Well THAT was a 180.
When I was younger: a teenager and a college kid, I used to hate New York. My dad would bring me up for the day to see a Broadway show, and while I loved spending time with him, Manhattan was so insane and commercial and absurd, I could barely stand it. Later on when I went to visit my friend Anna at NYU I felt that same mixture of overwhelmed and intimidated.
Things started to swing in the other direction after college. I would come to visit friends in the city and stay longer, in more out of the way places. I started to experience New York closer to how a local would- I knew it better now and it wasn’t so intimidating anymore.
In the past couple of years I’ve been up to New York dozens of times. My best friends live here, I met my fiance here. I feel comfortably here finally.
And now, after a week of cat-sitting in Brooklyn and running around the city pretending to be a local I can come clean:
I kind of really wish I lived in New York City.
Feels good to put that out there! As I mentioned in my last post, every time I visit New York I love it more and more. There’s always some new viewpoint to explore or new restaurant to try or a new site to see.
A lot of our friends now live in or near New York. Mike’s have always been there, he is a Jersey Boy after all. Many of mine have been migrating up from DC in the past couple years. Some of my best friends are now New Yorkers and I love coming to the city to catch up with them. Not to mention the plethora of travel blogger buddies who live in the city.
Additionally, New York may be the greatest city in the world for international food and culture. For a couple of foodies like us it’s paradise with it’s enormous collection of authentic restaurants: real Indian food, Cuban food, Chinese, Italian, Thai can all be easily obtained. There’s always new places to try and neighborhoods to explore. Fact is that if you have a permanent case of wanderlust like myself, you could do worse than to live in New York, where just about every culture in the world has representation if you look hard enough.
So yeah, I could live here happily- riding the subway, eating local, going out for cocktails with my girlfriends. I can totally envision that life, I think Mike could too. We were both a bit melancholy on our bus ride out of town. Both wondering when we could get back to visit the big city.
Maybe our nesting instinct is starting to kick in. We ARE getting married after all, and after 2-3 years worth of travel we’re starting to rethink the way we experience the world. It would be nice to have a real home base and an apartment of our own in the city. We got a sample of that life this week and it felt really, really nice.
This isn’t a dream I see coming true anytime soon. I’d need to make about 8 times more money then I do right now for starters. And I have other plans, big plans, that don’t involve being tied to a lease in the US just yet. But who knows, maybe someday I’ll get to call New York home.
Hey Steph. I was born and raised in the heart of New York City. I get all kinds of reactions when I tell people that, from “You’re a rare breed!” to “You’re SO lucky!” It’s true that I’m a rare breed; New York is filled with non-natives. But every time I’m told I’m lucky, I hesitate.
Yes, I suppose it is fortunate that I was born in a place where people all over the world, like you, dream about moving to. And at the ripe age of 22, I could probably get away with a few more free years living for totally free at my parent’s beautiful apartment in Downtown Brooklyn. But the irony is that I kind of hate it here!
Like you did when you were younger, I find it overwhelming, commercial and flashy. I can’t stand the way NYers walk around all fashioned up like it’s a runway and screaming on their cell-phones about their first world problems. I can’t stand how huge it is and that most of my friends live so far away that I never see them. Most of all, it bugs the hell out of me that NYers are often under the impression that NYC is the center of the universe and nothing outside of it matters or exists. As a world traveler, you must know that there is so much more to it!
I’m currently working on saving up and developing my travel blog so I can hit the road the hell out of NY. But in the meantime, if you ever need a free place to stay and want a native tour guide, give me a ring!
I was born in DC and everyone tells me I’m a rare breed too (everyone is from somewhere else). You make a really good point that seeing a city as a visitor and a local are really different experiences.
I have yet to visit NYC, but I have always had a stigma about it. It’s the prices that kill me. However, I am finally going next month and I am very excited to give it a chance. My boyfriend is a NYC lover (possibly because he is puerto rican? haha) and would love to live there someday, so I know he is hoping the city will leave a good impression on me.
One of the best songs: Billy Joel – New York State Of Mind