Your Own Personal Skyline

{manhattan from the george washington bridge, 1936}

There are a lot of things that could be said today, on this anniversary. But I wasn’t here, I didn’t belong to New York yet, so they’re not for me to say. Instead, I’d like to point you to a beautifully written essay from 2001 on the city that never ceases to move forward. Here are some of my favorite bits...

The city has spent a considerable amount of time and money putting the brochure together, what with all the movies, TV shows and songs -- the whole ''if you can make it there'' business. The city also puts a lot of effort into making your hometown look really drab and tiny, just in case you were wondering why it's such a drag to go back sometimes.

The New York City you live in is not my New York City; how could it be? This place multiplies when you're not looking...Before you know it, you have your own personal skyline.

We see ourselves in this city every day when we walk down the sidewalk and catch our reflections in store windows, seek ourselves in this city each time we reminisce about what was there 5, 10, 40 years ago, because all our old places are proof that we were here. One day the city we built will be gone, and when it goes, we go. When the buildings fall, we topple, too.

Photo by Jack Rosenzwieg. All quotes by Colson Whitehead in The New York Times. Story via Longform.

NYC before AC

{licking blocks of ice on a hot day, circa 1910-1915}

This absolutely amounts to a first-world problem, but the air conditioning has been broken for two days in the office where I’m currently working. It's hot, to say the least. As we all fanned ourselves, scoured the office for small, silly, USB-powered fans, and complained, it made me think of this fascinating old New Yorker article about life in the city before AC.

Arthur Miller (yes, that Arthur Miller) writes about a particularly warm summer in the late 1920s when his family was living in Harlem. He describes how, to escape the heat of their apartments, people took to sleeping in Central Park.

{battery park on a hot day, circa 1910-1915} 

Even through the nights, the pall of heat never broke. With a couple of other kids, I would go across 110th to the Park and walk among the hundreds of people, singles and families, who slept on the grass, next to their big alarm clocks, which set up a mild cacophony of the seconds passing, one clock’s ticks syncopating with another’s. Babies cried in the darkness, men’s deep voices murmured, and a woman let out an occasional high laugh beside the lake.

It’s completely understandable (especially in my current predicament) but also totally wild to think about from the perspective of a modern New Yorker. If it were safe, sleeping in Central Park sounds pretty magical...

Both photos via the Library of Congress. 

A Beautiful Day In This Neighborhood

Isn't it funny when a memory comes out of nowhere? Riding the subway this morning, I started thinking about an old Esquire profile of Fred Rogers that's stayed with me since I read it in college. In it, Tom Junod describes a time when Mr. Rogers took the subway with a friend when they couldn't get a cab in the rain. Once on the subway, they found themselves in a packed car, full of mostly school-aged children on their way home. Recognizing Mr. Rogers, the children began to sing. "They just sang. They sang, all at once, all together, the song he sings at the start of his program, 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' and turned the clattering train into a single soft, runaway choir."

If you have an hour to spare and feel like smiling, you can read the entire profile here.

Happy Friday, everyone! I hope it's a beautiful day in your neighborhood :)

Cardigan photo via The Fred Rogers Company

Miracle on 22nd St.

Just one last little bit of Christmas cheer before I sign off for the holiday weekend. What would you do if you suddenly started getting hundreds of letters addressed to Santa? It happened to a couple in Chelsea and I love that they reacted with generosity instead of cynicism. Merry Christmas, indeed!

A Year In New York

Even though I'm feeling wanderlust-y, I still love, love, love where I live. Which is maybe why this video, shot over the course of a year in New York, makes me a little teary (in a good way). I think the music helps, it's one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums of this year.

Happy weekend, everyone! After watching this video, I feel like I need to get out and enjoy this wonderful, big, dramatic, heartbreaking, strange and magical city.

via stephmodo

The Etiquette Police

Walking around the city today, I happened upon a few of these awesome signs from the "Metropolitan Etiquette Authority." Turns out it's a project from artist Jay Shells (who put up these genius subway etiquette posters last year—yes, people really do clip their nails on the subway).

The signs are pretty great, and hit on two of my pet peeves. First, why is it ok for smokers to litter? And second, watch where you're going, I'm walkin' here!

Images via Joe Holmes on Flickr and Laughing Squid.

