I was stationed on Governor's Island twice back when it was a Coast Guard base. It was the coolest place I have ever lived and I'll always remember it fondly. I was there first in 1982 for 6 month's of training, and then from 1990 - 1994 as a CG dependant. The first time, I was on my own and had a ball every weekend gathering my classmates and herding them onto the subway to venture out into the wilds of Times Square and Greenwich Village. The USO gave out unsold B'way and Off B'way tickets at 5pm and served free hot dogs, so we could get dinner and a show for the price of a subway token.
The second time was even better. I was a civilian, married to a Coastie, and I went to college at City University, College of Staten Island. I got to ride 2 ferries every morning. It was the best commute ever because I was going against rush hour and could have a bagel and coffee while looking at the skyline and the statue of liberty. I made friends with a local woman who told me some of the best stories I've ever heard and changed the way I looked at the world. CSI was a commuter college at the time and all my classmates were younger than I and living at home and working their way thru school. I did the same thing with them that I had done with my classmates 10 years earlier, taking the subway to Rockefeller Center to look at the skaters and the tree, or to the Bronx Zoo, or Greenwich Village for a street festival and pastries and cappuccino. I just love that stuff. I still take friends to New York for Broadway shows and walks through Central Park, and now the High Line. I'm a lifelong tourist who was twice lucky enough to actually live there, in a 100-year-old apartment building on an island in the middle of New York Harbor. BTW, I live in Newport News, VA and went to Kellam HS. I love your blog.
I grew up in LA—one of those rare birds: a native Los Angelina who is a normal person and not rich as fuck—and now I live in a semi rural part of a midsize Southern town. Within walking distance of my house is a cemetery with headstones of German settlers that predate the American Revolution. But the real draw is the Walgreens, Food Lion, Taco Bell and liquor store I can drive to in minutes without even hitting a stoplight.
Someone once complained when I defended the National Anthem that I had no skin in the game because “[I’m] an expat.” I didn’t bother to explain that “NY_Expat” is a lament that I’ve been an exile of New York, not of America. (And by the way, people from New York are also not exiles of America, in case you might be wondering)
I was extremely lucky to have been born in NYC in 1971, raised by my mom in a rent-controlled two room apartment on the Upper East Side (never higher than $425/mo). The roaches, radiator and single AC window unit without dishwasher or garbage disposal were all there, but since I didn’t know any different it was fine.
Thanks to my mom, I saw all sorts of amazing things in New York: The Paper Bag Players; the marionette show in Central Park; picnicking in Central Park to wait for tickets at Shakespeare In The Park; watching the Royal Short Theatre, a puppet show parody of whichever Shakespeare play was being performed (“Two Gentlemen Of Corona, Queens” was a standout); revival after revival at the Equity Library Theatre; exquisitely cast shows at Lincoln Center (“The House Of Blue Leaves”, with John Mahoney, Swoozie Kurtz, Christine Baransky, and a young Alec Baldwin); “Ruckus Manhattan” by Red Grooms, where as a boy I could walk through a cartoonish sculpture version of a crowded NYC subway; “Yellow Submarine” on a big screen in Central Park; the Gemstone Room at the Museum Of Natural History, which looked to me like the bridge of the USS Enterprise; a Disney retrospective at the Whitney where I befriended the person giving out tickets so that I’d be able to see both sets of shorts and features on the same day (Snow White, Bambi, Fantasia, Dumbo, Pinocchio); and many, many more.
“COLLECTIVELY, THESE WORKS express a craving for the city that, while at its worst, was also more democratic: a place and a time in which, rich or poor, you were stuck together in the misery (and the freedom) of the place, where not even money could insulate you. They are a reaction to what feels like a safer, more burnished and efficient (but cornerless and predictable) city. Even those of us who claim not to miss those years don’t quite sound convinced. ‘Well, I sure don’t have nostalgia about being mugged,’ John Waters told me. Though then he continued: ‘But I do get a little weary when I realize that if anybody could find one dangerous block left in the city, there’d be a stampede of restaurant owners fighting each other off to open there first. It seems almost impossible to remember that just going out in New York was once dangerous. Do any artistic troublemakers want to feel that their city may be the safest in America? Who’s going to write a book about walking the safe streets of Manhattan? It’s always right before a storm that the air is filled with dangerous possibilities.’”
