I will note that perhaps the most jarring "things have changed" part about going to NYC was flying through the new Terminal B at LaGuardia. I used to comment that I'd been through bus stations nicer than LGA, quite seriously, so I was shocked to find that instead of a dank, crowded hole with tarps hung from a grid ceiling to catch the leaks from above, I was flying through a legitimately beautiful airport terminal. Wonders never cease.
Also, i brought back three pounds of Zabar's coffee beans and it earned me an extra 20 minutes in security, a full pat-down from the TSA, and an inspection from the explosives expert. It was worth it; it's damned good coffee.
Aug 3, 2022·edited Aug 3, 2022Liked by Scott Hines
I've lived in Atlanta my whole life. When I was a teenager and pretty much through my early 30s, I was a hellraiser. I grew up sneaking into the city to go to punk shows, telling my parents I was doing a variety of other things.
I would drive into the city and get off at Freedom Parkway and hoof it down Boulevard to a sketchy strip mall venue that had "sound proof" carpet nailed to the walls and was stealing power from the convenience store next door (via an extension cord running through the ceiling panels). At the time, it was called the Neutron Bomb. Now it's a very well-lit self-storage space right near the Beltline (for fellow Atlanta folks, it's at the corner of Boulevard and Dekalb Ave).
I would meander around the gravel parking lot of the Masquerade carefully avoiding the broken bottles and dirty needles waiting for the gigs to start so I could promptly walk into the band entrance past security like I was part of the band. Sometimes fights would spill outside and I'd hustle out there to spectate. One time I was involved in a brawl that spilled out from the "Hell" part of the venue into the street where a couple of cops were waiting as security. Some dude got hit with a baton and I took off (lol). The Masquerade lives on as a part of a "revitalized" Underground Atlanta, but that building with the historical pedigree is now a mixed-use apartment complex.
The MJQ was a dance club where my shitty hardcore punk band played our first show with all of our degenerate friends. The whole block was recently bought by a developer and is set to be flipped next year, sometime.
Eats was our pre-gig staple. Used to be filled with legit weirdos, homeless people, and punks (I would wager at one point there were more face tattoos per capita in Eats than in anywhere else in the world). Now it's filled with yuppie tech bros who work at Ponce City Market ironically wearing their Reagan/Bush 1984 shirts.
Sorry to be long-winded, but Atlanta has always been home and while I realize that objectively it's probably better today than it was then for 90% of the residents and visitors -- myself included -- I'm still very nostalgic for the old days when it wasn't for everyone. Not everything should be commoditized to be appreciated. But I still love Atlanta and always will.
When we went back to DC for the first time since we moved away, the husband anchored the entire trip around our favorite places to eat. He had a schedule by meal to make sure we didn't miss a thing.
When people ask me about why I left DC, my answer is this: the things I love about the place, I LOVE; the things I hate, I HATE; and at some point the love/hate balance stopped balancing. So we went home to Alabama, where the love/hate equation became some weird mutated quadratic calculus deal. But to quote Steely Dan, the time of our time [in DC] has come and gone. And that seems to just be the way things are. Seasons change.
Aug 3, 2022·edited Aug 3, 2022Liked by Scott Hines
Missing home is so weird. You captured it well. My analogous city to your NYC is DC, and I'd love to roll through for a weekend to eat all the things, but I really miss the Shenandoah valley, where I'm from. But every time I go back, there's a new section of field or woods turned into apartments or subdivisions. Hard to see.
I have been to NYC twice, two flying visits, one decades ago on a student adventure, one 5 years ago when (humble brag here) my son was playing at Carnegie Hall. I have been researching the possibility of kayaking to the City by way of the Hudson River from Lake Ontario. All of my research suggests that I wouldn't survive. No way I would fly or drive there, so that's it: two visits only, until teleportation becomes a reality. I love reading about NYC, including this personal account. Nice.
There's a fantastic pizza place in Door County, WI called Wild Tomato. They have a pizza (called, naturally given the locale, the Green & Gold) with chicken, broccoli and cheese curds. It's magnificent.
One other thought: re kids and NYC, my wife's aunt and uncle used to live at 90th & Broadway and we had a hell of a time convincing my older daughter, aged maybe 4, that she was not qualified to cross Broadway on her own. And on a subsequent trip, my younger daughter, aged maybe 6, was "walking" the aunt and uncle's dog and nearly took out Philip Roth with the leash. He just smiled benignly and kept going.
Theres a line by Colson Whitehead that goes "No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, ''That used to be Munsey's...."
People often ask me if I miss it, and I usually say "I miss the restaurants and arts, but not how much I'd have to work to actually enjoy any of it." I can't imagine what it was like during COVID.
I do my my slice shop on Church Ave in BK, which always had Liga MX on the tV
Regarding my brother's time living in NYC he always says it was the best time of his life, but it would take an act of congress to get him to move back.
