One year in New York
good, bad, in-between thoughts
Hello, I wrote this thing about being in New York for about a year, so I won’t be sending any links this weekend.
If you’re new here, I usually share more about creativity and books and things like that, but this is about being in New York City for one year.
The big slice of apple for empire states. Or something.
Grab your pizza, pasta or bagel and settle down…
The lease in our apartment started on August 15, 2023, so it’s been over a year. But on August 15, I was in the warm climes of Florida and it felt disrespectful to write a year review while somewhere else, though I’m not the first New Yorker (blah) to ever travel to Florida. It’s a well-worn path.
If I was a good diarist I would have been collecting scraps of insight for you all year, but I’m not a good diarist, and I don’t want you reading my diary anyway.
But New York City. Manhattan.
There’s a lot unsaid here, both consciously and subconsciously sublimated, but okay here we go:
The good things:
The weather is better than I expected.
Moving here, I was concerned about the winter.
And as a lifelong Southerner, it’s not great.
But the city doesn’t get that much snow, and they do everything they can to clear it quickly.
It’s not great walking in the cold, but you just need a proper coat (which I didn’t really have before).
There are hot days, and they aren’t as bad as New Yorkers make them sound, especially compared to the South.
There were 50-degree days in May. The humidity is fine.
There aren’t tornadoes (no matter what that one scene in *Twisters* tells you). It doesn’t even rain that often.
It’s nice to find whatever you want.
I met a friend for lunch, and we agreed on a nearby Thai place. The price wasn’t cheap but not too bad, especially for lunch. And it had a Michelin star! Crazy.
Then you can walk down the block and get Korean fried chicken, bao buns, pizza, and bagels, of course.
And several locations of high-end clothing boutiques if that’s your thing. I like shopping at Uniqlo. And the Strand.
The food is good. Daily Provisions is tasty, Levain is solid, Magnolia Bakery is great, Balthazar was good.
Speakeasys in the back of burrito places is funny to me.
I had been to the Whitney a bunch of times before moving here, and even set part of my novel PLS ADVISE there so to get a membership and to attend a meh-Biennial felt like a real New York thing. This was nice and convenient and awesome.
It’s nice not to park.
I enjoy going to a Yankees game or a Nets game or to a Broadway show and never worry about parking. In most cities, that’s a good 30 minutes of finding your spot and making your way in.
It’s great to pop out of the subway and be (generally) close to where you want to be.
I feel like I need a car about once every 6 weeks.
Trains make sense. You can ride them and get where you need to go. But I’m not advocating for trains everywhere—this really is a habit and a forcing function at that. I do think everyone here would (mostly) prefer a car, the setup makes it hard.
The diversity is refreshing.
The church I attend up here is a big part of this, but it’s been humbling and great to meet people from all over the world. People who have lived in Singapore or Dubai or Nigeria or Korea or Italy or Scotland or Australia. People with family members in the Phillipines or Hong Kong or Australia or China or Canada or the Dominican Republic.
Then layer in the ethnic diversity within those places, too. It’s been fun to hear of different cultures that I haven’t been exposed to in other parts of my life.
What’s kinda crazy too is that a few people think I’m an oddity as well. “You lived in the South your whole life? What’s it like down there? Where’s your accent?”
Sometimes it’s okay to be forced together.
I’m going to contradict this statement below, but I understand now why there are so many stories and novels and films that come from New York. You run into differences. You run into nutty situations. You run into odd bedfellows. You press these things together and new ideas do form.
That part is exciting. It’s intoxicating.
The in-between things:
Wait, your ambition is showing.
There’s a weird energy. Most people consider this a New York hustle, or something similar, the relentless striving toward capitalism. I don’t really feel like people are super invested in making the world a better place; it just is. But then, is anyone trying to make the world a better place? How’s that going?
Oblivious to the important micro-niches.
This may have some element of FOMO to it, but the complete obliviousness that we all collectively have—that something important is going on somewhere, right here within five miles—yet it may only interest a small sliver of people.
For example, I know where the NBA office is, and I’m a huge NBA fan. Important things that I care about are happening right over there!
And then a TV show!
