a new york minute.
By: Joan Daly
Tags: Friendship, Home, New York, Life, NYC

sheep meadow in all of its glory

Things happen really fast here. The walking, the talking, the glances, the smiles; everyone’s running on their own clock in New York, and that clock is usually 7 minutes ahead of schedule because if you’re early you’re on time, if you’re on time you’re late, and if you’re late don’t bother coming (unless you want to pay for my drinks in reparation). It takes me a quick five to get to my closest subway stop, in which I spare no time being slowed down for anything except the occasional dog spotting.

One fine Tuesday afternoon, a couple approached me extremely timidly, with wide eyes and dad sneakers and a map. They had a map! I hadn’t seen one of those in ages. Even with my headphones in and sunglasses on, I probably still looked the most approachable out of the crowd of old, grouchy Upper East Siders. They spoke to me in broken French, saying, “I am lost” over and over again since it was, well, true. They were supposed to be at Bryant Park and they were instead outside of Bloomingdales. “You’re going to get back on that subway,” I gestured as I removed my headphones and sunglasses so they could see I was a real person, because humanity seemed important in this moment, “and take the F train downtown to 42nd and Bryant Park.” Before I could start blasting The National again they motioned for me to stay. “Wait!” the woman said, then pointing back at the map. “Where can I go to get a gift for my daughter?” I wouldn’t say tourists are any native New Yorkers’ favorite, but something struck a chord in my chest. I spent the next generous five minutes, missing my train, sharing some of the best shops in midtown (read: not many, but some) for them to get their daughter a gift. She was studying to be a doctor at university in France. Eventually we parted ways, the French couple shouting “merci beaucoup” as they descended the subway station, and me shouting back, “de rien” as I decided to walk a bit and window shop before finding another train. In French, “de rien” translates directly to “of nothing,” and maybe that’s what that interaction was.

New York is a lot of things, and this year I finally got to call it home. For what seemed like years of taking the train or bus or Ubers in and out of the city from New Jersey, and even moving coasts for a bit, I could declare citizenship here, with a nice driver’s license to boot without ever having to drive again. I moved into my Upper East Side apartment a full year ago and have been thinking on the grandeur and grime and greatness that is this place that I now feel so at home in.

But of course, there’s that quote: wherever you go, there you are. And I think a lot of places can feel like home. I lived in California for seven years and would be lying to the Internet if I said I never felt home there. But there’s a different, innate sense of peace that someone feels when they are where they’re supposed to be. It’s deep-down, grounding, and natural. A lot of times I sit on my bedroom floor in New York and curl into the tightest ball that I can and stare at my ceiling fan refracting the light shining from my lava lamp my best friend gave me because he knows me way too well. I can sit here for minutes, sometimes almost an hour, feeling small and insignificant in this extremely large island I now call my home. I feel every bit of my body and my soul in a room that I can call my own, something I’ve dreamed about having for a really long time. Sometimes there are happy tears and sad tears and laughter, thinking about what trouble my roommate and I got into the night before, but every time, I sit in silence in my room with the feeling that I am finally so at home in my own body. Each breath feels easier, lighter, than anywhere I’ve ever lived before. Maybe it’s not the physical cities that make us feel at home, but instead, the way they ground our souls to our bodies when we find joy in where we live that makes us feel so connected.

astor place subway at 2:00AM

And there’s millions of people who feel at home here. Or maybe they don’t, and they’re itching in their own skin like it were a wool sweater in the summer to get out of this city and onto the next one. New York is and always has been Hell, but whether you see it as a beautiful one or a terrible one is up to the viewer.

I ride the 6 train a lot to get to SoHo, where I of course shop sample sales and have silly little walks on the cobblestone streets and drink chai lattes from my favorite shop that still sits across from one of my favorite internships with the friendliest staff. And there’s no good way to dress for a New York Summer. Sneakers are of course advised but your feet will feel like they’re catching on fire. Any knit fabric you’ll sweat entirely through. Dresses are nice but then your legs are exposed on public transit. It’s all crap. But you go out anyway because that’s what New Yorkers do; they press on. On this recent subway ride, my hair was plastered to my face as I sat in the train car and I noticed an uptown 5 train running parallel to mine. We were passed by the train in a slow succession of what felt like movie clips. From car to car I saw a different life being lived. A man whose wife had fallen asleep on his shoulder. A family of five toddlers and their parents being wrangled from playing on the poles. Two friends wearing their fraternity shirts and carrying a cooler of what I’d assume to be White Claws heading out for a boys day in Sheep Meadow. A young couple making out in the subway, blissfully nonplussed by a global pandemic and spectators alike. An old woman, alone, reading Cosmopolitan magazine while sipping an iced coffee. A young man in a tank top with beard stubble and an ear piercing who locked eyes with mine, not breaking, probably wondering who I am and what sort of life I lead and who I say goodnight and goodmorning to and what my laugh sounds like and what made me cry most recently. I smiled as the 5 train pulled away and onward.

I’ve been thinking about the in-between recently. How that’s where the magic is in the everyday. Those big, grand moments are never as shiny as you think they’re going to be. The moments that are special are much harder to find.

