My Year in New York

Everyone tries to write about New York, and everyone fails. Even the great E.B. White could not fully capture the heart of the city. It is a mirrorball with a thousand different edges, always spinning, showing sides you haven’t seen before.

The smell of urine and trash is everywhere. Rain doesn’t wash it away – it just moves it around. Homeless crackheads and panhandlers groan incoherently for money and sleep barefoot on soggy cardboard. Someone is blasting music in a crowded subway car. The trains are delayed or going local instead of express. People yell at each other in public, everyone swears, everyone litters. There is racism and violence, mugging and murder, and in a city full of the guilty, the police are always harassing someone innocent. 

I have to catch two trains and walk twelve minutes one way to buy a week’s worth of groceries which I carry back in a duffel bag. It’s oppressively cold in winter and hot in summer. The city is an expensive, overcrowded, hostile place that will run you over, not out of malevolence, but indifference. It doesn’t know you exist and it doesn’t care.

But there’s another New York. Midtown at night, walking the streets tipsy and watching the lights bleed into a kaleidoscope of living color. The city unfolds, presenting itself full of benevolence and potential. Broadway is here: rows of theaters with sold out performances every night of the week. The stars who play these stages came from these streets, and they still exit the stage door at night to sign autographs. Six figure salaries are here for the taking, as is dollar pizza. New York is where it’s happening. Everywhere else is nowhere; this is where it’s at.

I’ve met an incredible community in the city – people who love Jesus, love art, and love each other. We’re broke, but there’s something romantic and bohemian about it that makes up for the discomfort. Comfort is overrated, anyway. I’ve been sleeping on the floor and living out of a suitcase in a house with five other people, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be and nothing I’d rather be doing. 

I’ve found my people and my places. My spots in Central Park, my coffee shop, my bookstore, my pub. I’ve seen plays, gone to acting class, listened to my New York City playlist, and stood clear of the closing doors. I’m grateful every day that I get to be here and be a part of this. I don’t know if it will last, or for how long, or what will come next. After the COVID years, it’s hard to reopen one’s heart and trust again. But this year has meant the world to me, and I just want to say what so many have said when all other words have failed: 

New York, I love you. 

J.

March 13, 2024