That danger was simply a part of life there, and I hesitate to use the word glibly: Getting mugged wasn’t the end of the world, and could settle in as an anecdote; getting stabbed or shot could be the end, and happened far more often than it does now. But there was a special beauty to be found: Giant graffiti murals on subway cars; the large number ‘9’ on 57th Street; walking down the median on Park Avenue listening to Houses Of The Holy; the unique lavender sparkle of the sidewalk under the streetlights; hitting a ball over the schoolyard fence onto a fire escape across the street; “BOS-TON SUCKS!”; the sunset through the buildings (the name “Manhattanhenge” poisoned this for future generations); walking the streets early Sunday morning after an all-night party; the “No Radio” signs on cars; going to a summer camp at the 92nd St Y where you literally went around the city *every day*; playing Dungeons and Dragons for the first time at the same Y; walking to Bloomingdale’s to play the Intellivision set up in the AV center and playing Tennis against the same guy most days, a grown-up who just rolled with the fact he was playing some 10 year-old (the manager was *usually* understanding); walking into the office of a video game magazine down the street to ask for a writing gig at 11, and getting it!
I loved growing up in New York, and I miss that specific New York, which has faded away. That schoolyard I mentioned playing stickball on? Now it’s tennis courts. I also feel I was fortunate to move to Chicago for college, where I’ve stayed and had a wonderfully wasted youth in the ‘90s; similar dynamics made for cheap rent and a good scene, though with less gravitational pull than New York or LA, and consequently a relatively lower cost of living after the gentrification took hold. Plus, the God’s honest truth is that I’m a normie at heart, and once you go Central Air, you never…compare? Go bare? Shit, you’re the comedian, Jeff, you figure it out.
But I will always have my memories, which live with me rent free! ;-)
I actually expected to hate living in NYC but ended up really enjoying it. I think one of the primary reasons is because I had zero preconceptions of what NYC is supposed to be, arts, culture, or history wise. You can literally see the cognitive dissonance grinding brain gears down like a screeching transmission about to fall right out of the bottom of a car written across the pain of a person's face when they say, "But I love it here!" after going off on a long rant complaining about matters of daily existence. It's stupid as shit.
Me, I ended up loving it because of the specific friends I've made and jobs I've had and meeting my wife here. I could probably have any number of multiverse histories saying the same thing about any other city in the world. And that's okay.
Boy it’s annoying when someone writes the article you’ve been thinking about writing. :) It was very funny. Thanks for this.
I lived in NYC for about 20 years before my wife and I started having kids. We were determined to be New York parents - really sweat it out - until 11 minutes after our first son was born. Then we fled back to Long Island (where were both from) like rational human beings.
If I wrote a letter to my younger self I’d add one more section: “Have fun! Hit the clubs, drink $32 glasses of wine indistinguishable from the $8 glasses of wine you get everywhere else, enjoy the booze and drugs and parties, keep thinking you’re part of the slick fancy rich lawyer set, ignore the dawning realization that none of them borrowed money for law school and all seem to mysteriously own their apartments even though they graduated 2 months ago. Have fun! For eighteen months. Then get the fuck out of there and save some money in a place with a backyard and many fewer rats and less weird smells.”
Kids: NY is a playground for generational wealth. If you don’t have it, you need an exit strategy. Because the shit that’s cool in your 20s is not cool in your late 30s and 40s, and NY only has the former for you.
Haha, in my 20s I despised the suburbs in northern Illinois so I moved to Chicago. Great city! Not NY scale but everything about this rings true. You can probably guess where 36 year old me lives now.
I like this idea of having a debate with our younger dumber selves. It could be valuable to younger dumber people. It would maybe give them some foresight. Idk.
Great article, lol. I remember my one and only trip to NYC when I was 14-my buddies and I wanted to see a real “ho”like the rappers rapped about-we think we saw one outside a bodega, and then I put a Miami Hurricanes cap on a bust of a Pope in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We saw the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building too.
Fellow Washingtonian here—welcome back! 👋 I think DC is very underrated, myself. I always felt a little bad for never having lived in NYC when I was younger and had more tolerance for its bullshit. Now I'm just grateful that I live somewhere with a washing machine and it's not, like, a super big deal.
I love to visit NYC and and am fortunate enough to live close enough to do so on a fairly regular basis. But, would I want to live there full-time? Nah...........I'll stick with suburbia, a green lawn and occasional quiet at night.
Ok, you win. Here is a new paying subscriber.
I was stationed on Governor's Island twice back when it was a Coast Guard base. It was the coolest place I have ever lived and I'll always remember it fondly. I was there first in 1982 for 6 month's of training, and then from 1990 - 1994 as a CG dependant. The first time, I was on my own and had a ball every weekend gathering my classmates and herding them onto the subway to venture out into the wilds of Times Square and Greenwich Village. The USO gave out unsold B'way and Off B'way tickets at 5pm and served free hot dogs, so we could get dinner and a show for the price of a subway token.