You can really be anyone you want here, which is incredible for dreamers and a recipe for disaster for people with multiple personality disorder (for the record, I’m the former). Very early into my time here I decided to go on a date, which was big for me, since it’s big for anyone post-pandemic, really. The white negronis at the Murray Hill bar we ended up at were to die for. It’s the only reason I went to Murray Hill, or liked to tell myself. I think the cocktails made time pass exponentially quicker than normal, because three drinks in and all of the sudden we were closing down the bar. Me, closing down a New York City bar on a blind date. Charlotte York who? He smiled and laughed at my jokes and also at things that weren’t jokes but he found cute. He had no idea who I was and I had no idea who he was, and we could make each other out to be whoever we wanted or needed to be. There was magic that night, in how we smiled and winked and really made the bartender think we had been dating for years despite never seeing each other prior to two hours ago. We parted ways, I going uptown and he downtown, and I grinned ear to ear with the promise of a love story. Not with him; we haven’t spoken since that date last autumn. And I think that’s fine with the both of us. The entire night we talked about what we loved about the city, what’s on our post-pandemic New York bucket list, new places to try, parks to run in, and more. This was a first date with New York, and I loved every minute.

fanelli cafe in soho on a mild day

I once was told that, “New Yorkers are not nice, but they’re kind, and Los Angelenos are not kind, but they’re nice.” Having spent time in both cities, there is some truth to that. I’ve seen plenty of people here act like they don’t care about you or anything around them. But then, you’re walking down 2nd Avenue on a hot summer day and you see a young woman drop two full bags of groceries on the street corner. Four people surrounded her, and in collective silence, started to pick up what had dropped from her eco-conscious but not-big-enough-for-her-Gristedes-haul bags. The job was done in record time, and she very politely whispered her thank yous as everyone stood up, nodded, and slammed the crosswalk button impatiently as they wanted to move on with their day. New Yorkers hate being thanked for a good deed more than they hate waiting.

Central Park has been my playground this past year. From day drinks to night walks to free comedy in Sheep Meadow to birdwatching to ice skating, there’s just as much joy there as an adult as I found when I was a child dragging my parents around the zoo to see the sea lions for the 18th time. But most of all, I spend my mornings there jogging and feeling connected to a route that has also formed a sense of home for me. I usually run down my block to the park as opposed to walking there, because I’ve never been the type to not do that, and for a year now I’ve been seeing the same security guard outside of a Temple between Fifth and Madison. At first in the fall, we didn’t acknowledge each other, masked up and protected from interaction from the outside world. By the holidays, we were head-nodding, sometimes even saluting, as I would jog by. Come springtime, he would do the little running man motion when I’d dash by, and I would laugh behind my mask, because it really did make my morning. As summer came and masks were off, I finally got to see his face and he mine, and he started to add clapping and cheering on top of the running man, and I’d be cheesing ear to ear each time from his support.

Finally, after a full year, I stopped at his post. He seemed a little shocked, but happy. I introduced myself and asked for his name. His name is William, and he said that seeing me run everyday brings him joy. I was stunned, not knowing I could have that effect on a complete stranger, and I told him his support gives me the same. He then handed me a travel container of pepper spray and told me to always run straight to the Temple if I’m ever in trouble and he’ll help me out. Tears were welling in my eyes at 7:30AM as I thanked William for his kind words, and said I’d see him soon. I continued home, overwhelmed with gratitude for a stranger’s kindness and care in a city that, on the surface, seemed to be anything but that.

And that’s the thing about this place; there’s more good people in it than you’d think. The news mares the city with danger (and yes Mom and Dad, I do lock my doors and carry an alarm at night and don’t let men I go on dates with see where I live) and the media tells us that only mean, bad, rich people live here. But there are nights where you do sometimes meet a Bad Person and have to turn it into content somehow. I was out on the Lower East Side with my best friend who had just moved to the city. We had a few new friends accompany us for drinks, and one of them turned out to be the grandson of a certain famous dictator and, as you would suspect, acted as such. I’m not sure who started the fighting, but for the greater part of the night I was sharp-tongued sparring, Jersey accent in full force, with a man ten years my senior. He told me and my friend to “look him up on Guest of a Guest” and that “this is the last time he ever hangs out with 26-year-olds” and that “he will blacklist me from every fashion job in New York City.” Imagine this feud outside of Grey Lady on Delancey surrounded by Millennials who are too many drinks in to actually care, but drunk enough to film this because it would be funny on TikTok or their Instagram Story. He eventually then asked for a ride home and my friend and I whisked ourselves away in an Uber never to see the dick-tator again, unless it’s on a Saturday morning grabbing a coffee from Matto uptown, and then, we’d run the other way and pay the extra $2 for Starbucks.

a lower east side day drink

But there are good people too. Sometimes they’re your friends. Well, I’d hope most of the time they are. But it’s you and your friends and you’re riding in the back of a taxi cab at 1:00AM and you love taxi cabs and you stick your hands out the window like you’re 6 and 16 and 26 all at the same time and wind is messing up your tangled, brown hair and the air feels crisp because it’s springtime and the world is waking up after a long year of solitude. You laugh in the face of the night and all of its misfortune, how the guy you wanted to talk to was with another girl and how another won’t text you back and that’s all fine because you have your friends and you have yourself. My friend is saying he met someone he really likes and hopes it works out and I say I hope it does too, because he deserves it. He turned to me and his look was infused earnest compassion and tequila and said, “You deserve a good person too, Joan. There’s some good people in this city.” I looked back at him and stopped humming along to the Fleetwood Mac song I queued on the aux I made the driver give me. “And you’re a good person too,” he said.

Maybe we just need to be reminded of that sometimes. We’re good people who are just trying to exist in this larger-than-life-city that makes us feel like home or far from home or somewhere in-between; most of us sit somewhere in-between. You can’t come to a city, especially one like New York, and just expect it to make you feel at home. But you can live here, spend time here, struggle here, fall in love here, fall out of love here, and sit on the floor of your bedroom here when you’re feeling small, and eventually start to feel more at home with yourself than you’ve ever been in your entire life. We spend years trying to fight who we are and be new people and work for new bodies and change our gut instincts on things to please the masses but at the end of the day, we’re all we have when we’re staring at ceiling fans and lava lamps and sticking our hands out the window of a taxi cab on a ride home past the vastness that is this city and this life.