And then we just keep going because some of us care, and some of us don’t. And it’s New York, so there’s Sony Music, or ABC News, or my wife saw Robin Roberts in the elevator, and NASDAQ? Ok. Important decisions are made everywhere, but you don’t know about it, but maybe not important to you, at least not right now. Just keep chugging along.
There’s also a random important person picking up their dog’s poop off the sidewalk, and you don’t know they are important, because we’re all important in our own small worlds anyway.
Not great things:
The work culture.
It’s so hard to express these things about New York because everyone has heard them before. Because of the cost, you have to keep working. You can’t stop. I’m sure for a lot of people, it is about achievement, but for the average person, it feels like you’re just trying to survive.
People treat it like it’s disposable.
For people with means, they either stay in the city for a very short time and then move to the suburbs, or they leave the metro area altogether for Dallas or Atlanta or wherever. They get their grad degree in New York City living while in their 20’s and then leave. There’s not a long-term mindset with that.
For all the reasons listed here, I may end up being one of these people, I don’t know. And we never know how life will come at us. But I think a lot of people have arrived with that mindset, that they’re on their way out from when they arrive, making community investment difficult.
The cost of walking around.
A Nashville person told me their Brooklyn friend said that you get taxed every time you walk out your door. $10 here, $10 there. That part is essentially true. Because of the conveniences, the temptation to spend is omnipresent.
Things cost more.
So I live in one of the most expensive places in the world. I pay more to live here, and then things cost more when I go to a restaurant or the grocery store. The grocery store near me costs more than one in Harlem or Queens. I’ve been to them.
So the rent is more, and the cost of living is more, and then you have access to more events and sites that cost more.
You can see how it quickly adds up.
What I’m really talking about is income inequality.
Because of the closeness, the differences are stark. In my zip code, there is a $30 million penthouse with homeless people on the street. It seems to be more stark in Manhattan than elsewhere.
I finally understood why all these financial ads show people on trains and stuff, even though most of the country doesn’t take a train.
This is where the wealth is.
To be in the top 10% of earners in the city, you need to make about $440,000, which is a two-year-old stat.
And making $100,000 is equivalent to $36,000.
Living here is like a small startup—you have a limited runway, and you’re not sure how long you’re gonna last.
People are not nice.
Yes, you will meet nice people, but on average, people aren’t nice. They yell at each other.
Everyone is on edge. Everyone gets bumped. Everyone gets jostled.
The city is heavy. The people with means get a house out of the city for the weekend because you need somewhere to go.
It doesn’t make sense for how big America is for this number of people to live this closely together.
When I’m back in Nashville or at my in-laws’ or my parents’, and walking around, I’ll say hi to people. But it’s often because there’s maybe two or three people on a residential street at a time.
Here, that’s impossible. As it would be in downtown Nashville, Atlanta, or somewhere else. But here, that’s everywhere.
The schlepping.
My friend Michael, who was born in Jersey and then lived in the city for 10+ years, mentioned this to me. It was disorienting to see young men in golf shirts carrying huge bags of golf clubs through downtown city streets. They are on their way somewhere else, yet have to take this crazy circuitous route where no eye can see a golf course. And then similarly, I’m carrying my tennis racket an hour away just for a better chance at courts. This was very frustrating to me at the beginning, but I’ve gradually grown to accept it.
But then you see people carrying couches on bicycles or rolling a set of chairs on a skateboard.
There is limited space.
It’s a crucible. How high can we go in such a small space? How many people can we pack in here? How deprived can we be of nature? What is everyone’s breaking point?
There’s a lot I haven’t done yet!
These things are on my list:
Staten Island
Gray’s Papaya
JG Melon
The Guggenheim
MoMA (crazy, I haven’t been yet)
Brooklyn Museum
Prospect Park
SNL
A whole bunch of saved restaurants in Brooklyn…
All of this is, obviously, only my opinion.
Many people have had way different experiences than me in this city.
We’re still here.
We moved here because of my wife’s job, a dream job of sorts, and we’re here. Only God knows how long (that’s true for all of us).
But as always…
Keep going-
Josh Spilker
Love this. Funny and insightful. Just like a New Yorker!