New York, I Still Love You
Well this is a totally weird time to be celebrating another year of living in New York but when I saw the end of August approaching I knew I wanted to sit down and write my yearly love letter to this city.
I first moved to NYC when I transferred to Barnard and I remembered being completely over the moon. I had figured I’d move here after graduation but to get to arrive earlier than scheduled felt like I had won the lottery.
For three years while I was in college I squeezed every little moment out of being in the city that I could think of whether it was hiking down from Morningside Heights to the Lower East Side just so I could do my homework in the coolest coffee shop to interning at magazines every spring and summer (and also working a retail job to actually make money) to start building connections in the industry I was hoping to end up in.
So much has changed since then and putting the pandemic aside for a moment, I couldn’t have even predicted that this time last year I’d be working full-time at Jumprope. I felt like by creating this blog on the side, offering to do Snapchat takeovers at Nylon and creating a weekly column for Interview’s website were all extra work on top of my responsibilities as a print editor. But considering how everything unfolded I’m so grateful I listened to the voice in the back of my head that was telling me to learn more about the digital space for creating. Even as a forever lover of print magazines, I could feel the shift happening and decided to dive in.
Now fast forward and here we are in 2020, a year which has completely shaken up the world I knew and the city I love. I feel like every time I open my Instagram feed I see another influencer who is sharing a photo of themselves in an empty room with a caption that reads something like “surprise! I’m a Cali girl now!”
Obviously everyone has their own personal circumstances, myself included. In the beginning I was fully prepared to ride out this pandemic from my one bedroom apartment but I left New York at the end of March when I learned my dad had Covid-19 to be with my mom. I honestly didn’t picture being gone for more than two weeks since I had only left with a backpack with maybe four or five days worth of clothes. I didn’t end up returning to New York until July and while I am so glad I was able to be home and be with my family,I felt a little bit of guilt that I didn’t experience New York at its most vulnerable.
Did being gone during such an (I hate this word but) unprecedented time mean that I wasn’t a real New Yorker? My time away was certainly no vacation, but it did give me space and pulled me out of the center of the pandemic at the time so I could be with my mom.
My dad is thankfully home now and getting back to himself more and more each day, and I finally felt ready to come back to the city. I have honestly loved being back in New York and have felt more like myself in the last 30 days than I have since March. I love every inch of our one bedroom apartment, our neighborhood, and the energy of waking up here every day.
Truthfully, my love for New York hasn’t changed, and has even grown as I’ve watched business owners make swift adjustments to their business models, or in many cases their actual infrastructure, to accommodate ways for people to safely spend money with them. I remember back in April feeling sad that I couldn’t order takeout from some of my favorite restaurants even though I wanted to support them.
Then I saw on Instagram that Dan & John’s (arguably the best wings in NYC) was allowing people to place orders of wings for hospital workers. It was a win-win to support a business I loved and give back to everyone who was working long hours under crazy circumstances in these hospitals to help Covid patients.
This is just one example of the tenacity of New Yorkers who will always try whatever it takes to find a way to make it work. However, I get that you probably chose your current apartment because of its proximity to the subway and your favorite bar. Maybe you chose a smaller apartment because before you’d mainly be sleeping there—not working, exercising, virtually hanging out with friends, and looking for new hobbies there in addition to sleeping. Or maybe you were one of millions of Americans who lost their job and have decided that it’s time for an intermission in the New York chapter of your life while you reassess.
Whether your time away is temporary or you’ve decided that you’re ready for something else, know that your decision is valid. Before all of this I definitely used to judge anyone who wanted to leave New York because selfishly I just wanted all of the people I love to be here in one place.
As I think you can conclude from this very long blog post, I personally don’t believe that New York is “over” but I won’t shame or judge anyone who decides to head elsewhere during this time. And while I’ve always been of the mindset that New York City would be my forever home, and I would very much still like to be here when I’m 90, I am doing something now that truly terrifies me— I’m keeping an open mind about the future.
Why? Because maybe I would like a second bedroom somewhere to have a little more room to create. And maybe because it’s not just about me anymore. Don’t worry, I’m not packing up my life here anytime soon, but I am letting myself be receptive to new ideas of what my life could look like. If I’ve learned anything this year it’s that we only have one and it would be silly not to try to make it the absolute best it could be.
yours,
Austen
Photos above by Emily Polner and Victoria Saperstein