Moved from Boston to the Midwest. I miss not having to get in the car to do things or run errands. We could walk to our choice of restaurants/bars/breweries. I don't miss having to drive in Boston - every trip seemed to take an hour no matter the destination. I also don't miss the sports fans - Its on a different level and the stereotypes are deserved.
I've lived in NYC for 23 years, which is about half my life at this point. Wow. The city is everything you describe, both good and bad, and it can be an incredibly frustrating place to live. A few months ago I had dinner with HS friends who were visiting from Pittsburgh, and their young daughter said she didn't like NYC because it was "smelly." She's right! I'm not tired of living here yet, but I can imagine a day when I will be.
I lived in DC for 7 years, in college and for a few years after, and when I go back I'm struck by how unrecognizable the city is to me. The downtown area has changed so much that my mental map of where my stepmother worked or how we drove from Georgetown to my parents' house in the suburbs has been completely erased. When I go back to campus, the buildings and some of the places I went as a student are still there, but others are long gone. And it's as if the place doesn't belong to me anymore, if it ever did. It's a weird feeling but it's not entirely unpleasant. It's a recognition that I'm a different person than I was then, and that it's OK to reminisce about those times but it's also OK to be comfortable with who I am now.
Rather like other people in the comments, for me the "going back" experience was "wow this is bougie now." I lived in Providence RI for 5 years while pretending to be in grad school. When I moved there in the fall of '92 it was - not to be overly judgmental - a bit of a dump, reminded me of Newcastle in terms of the "wow you really didn't recover from deindustrialization." I loved it though - there were a number of great independent record stores, tons of good cheap food (magical combo of immigrant communities and graduates of Johnson and Wales who decided to stay in town), multiple concert venues. Turns out I was catching it at the beginning of the "upswing" of uncovering the river through downtown, rents going up to drive out the record shops and independent food places on Thayer Street. I was there last October for a wedding reception for my wife's cousin and was staggered at how much redevelopment of happened downtown. The funny part is, I was keenly aware that what I was missing was "being young" because my younger daughter, who 1) doesn't care for our situation in the MD burbs of DC and 2) is planning to apply to Brown (qualified on paper but you know 7% acceptance rate) was along for the ride and she LOVED it because what she was seeing was a contemporary version of what I saw.
I lived in Chicago during my most of my 20s (I live in Madrid now), and this post perfectly captures the way I feel about the city. A lot of my memories are also wrapped up in food: deep dish pizza with giardiniera, Portillo’s cake shakes, brunches at various spots in Wicker Park before checking out an art fair, a glass of wine along the river walk while watching the sun glisten on the water, a picnic with friends at a summer concert in Millennium Park. Too many to list.
My first apartment on my own was there, and it’s still my favorite place I’ve ever lived, not because of the location or the apartment itself (although it was a pretty sweet vintage walkup), but because it was completely mine. That whole time I was in Chicago was almost a coming-of-age event, so it will always hold a special significance for me.
Fort Collins, CO. Craft breweries within a stone’s throw in any direction, trails and outdoor recreation everywhere both in town and through the foothills and Poudre Canyon to the west, mostly fantastic weather (minus a sideways sleet and snow storm in May 2019), decent food scene (the Italian and pizza was very meh), and perfect time zone for football watching.
Also stupid expensive (can I interest anyone in $300-$400 per square foot?), NIMBY’d to the extreme, and now at serious risk of running out of water and/or a wildfire burning through it. IMO, still great now but long term prospects are very iffy.
I lived this experience. After graduating, I stuck around campus and worked for a local firm. That transitioned into full-time work at another local place, littered with a mix of students, post-grads and locals. Had a great time. Eventually, got married, moved away, divorced. Saw that a local government agency had an opening, so I applied. Got an interview and traveled back to campus.
It had only been maybe 3 or 4 years since I had moved away, but things were so much more different. When you're pushing 30, living in a place completely saturated with teenagers quickly loses its luster. The fight for parking, the stagnant town, and the lack of much beyond drinking at one of the myriad bars didn't have me longing to relive my younger days. I didn't get the job, and I didn't ever look to see if they were hiring again.
We’ve now gone full circle in our late 60s, back to a walk-up in the neighborhood of Boston where we lived as 20-somethings, then fled in our 30s. It isn’t so much that the city changes, although of course it does, but that your perspective alters with your circumstances. Children are a big part of it. So is the need to work free of hassles and distractions. When all those are gone, when that suburban house is suddenly cavernous and empty, all the good things about the city come back to the front of your consciousness. It becomes the release it was from your suburban youth (maybe), and the same source of freedom you found back then. We also live in LA and Bruxelles, all in inner city postage-stamp condos. Our biggest dilemma today is whether to keep a car (we already ditched the other one). It’s a very liberating dilemma.
