It feels a bit wrong to say New York is home at this point. It’s been four years now since I moved to the UK, and while London doesn’t quite feel like home yet, New York just feels like the place I came from, a place I happen to know.
I’ve only been back a handful of times, but this last trip really felt more like being just a visitor than before. Since I was in town for work, I stayed at a swank hotel in Chelsea — the Maritime. I’ve never stayed in a hotel in New York before, just my own place when I lived here, or crashing with friends since I left.
Coming right into Manhattan from the airport, rather than easing into a visit by seeing friends first, is also a bit of a shock. I got in around 11 the first night, but it was such a perfect clear night that I went for a short stroll through the West Village to unwind before the travel fatigue caught up with me. I’m so used to living in Europe now that it felt so unexpected, so preposterous to hear myself surrounded by shouting, laughing, gabbing Americans. Part if it was that these were regular New Yorkers out on a Saturday night, instead of the blandly accented Americans I regularly hear on TV. I was sure I’d stop giggling and eavesdropping once I readjusted. But it was a delicious shock to the system in my weary state that night.
Distance from the everyday hassles of living, working,and subsisting in New York make it a lot easier to appreciate the changes to the city. Before, change always felt like a kind of betrayal of the New York I always loved. Despite the novelty and the improvements that made life better, my overall feeling was that I was constantly losing a sense of place that meant something to me.
Times Square was better when it was a den of sin! The Meat-Packing District was the place for sex clubs and late night food at Florent! My old neighbourhood in Bushwick used to have packs or feral dogs instead of boutiques! What’s up with having a Barney’s in Cobble Hill, anyway? Long-time New Yorkers gripe like this all the time.
Now that I’m just an occasional visitor — neither a tourist nor a resident — I realise that I don’t really miss the city the way it used to be. I miss specific things — graffiti on the subways, CBGB’s, subway tokens, the Lure — but I can see that all those things had their time, and that time has passed. It’s been swept away, just like all the stuff that other people missed before my version of New York happened. I don’t miss an older version of the city quite as much as I miss that moment when I was younger, more reckless, the early version of who I am now. It’s nostalgia, that’s all.
The truth is that the city has been reimagined, reengineered, rebuilt over and over again. My New York was one moment, and now it’s just another moment in a series. And honestly? New York is still fucking amazing, and it’s a lot easier to appreciate that as a visitor, shielded from the day-to-day growing pains.
It’s a luxury, even when I’m not here enjoying the trappings of luxury. I don’t have to deal with the depressing shit like budget crises, Islamaphobia, health insurance, or rejection. (I get my fair share of that in London, anyway.) Now I get to enjoy New York at its best. I get to zip through for a few days at a time, seeing my best friends there, walking and seeing what’s new, eating food and buying stuff I can’t get as cheaply — or can’t get at all — in England. It’s willfully uncritical, perhaps, but turning a blind eye to the New York that once wore me down and embracing the New York that always enchanted me is a lot better for my morale.
BRAVO! Well said and exactly what I had hoped you’d feel about NYC after the fact. BTW: Didn’t mention how lovely it was to see your family, ya bitch. LOL
I enjoyed reading your post – my own experience of New York as an annual tourist is very different, but I can relate your feelings about witnessing change in a place and feeling a sense of a loss at “your” version of the city. I got upset the other week in Newcastle when an old toy store that I used to visit a lot as a child wasn’t there any more. It’s a feeling that even though you can go back, you also can’t go back.