For NYC DWELLERS

Did you ever feel like you needed to defend living in NYC? The conversation can be easily triggered, like a mouse trap or a relative asking that provocative question once again regarding your urban lifestyle.

Friends come to visit, excited to see you and “experience the city.” You go food shopping for them, do a heavy cleaning and may even splurge on tickets to a musical! Seemingly, within hours, the grievances commence, slowly and measured at first, gradually without restraint. The crowds, constant car horns, screaming sirens, smelly garbage everywhere and the “DANGER” of walking the streets at night. You can’t help but to think to yourself, “How many more days will they be staying?” We as New Yorkers are use to walking miles each day, one of the attractions of living in NYC. Be careful when your visitor asks, “How many blocks away is the restaurant ?” Your concept of “not far”, could mean 10 blocks, too much for the car riding visitor.

During the Spring of 2020, NYC was referred to as the “epicenter of the pandemic.” Most of the reasons we lived in NYC were no longer available. Walking freely, going to stores and restaurants, attending cultural events. Our outdoor space consisted of the roof of our apartment building. So, like approximately 131,000 NYC dwellers, we escaped the lock down in the city to, so we thought, the freedom of the suburbs. This was one of the worst decisions ever! It was so un stimulating that even my dog would sit for hours looking out the window for signs of life. Yes it was clean, quiet and uncrowded but I found myself grieving and longing for the city. I would easily exchange the screaming sirens for the blasting drone of the leaf blowers.

After a long three years, I came home.

I remember in the first few weeks I would sit in one of the chairs near my office in the Flatiron district and listen to the subway noise as if it were a Chopin Nocturne!