I will note that perhaps the most jarring "things have changed" part about going to NYC was flying through the new Terminal B at LaGuardia. I used to comment that I'd been through bus stations nicer than LGA, quite seriously, so I was shocked to find that instead of a dank, crowded hole with tarps hung from a grid ceiling to catch the leaks from above, I was flying through a legitimately beautiful airport terminal. Wonders never cease.
Also, i brought back three pounds of Zabar's coffee beans and it earned me an extra 20 minutes in security, a full pat-down from the TSA, and an inspection from the explosives expert. It was worth it; it's damned good coffee.
I've lived in Atlanta my whole life. When I was a teenager and pretty much through my early 30s, I was a hellraiser. I grew up sneaking into the city to go to punk shows, telling my parents I was doing a variety of other things.
I would drive into the city and get off at Freedom Parkway and hoof it down Boulevard to a sketchy strip mall venue that had "sound proof" carpet nailed to the walls and was stealing power from the convenience store next door (via an extension cord running through the ceiling panels). At the time, it was called the Neutron Bomb. Now it's a very well-lit self-storage space right near the Beltline (for fellow Atlanta folks, it's at the corner of Boulevard and Dekalb Ave).
I would meander around the gravel parking lot of the Masquerade carefully avoiding the broken bottles and dirty needles waiting for the gigs to start so I could promptly walk into the band entrance past security like I was part of the band. Sometimes fights would spill outside and I'd hustle out there to spectate. One time I was involved in a brawl that spilled out from the "Hell" part of the venue into the street where a couple of cops were waiting as security. Some dude got hit with a baton and I took off (lol). The Masquerade lives on as a part of a "revitalized" Underground Atlanta, but that building with the historical pedigree is now a mixed-use apartment complex.
The MJQ was a dance club where my shitty hardcore punk band played our first show with all of our degenerate friends. The whole block was recently bought by a developer and is set to be flipped next year, sometime.
Eats was our pre-gig staple. Used to be filled with legit weirdos, homeless people, and punks (I would wager at one point there were more face tattoos per capita in Eats than in anywhere else in the world). Now it's filled with yuppie tech bros who work at Ponce City Market ironically wearing their Reagan/Bush 1984 shirts.
Sorry to be long-winded, but Atlanta has always been home and while I realize that objectively it's probably better today than it was then for 90% of the residents and visitors -- myself included -- I'm still very nostalgic for the old days when it wasn't for everyone. Not everything should be commoditized to be appreciated. But I still love Atlanta and always will.
When we went back to DC for the first time since we moved away, the husband anchored the entire trip around our favorite places to eat. He had a schedule by meal to make sure we didn't miss a thing.
When people ask me about why I left DC, my answer is this: the things I love about the place, I LOVE; the things I hate, I HATE; and at some point the love/hate balance stopped balancing. So we went home to Alabama, where the love/hate equation became some weird mutated quadratic calculus deal. But to quote Steely Dan, the time of our time [in DC] has come and gone. And that seems to just be the way things are. Seasons change.
Missing home is so weird. You captured it well. My analogous city to your NYC is DC, and I'd love to roll through for a weekend to eat all the things, but I really miss the Shenandoah valley, where I'm from. But every time I go back, there's a new section of field or woods turned into apartments or subdivisions. Hard to see.
I have been to NYC twice, two flying visits, one decades ago on a student adventure, one 5 years ago when (humble brag here) my son was playing at Carnegie Hall. I have been researching the possibility of kayaking to the City by way of the Hudson River from Lake Ontario. All of my research suggests that I wouldn't survive. No way I would fly or drive there, so that's it: two visits only, until teleportation becomes a reality. I love reading about NYC, including this personal account. Nice.
There's a fantastic pizza place in Door County, WI called Wild Tomato. They have a pizza (called, naturally given the locale, the Green & Gold) with chicken, broccoli and cheese curds. It's magnificent.
One other thought: re kids and NYC, my wife's aunt and uncle used to live at 90th & Broadway and we had a hell of a time convincing my older daughter, aged maybe 4, that she was not qualified to cross Broadway on her own. And on a subsequent trip, my younger daughter, aged maybe 6, was "walking" the aunt and uncle's dog and nearly took out Philip Roth with the leash. He just smiled benignly and kept going.
Theres a line by Colson Whitehead that goes "No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, ''That used to be Munsey's...."
People often ask me if I miss it, and I usually say "I miss the restaurants and arts, but not how much I'd have to work to actually enjoy any of it." I can't imagine what it was like during COVID.
I do my my slice shop on Church Ave in BK, which always had Liga MX on the tV
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/magazine/the-way-we-live-now-11-11-01-lost-and-found.html
Regarding my brother's time living in NYC he always says it was the best time of his life, but it would take an act of congress to get him to move back.
