in my life, all total less than six months, but enough to get a vague sense of the city and long enough to have had a routine here. You have to carve out a life in the city, find those places that, for you, make it not such a massive and overwhelming place. You have to find those parts that become yours. For me that was the area of Manhattan between Broadway and 7th avenue, from just below Houston to about 18th street. This was where I spent the vast majority of my time in NYC.

My girlfriend at the time had an apartment on Minetta, just off 6th avenue. I was working as a photographer and photo retoucher, mostly doing model head shots. It was tedious, boring work, but I could do it anywhere, and in 2001, that felt like a miracle. I’d get done in the evenings and meet her at Tonic, an odd, but wonderful little music club just down from where she worked. It was a strangely idyllic and quiet time and I enjoyed it.

The day I left for New York it was -25F at the cabin, -40F with the wind chill. I ended up spending the night before I left in a hotel in Duluth because I wasn’t sure our car would start in those temps (it did, but barely, several people were stuck at the hotel because their cars wouldn’t start). I’d never seen a plane de-iced before, which as slightly unsettling, but it worked. It was an uneventful flight to New York.

I had a few hours a day to myself in the mornings, which I used to wander the city, see what had changed in my old neighborhood. The Waverly diner, where I used to spend an inordinate amount of time, didn’t seem to have changed at all, aside from upping the prices on the menu. If you can get a good breakfast, the rest of the day takes care of itself.

My old neighborhood felt familiar too, though the restaurants were different, a few businesses had gone, some new ones come in. Encouragingly, two chain stores were gone, replaced by smaller businesses.

The apartment building where I lived seemed completely unchanged, right down to the bum pissing on the street at 6:30 in the morning. Just like it was in 2001. Which is not to say nothing has changed. Tonic is long gone, so are many other places we used go, driven out as rent prices in the area went from high to insane.

But what has really changed is larger than all that. New York just no longer seems relevant in any meaningful way. Not the way it did in the early 2000s when New York seemed like the place to be. Perhaps it’s just not relevant to me. Surely it is still relevant to someone. Surely there are still aspiring musicians and artists flocking to New York. But perhaps not. Who can afford to live in Manhattan anymore? Certainly not starving artists and future stars currently tending bar. There’s no Yeah Yeah Yeahs forming in the East Village these days. And out here in the larger world — it’s been a long time since I heard anyone, anywhere outside of New York say anything nice about it.

I was half expecting the city to be an apocalyptic wasteland, empty streets, newspapers blowing in the wind, but thankfully it’s not that. It feels like a place that has pulled back into itself. The cultural relevancy might be gone, but the city survives. In fact I’d say the city is on the upswing. Or it feels that way when you walk around. I spent most of my time in the financial district, hardly the place you’d go to catch the pulse of the city as it were, in fact, not a place I’d really been before, but that part of the city seems to be thriving. Perhaps that’s why the rest of it isn’t?

The early 2000s heyday of the New York music and art scene that I remember was due in part to the market crash and real estate crash that preceded it. The financial district was a mess, but rent was cheap and creative people flocked to the city. When rents are high like they are today, those that thrive in the liminal spaces of culture go elsewhere. The market thrives, the city does not. Then the market crashes. Rinse and repeat, seemingly forever.

I like knowing that New York is still here, still going. For all that’s happened since I called New York home — September 11th, the Covid mess, and more — the city feels to me like it’s survived with at least its spirit in tact. I have no interest in calling it home these days though, I couldn’t wait to get back to the woods.