Answering the question: What do I like most about New York City

Interestingly, this is a multi-threaded answer, thought, feeling. I will attempt it here. First, context…

I am 44.

I still shuttle between Seattle and NYC.

I’ve lived in a top-six downtown city, Seattle, for over two decades.

No kids.

I am eating a bagel on Sunday morning in NYC listening to Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.”

The best way to respond to the question of why NYC is to tell you about the previous 24 hours. Come with me.

At 7:54 a.m. Saturday morning, I was jolted awake to six missed FaceTime calls and the same amount of texts: “here.” I knew what that meant. On Friday I messaged my childhood friend, “Hey, let’s run Summer Streets.” It’s when the city shuts down Park Ave from the top of Manhattan to the bottom, aka you can run, walk, bike, rollerblade, all you want. We chose to run. Side note, my wife was running 17 miles and had left at 7 a.m.

I got up, texted him back, and bolted to the 6 train, which arrived within 30 seconds. I exited around East 55th. We met on East 54th. Note, I have not run consistently past one mile in maybe nine months. Yet with the people, music, and this friend, the momentum carried us.

Sure enough, the blocks started ticking down. We kept running. We talked, passed Grand Central, Union Square through SoHo, and ended in the Financial District. Which coincidentally is where my wife was also finishing. She ended up running the Brooklyn Bridge too.

My friend and I hopped on Citi Bikes and headed back to his apartment, where we started the race. Another four miles on the bike. I pedaled back down to my place, as we had agreed to meet for breakfast in 30 minutes.

At our apartment, Ashley was getting ready and I quickly showered. Together we were out the door waiting for my friend, who had now decided to drive us to Brooklyn. Mind you, the weather was perfect.

We crossed over the bridge next to the Brooklyn Bridge, I forget the name. Once in Brooklyn, Williamsburg, we found parking and went to a cute breakfast place called Maison something. There, the three of us split French toast, frittata, and heirloom tomato salad. I had Diet Coke, lemonade, sparkling water, and coffee. Ashley and him, Champagne and a Bellini.

After breakfast we walked Williamsburg a bit before heading to Carroll Gardens / Park Slope area. This has always been a weird NYC bucket list item for me, aka I’d fallen for the townhouse stoops a decade earlier when I wanted to live in NYC. Seattle was too good to leave.

We chatted with his friends about life, aging parents, careers, music, and hot takes. Mine at the moment is Eminem ruined rap. We can discuss that later. Yooo Karhim ;)

Ashley had texted me, “let’s go home.” I couldn’t agree more. Yet we are too nice and didn’t know how to really exit. In hindsight, we probably could have just left.

Regardless, my friend drove back into the city, this time over the Manhattan Bridge. If I told you the collective breath we all took to be back in the city was funny, as I kept yelling, “WTF was Brooklyn?” I am new, I know.

He said, “Let’s go meet one more group of friends off Great Jones St.,” which for Ashley and me is nearly our neighborhood, so yes, we were in.

There at Swift, named after Jonathan Swift, who wrote Gulliver’s Travels, I was transported into a writer’s den. After seven months of abstaining from a martini, one landed in front of me courtesy of Ashley and my friend.

The tiniest sip, another.

I turn to my left. A guy who is getting married in Seattle, where I jumped into, here’s where, who, etc., you can use, meet, to help coordinate. The guy diagonal is a former stage actor, among other interests. We talk. During those conversations my show comes up. They are amateur politicos. What a perfect episode. Aka, let me have you guys on to talk politics to the layman, me being that political moderate. They agreed. Coordinating that episode now.

After Swift we headed toward the Lower East Side. I love the East Village. The Lower East Side is a different beast. To have the former stage actor with us, who lived in the area, was awesome, as we ducked into the French Diner.

If you know, you know how small it is and what the wait times are. We didn’t. As he lived across the street since its founding, aka had an in, the four of us enjoyed basically the entire menu over the next few hours.

The night should have been over. It wasn’t.

We went back to his place in the West Village and then the Commerce Inn, where he is a regular. There, over a bottle of Schramsberg, we shared the deeper aspects of our respective lives, relationships, every once in a while, when getting too deep, yelling “fuck Brooklyn” in that sly, funny way that almost made us go back to Brooklyn.

It’s now midnight.

Ashley and I head home. Walk into our place, laughing and saying to each other how much fun this day was. How many times it was over. How many people we met who were coming, going, understanding their own role in this city, and here we are in our early 40s dashing about.

For me, it’s the people and the serendipity. That’s why I love New York. Take a right instead of a left and the entire day changes. Someone introduces you to someone. A drink becomes dinner. Dinner becomes someone’s apartment. A stranger becomes a guest on your show. The city is constantly changing, one neighborhood, one person, one era giving way to the next.

And somehow, at 44, I get to be here for this one.

I’m happy I’m in this era.