Moved from Boston to the Midwest. I miss not having to get in the car to do things or run errands. We could walk to our choice of restaurants/bars/breweries. I don't miss having to drive in Boston - every trip seemed to take an hour no matter the destination. I also don't miss the sports fans - Its on a different level and the stereotypes are deserved.
I've lived in NYC for 23 years, which is about half my life at this point. Wow. The city is everything you describe, both good and bad, and it can be an incredibly frustrating place to live. A few months ago I had dinner with HS friends who were visiting from Pittsburgh, and their young daughter said she didn't like NYC because it was "smelly." She's right! I'm not tired of living here yet, but I can imagine a day when I will be.
I lived in DC for 7 years, in college and for a few years after, and when I go back I'm struck by how unrecognizable the city is to me. The downtown area has changed so much that my mental map of where my stepmother worked or how we drove from Georgetown to my parents' house in the suburbs has been completely erased. When I go back to campus, the buildings and some of the places I went as a student are still there, but others are long gone. And it's as if the place doesn't belong to me anymore, if it ever did. It's a weird feeling but it's not entirely unpleasant. It's a recognition that I'm a different person than I was then, and that it's OK to reminisce about those times but it's also OK to be comfortable with who I am now.
Rather like other people in the comments, for me the "going back" experience was "wow this is bougie now." I lived in Providence RI for 5 years while pretending to be in grad school. When I moved there in the fall of '92 it was - not to be overly judgmental - a bit of a dump, reminded me of Newcastle in terms of the "wow you really didn't recover from deindustrialization." I loved it though - there were a number of great independent record stores, tons of good cheap food (magical combo of immigrant communities and graduates of Johnson and Wales who decided to stay in town), multiple concert venues. Turns out I was catching it at the beginning of the "upswing" of uncovering the river through downtown, rents going up to drive out the record shops and independent food places on Thayer Street. I was there last October for a wedding reception for my wife's cousin and was staggered at how much redevelopment of happened downtown. The funny part is, I was keenly aware that what I was missing was "being young" because my younger daughter, who 1) doesn't care for our situation in the MD burbs of DC and 2) is planning to apply to Brown (qualified on paper but you know 7% acceptance rate) was along for the ride and she LOVED it because what she was seeing was a contemporary version of what I saw.
I lived in Chicago during my most of my 20s (I live in Madrid now), and this post perfectly captures the way I feel about the city. A lot of my memories are also wrapped up in food: deep dish pizza with giardiniera, Portillo’s cake shakes, brunches at various spots in Wicker Park before checking out an art fair, a glass of wine along the river walk while watching the sun glisten on the water, a picnic with friends at a summer concert in Millennium Park. Too many to list.
My first apartment on my own was there, and it’s still my favorite place I’ve ever lived, not because of the location or the apartment itself (although it was a pretty sweet vintage walkup), but because it was completely mine. That whole time I was in Chicago was almost a coming-of-age event, so it will always hold a special significance for me.
Fort Collins, CO. Craft breweries within a stone’s throw in any direction, trails and outdoor recreation everywhere both in town and through the foothills and Poudre Canyon to the west, mostly fantastic weather (minus a sideways sleet and snow storm in May 2019), decent food scene (the Italian and pizza was very meh), and perfect time zone for football watching.
Also stupid expensive (can I interest anyone in $300-$400 per square foot?), NIMBY’d to the extreme, and now at serious risk of running out of water and/or a wildfire burning through it. IMO, still great now but long term prospects are very iffy.
I lived this experience. After graduating, I stuck around campus and worked for a local firm. That transitioned into full-time work at another local place, littered with a mix of students, post-grads and locals. Had a great time. Eventually, got married, moved away, divorced. Saw that a local government agency had an opening, so I applied. Got an interview and traveled back to campus.
It had only been maybe 3 or 4 years since I had moved away, but things were so much more different. When you're pushing 30, living in a place completely saturated with teenagers quickly loses its luster. The fight for parking, the stagnant town, and the lack of much beyond drinking at one of the myriad bars didn't have me longing to relive my younger days. I didn't get the job, and I didn't ever look to see if they were hiring again.
We’ve now gone full circle in our late 60s, back to a walk-up in the neighborhood of Boston where we lived as 20-somethings, then fled in our 30s. It isn’t so much that the city changes, although of course it does, but that your perspective alters with your circumstances. Children are a big part of it. So is the need to work free of hassles and distractions. When all those are gone, when that suburban house is suddenly cavernous and empty, all the good things about the city come back to the front of your consciousness. It becomes the release it was from your suburban youth (maybe), and the same source of freedom you found back then. We also live in LA and Bruxelles, all in inner city postage-stamp condos. Our biggest dilemma today is whether to keep a car (we already ditched the other one). It’s a very liberating dilemma.