The second time was even better. I was a civilian, married to a Coastie, and I went to college at City University, College of Staten Island. I got to ride 2 ferries every morning. It was the best commute ever because I was going against rush hour and could have a bagel and coffee while looking at the skyline and the statue of liberty. I made friends with a local woman who told me some of the best stories I've ever heard and changed the way I looked at the world. CSI was a commuter college at the time and all my classmates were younger than I and living at home and working their way thru school. I did the same thing with them that I had done with my classmates 10 years earlier, taking the subway to Rockefeller Center to look at the skaters and the tree, or to the Bronx Zoo, or Greenwich Village for a street festival and pastries and cappuccino. I just love that stuff. I still take friends to New York for Broadway shows and walks through Central Park, and now the High Line. I'm a lifelong tourist who was twice lucky enough to actually live there, in a 100-year-old apartment building on an island in the middle of New York Harbor. BTW, I live in Newport News, VA and went to Kellam HS. I love your blog.
I grew up in LA—one of those rare birds: a native Los Angelina who is a normal person and not rich as fuck—and now I live in a semi rural part of a midsize Southern town. Within walking distance of my house is a cemetery with headstones of German settlers that predate the American Revolution. But the real draw is the Walgreens, Food Lion, Taco Bell and liquor store I can drive to in minutes without even hitting a stoplight.
Someone once complained when I defended the National Anthem that I had no skin in the game because “[I’m] an expat.” I didn’t bother to explain that “NY_Expat” is a lament that I’ve been an exile of New York, not of America. (And by the way, people from New York are also not exiles of America, in case you might be wondering)
I was extremely lucky to have been born in NYC in 1971, raised by my mom in a rent-controlled two room apartment on the Upper East Side (never higher than $425/mo). The roaches, radiator and single AC window unit without dishwasher or garbage disposal were all there, but since I didn’t know any different it was fine.
Thanks to my mom, I saw all sorts of amazing things in New York: The Paper Bag Players; the marionette show in Central Park; picnicking in Central Park to wait for tickets at Shakespeare In The Park; watching the Royal Short Theatre, a puppet show parody of whichever Shakespeare play was being performed (“Two Gentlemen Of Corona, Queens” was a standout); revival after revival at the Equity Library Theatre; exquisitely cast shows at Lincoln Center (“The House Of Blue Leaves”, with John Mahoney, Swoozie Kurtz, Christine Baransky, and a young Alec Baldwin); “Ruckus Manhattan” by Red Grooms, where as a boy I could walk through a cartoonish sculpture version of a crowded NYC subway; “Yellow Submarine” on a big screen in Central Park; the Gemstone Room at the Museum Of Natural History, which looked to me like the bridge of the USS Enterprise; a Disney retrospective at the Whitney where I befriended the person giving out tickets so that I’d be able to see both sets of shorts and features on the same day (Snow White, Bambi, Fantasia, Dumbo, Pinocchio); and many, many more.
My mom was adjacent to the scene described here: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/t-magazine/1970s-new-york-history.html?referringSource=articleShare
“COLLECTIVELY, THESE WORKS express a craving for the city that, while at its worst, was also more democratic: a place and a time in which, rich or poor, you were stuck together in the misery (and the freedom) of the place, where not even money could insulate you. They are a reaction to what feels like a safer, more burnished and efficient (but cornerless and predictable) city. Even those of us who claim not to miss those years don’t quite sound convinced. ‘Well, I sure don’t have nostalgia about being mugged,’ John Waters told me. Though then he continued: ‘But I do get a little weary when I realize that if anybody could find one dangerous block left in the city, there’d be a stampede of restaurant owners fighting each other off to open there first. It seems almost impossible to remember that just going out in New York was once dangerous. Do any artistic troublemakers want to feel that their city may be the safest in America? Who’s going to write a book about walking the safe streets of Manhattan? It’s always right before a storm that the air is filled with dangerous possibilities.’”
(See also this profile of the Yankees Bleacher Creatures well before the Giuliani-esque version emerged in the mid-90s: https://deadspin.com/when-yankee-stadiums-bleacher-creatures-were-wild-1613431148/amp, look for the cameo by Melle Mel!)
