In approximately 7 hours, I’m heading to New York City. Specifically, I’ll be spending the majority of the next week in Manhattan and just over the Hudson in New Jersey. This will be my second week-long trip to the heart of the Empire State in the past few months, and the tenth or twelfth in the past 18 months. Needless to say, for someone who lives in Boston, I spend a lot of time in New York.
I am fortunate to have some very close friends who live there, and I always joke with them that I don’t think I ever could. However, the more time I spend wandering the vast avenues of Midtown, getting lost in the Lower East Side, or pinching my nose walking down the smelliest damn sidewalks in Chinatown, the more I’m not sure this is true.
Despite my father’s affinity for the Yankees and the Giants, I grew up a Boston sports fan. I spent my childhood watching the Red Sox Triple-A team, the PawSox, at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and making the “long” trek up with my best friend and our fathers to Fenway Park and Boston Garden (since replaced by TD Garden.) I loved visiting my brother in the North End when he was attending Suffolk Law, and I fell in love with Boston the second I moved here a couple of years ago. It feels like home, and there are days I can’t ever imagine leaving.
I can’t deny it, though. New York has this incredible, ridiculous pull on people. The city is awesome in the purest sense of the word; that is, it is literally an awe-inducing experience, and the feeling of it all is so vastly different from the small-town feeling I get at home in Boston. The lights, the energy, the breathtaking skyline the view from the top of the Empire State Building — hell, even the ridiculously aggressive drivers making their way through the grid-based road patterns of Midtown — they make me stop and try take it all in, all at once, despite the overwhelming nature of simply being present here. Then, when you drill down into the wonderful neighborhoods that make up this crazy island and its surrounding boroughs, you find the hidden gems – the small, friendly neighborhood bars, generations-old family restaurants, and gorgeous parks and scenery – that make the Big Apple seem just a little bit smaller and worth coming back to time and time again.
I’m still not completely sold on the idea of ever moving to New York City, but I always get excited about my visits because I know a few very specific things: I know that I will have great conversations catching up with my friends. I know I will discover at least one incredible thing about the city that I didn’t know about before; I know there is always the possibility of coming home with at least a good story or two; I know that even though I might get lost somewhere at 4am, I will always find some damn good food before I find my way back; and I know I will always leave wanting to come back for more.
So, New York City, I’ll see you in just a little bit. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope you are too.
[...] Sitting at a bar in Union City, New Jersey, just a few blocks from the Hudson River, I find myself contemplating (and now writing) this blog, and realize it’s been more than a month since my last post. [...]