190 Bowery

Since I moved to New York, I've been playing a little game with myself that I call the buzzer game. When I see a particularly nice brownstone, or a mansion-sized building that could be a museum or an embassy, I look for the buzzer. If there's a series of buzzers, the building's been converted into apartments. If there's just one buzzer, someone very lucky has a lot of space to themselves. I always end up daydreaming about what the inside of the home might be like.

So I was floored by this New York Magazine story about 190 Bowery. It's a six-story former bank built in 1899 that photographer Jay Maisel bought in 1966 for $102,000 and turned it into a home. The whole building! Can you imagine? The pictures are fascinating.







This might be the ultimate "single buzzer" home in New York.

All photos by Leigh Davis for New York Mag.

Letters to Santa

A conversation with a cab driver, during the first snow flurries of the year. 

Cabbie: So, I wrote my letter to Santa.

Me: ...oh yeah?

Cabbie: You know, at the North Pole? I wrote my letter two weeks ago, and I put a stamp on it, and I mailed it to the North Pole and I asked him to make my dream come true.

Me: What's your dream?

Cabbie: To win the PowerBall! You know, a million dollars? I played it the other day.

Me: Did you win?

Cabbie: I missed by two numbers! I only won $5,000. I think Santa needs glasses.

photo via weheartit

Twas the first day of Christmas

The day after Thanksgiving was a busy one for the girls in apartment #3. After a morning dose of the Deathly Hallows we headed to Corner Bistro for burgers and beer. On the walk home we passed a Christmas tree stand (I keep calling it a "farm") and figured there was no time like the present.

{roommates, tree carrying}

Christmas kind of went to our heads from that point on. The lights and ornaments came out from the depths of our closets and under our beds, bottles of wine leftover from Thanksgiving (um, five of them) were mulled with cinnamon and orange, and texts were sent.

{trimming the tree}

{stockings, hung with care}

Soon the apartment was filled with Christmas music and friends, cheeks rosy with wine and the very first dose of Christmas cheer. By the end of the evening the apartment was decorated, the stockings were hung, and one of us had whipped her hair in a moment of pure charades genius. I love a good impromptu Christmas gathering.

{megan, spontaneous wreath making}

{merry christmas, apt. 3}

Four years ago today

In the whirlwind of accepting a job, hurriedly packing everything I owned and finding a beefy guy on Craigslist to help me load it into a U-Haul (um, that could have ended badly), I hadn't really stopped to think if this was what I wanted. On the two day drive between Chicago and Manhattan, the reality of what I was doing had time to sink in.

Um...did I want to move to Manhattan?

I did, someday, but did I want to do it this day, December 1st, 2006? That thought rattled around in my head like the IKEA dresser in the back of the truck, cushioned by garbage bags full of clothes. Rural Pennsylvania stretched out before me, hundreds of miles of highway the only thing standing between me and the scariest thing I'd ever done.

Soon, there wasn't much time for contemplating. I got terribly lost on the New Jersey turnpike, was pulled over before entering the Queens-Midtown tunnel, cried, ended up in Herald Square instead of Brooklyn, cried, eventually made it to Brooklyn and into the cozy apartment of a friend I hadn't really talked to in five years. After endless weeks of staying on couches, floors, and even in a hostel, I finally found a place to stay. How true that turned out to be. Sometimes this city beats you up before it takes you in.

Happy anniversary, New York. Here's to four more.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving morning began with my apartment filling with smoke and the carbon monoxide detector loudly telling us to get out of the apartment right! now!

{megan's chocolate bourbon pecan pie}

After two thorough cleanings of the oven (tip for next year: clean the oven before Thanksgiving day), a minor freak out (not that everything wouldn't get done, but that it wasn't going to get done in the leisurely way I had planned - I have issues), and some major multi-tasking, the meal was perfect and the evening was lovely.

{coffee table turned dining table}

The first guest did, in fact, receive a freshly poured cocktail from a (finally) calm host. And let's just say that it was not the last of the evening. We're still working through the surplus.

{tv stand turned bar}

My friend Ian and his fiance Ashleigh brought their adorable white golden retriever puppy, Misty Bear, and she was definitely the guest of honor. It just felt so home-y to have a dog around. And she was super well behaved. The photo below is not begging, just hoping.

{the puppy, hoping}

{the best guest, misty bear}

Happy Thanksgiving, all.