That danger was simply a part of life there, and I hesitate to use the word glibly: Getting mugged wasn’t the end of the world, and could settle in as an anecdote; getting stabbed or shot could be the end, and happened far more often than it does now. But there was a special beauty to be found: Giant graffiti murals on subway cars; the large number ‘9’ on 57th Street; walking down the median on Park Avenue listening to Houses Of The Holy; the unique lavender sparkle of the sidewalk under the streetlights; hitting a ball over the schoolyard fence onto a fire escape across the street; “BOS-TON SUCKS!”; the sunset through the buildings (the name “Manhattanhenge” poisoned this for future generations); walking the streets early Sunday morning after an all-night party; the “No Radio” signs on cars; going to a summer camp at the 92nd St Y where you literally went around the city *every day*; playing Dungeons and Dragons for the first time at the same Y; walking to Bloomingdale’s to play the Intellivision set up in the AV center and playing Tennis against the same guy most days, a grown-up who just rolled with the fact he was playing some 10 year-old (the manager was *usually* understanding); walking into the office of a video game magazine down the street to ask for a writing gig at 11, and getting it!
I loved growing up in New York, and I miss that specific New York, which has faded away. That schoolyard I mentioned playing stickball on? Now it’s tennis courts. I also feel I was fortunate to move to Chicago for college, where I’ve stayed and had a wonderfully wasted youth in the ‘90s; similar dynamics made for cheap rent and a good scene, though with less gravitational pull than New York or LA, and consequently a relatively lower cost of living after the gentrification took hold. Plus, the God’s honest truth is that I’m a normie at heart, and once you go Central Air, you never…compare? Go bare? Shit, you’re the comedian, Jeff, you figure it out.
But I will always have my memories, which live with me rent free! ;-)
I love the pictures you used for the bylines.
I actually expected to hate living in NYC but ended up really enjoying it. I think one of the primary reasons is because I had zero preconceptions of what NYC is supposed to be, arts, culture, or history wise. You can literally see the cognitive dissonance grinding brain gears down like a screeching transmission about to fall right out of the bottom of a car written across the pain of a person's face when they say, "But I love it here!" after going off on a long rant complaining about matters of daily existence. It's stupid as shit.
Me, I ended up loving it because of the specific friends I've made and jobs I've had and meeting my wife here. I could probably have any number of multiverse histories saying the same thing about any other city in the world. And that's okay.
Boy it’s annoying when someone writes the article you’ve been thinking about writing. :) It was very funny. Thanks for this.
I lived in NYC for about 20 years before my wife and I started having kids. We were determined to be New York parents - really sweat it out - until 11 minutes after our first son was born. Then we fled back to Long Island (where were both from) like rational human beings.
If I wrote a letter to my younger self I’d add one more section: “Have fun! Hit the clubs, drink $32 glasses of wine indistinguishable from the $8 glasses of wine you get everywhere else, enjoy the booze and drugs and parties, keep thinking you’re part of the slick fancy rich lawyer set, ignore the dawning realization that none of them borrowed money for law school and all seem to mysteriously own their apartments even though they graduated 2 months ago. Have fun! For eighteen months. Then get the fuck out of there and save some money in a place with a backyard and many fewer rats and less weird smells.”
Kids: NY is a playground for generational wealth. If you don’t have it, you need an exit strategy. Because the shit that’s cool in your 20s is not cool in your late 30s and 40s, and NY only has the former for you.
Good thing you moved to DC and don’t have to deal with horrible traffic anymore.
My wife, who went to college in Manhattan: "It's not a good place to live, but it's a great place to have lived."
Haha, in my 20s I despised the suburbs in northern Illinois so I moved to Chicago. Great city! Not NY scale but everything about this rings true. You can probably guess where 36 year old me lives now.
I like this idea of having a debate with our younger dumber selves. It could be valuable to younger dumber people. It would maybe give them some foresight. Idk.
Great article, lol. I remember my one and only trip to NYC when I was 14-my buddies and I wanted to see a real “ho”like the rappers rapped about-we think we saw one outside a bodega, and then I put a Miami Hurricanes cap on a bust of a Pope in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We saw the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building too.
From my vantage point in Texas, DC still seems too crowded, expensive, and cool. But, home is home! Congrats on the move.
Fellow Washingtonian here—welcome back! 👋 I think DC is very underrated, myself. I always felt a little bad for never having lived in NYC when I was younger and had more tolerance for its bullshit. Now I'm just grateful that I live somewhere with a washing machine and it's not, like, a super big deal.
F*kn brilliant.
I love to visit NYC and and am fortunate enough to live close enough to do so on a fairly regular basis. But, would I want to live there full-time? Nah...........I'll stick with suburbia, a green lawn and occasional quiet at night.
What is up with the hair? do you really part it on a different side of your head now?