So, a few posts ago, I alluded to a big announcement. I've been putting it off for a while, but now I suppose I should just get it over with.
I'm moving to San Francisco!!
To understand what huge import this has for me, you have to know what New York means to me. It's always been the city of my dreams, the city I never questioned I would move to, the city of my childhood -- when Christmases meant walking down Fifth Avenue, going to Rockefeller Center to see the tree, shopping at Bloomingdales and making the yearly pilgrimage to MoMA -- as well as the city of my young adulthood.
I've lived here for nine years now, not counting two summers during college -- and in four of the five boroughs to boot. I can vividly remember all my homes, and all the memories connected to them, both good and bad. First, my grandparents' house in the Bronx, just below Riverdale. The long subway ride on the 1, the smell of Italian anise cookies being baked in the Stella's Cookies factory by the 238th St stop, the walk home, past Riverdale Diner and McDonald's. The old house full of stuff. Just stuff. The black vinyl couch from the 60s, the screaming argyle wallpaper by the stairs, coupons, magazines and old mail. The Goddess of Mercy statuette in the study and the smell of incense burning in front of it. The sticky kitchen, and my grandmother, always sitting at the worn enamel-topped table, reading the paper or listening to 1010 WINS. Even when I told her not to wait up for me, and I'd been out all night with some boy.
I remember the day she died. It was shortly after July 4, and I came back from a day wandering around SoHo window-shopping and listening to pounding trance on my CD player. My uncle met me at the gate and told me quietly what had happened. This was the summer before I graduated. I came back to the house afterward, staying there through a hot summer (sometimes sleeping in the basement on a camping cot) and 9/11, a day when a friend's phone call woke me and I turned on the TV in shock. All was quiet in the Bronx, except for a faint smell of burning and more cars than usual parked in the streets.
In November 2001, I moved to Queens, a quiet neighborhood for a quiet phase in my life. I was so frugal in those days -- just a baggie of Crispix for breakfast, a cup of soup for lunch, maybe some homemade lentil stew and an apple for dinner. I went to the Dominican or Korean grocery stores on the weekend and once in a while for all-you-can-eat lunch buffet at Jackson Diner. Once, when friends were in town and we were riding the 7 back to the apartment at 3 am, I took my house keys out in anticipation and promptly dropped them in a crack between the subway seats. I had to ask a night watchman on his way home from work, carrying his dry cleaning, to use one of his coat hangers to fish them out (and convince him I wasn't crazy).
A year after, my wonderful roommate Soni announced he was buying a place of his own, so I tried out that quintessential city fixture -- Craiglist -- to find a new place. And I did, on Broadway and 150th St. Suffice it to say, loud roommate sex, unannounced long-term house guests, and one helluva neurotic cat pushed me out in just one year. For the next three, I lived about two blocks away with two of my best friends from college, Angelica and Eliot. What years those were -- years when I woke up and got to know New York in a different way than before, when each block became ingrained with memories of friends, dates, brunches, dinners, blurry nights and funny incidents. I made some close friends -- the so-called "Js," or four other girls with names all starting in J (except Marisa!) -- and we sure painted the town red. One Halloween we dressed up as the Spice Girls; for another, we hailed a limousine when we couldn't find a taxi and drove through Times Square with our heads poking out of the sun roof.
Home, however, was another matter -- Eliot and I later agreed that when we finally moved, it was like a cloud lifted from our heads. We were so miserable we didn't even know it. Aggressive kids hassled me on the streets; crackhead arrests, street fights and the sound of gunshots in the night were never a surprise; and toward the end, water flowed down the walls, and ConEd rushed over to tell us that our gas and electricity lines were crossed and the whole building should probably be condemned. Yay for home!
Finally I took the plunge and bought an apartment in Brooklyn, a borough I had never really visited and never thought about. Consequently it was a surprise when I tucked a map into my bag and emerged from the F train into Cobble Hill. I was stunned. This was my dream neighborhood, and I had never even known it existed. Although I didn't get that first apartment on Amity Street, nor the next one on Remsen, I knew from the moment I stepped in the door on Orange that I was home.
These last five years have been fabulous. A dream come true. From my little nest in the upper Heights, I feel like I have the world at my fingertips. Hundreds of times I've walked around the corner and down Henry Street to the bodega-that-has-everything, the meat shop, the sushi place, the mom-and-pop video store, the wine shop. Beyond that, the street slopes down and I have a choice of turning onto Montague, or farther, heading to Cobble Hill. On a really nice day, Chef K and I walk all the way to Carroll Gardens, preferably to Frankie's Spuntino, one of the few restaurants he approves of, to have their fresh pasta (the spaghetti with fava beans and that old warhorse, the cavatelli with sausage and browned sage butter, are to die for). Summer nights mean a drink outside at Abilene, or maybe going to Smith Street and visiting Cubana Cafe, Bar Great Harry or Clover Club. By day, we might indulge in some trout or scallops and shrimp from Fish Tales, or cheese from Stinky Brooklyn, or even bike down to Fairway. The official Saturday ritual, of course, is waking up and ordering breakfast from Park Plaza, watching a movie, and then heading to the Borough Hall farmer's market. So many memories.
I didn't particularly mean to write a long essay. The short version, I suppose, is that I will miss New York very much. It's the best city in the world. And I hope I like San Francisco even half as much.
