Being in love is a wonderful thing.
And this summer, forced by circumstance to be in NY most every day, I’m rediscovering the local ease of this place I’ve known and loved my entire life.
There is something about waking up just before first light, pre the summer heat, to take a stroll out to the end of my local pier on the Hudson and meditate.
People stir slowly around me as the city awakes.
The early runners, Tai Chi aficionados, folks who scribble Morning Papers, people doing grueling interval training–all starting their routines.
In a meandering walk home, food trucks are unloading, store fronts unlocking, with the ever present veneer of people washing the sidewalks like we wash our faces to wake ourselves.
I’m working this summer but since most of my clients are other places in earlier time zones, a few hours of prep and a few hours of Zoom calls either early or late give an unshaved, hyper casual pace to my days.
The thing I always loved about New York, was the joy in finding a personal spot in a public place.
That corner of the bar with friends. Grabbing some sliver of space on a bench or bar stool, or stoop, just hanging around. This is a city of true repose defined by the swirl of busyness around you if you care to make it your own.
There are things I have done for decades, that this summer are giving me the same familiar and deep pleasure with a new twist.
Pre-crowd walks across the Brooklyn Bridge. Taking the train to the top of Central Park for the millionth time, wandering down through the Rambles, sitting by the reflecting pond, just…reflecting.
And the people, insanely diverse. Crazily kooky of every sort.
From the Cat Adventurers who gather in Central Park with their cats to visit and watch their cats for hours.
To every possible variation of street artist and performer, in every shape and form, speaking languages that sound like nothing you’ve ever heard when they ask through gestures for directions.
People complain of a vanishing New York. I of course feel the longing for those hyper local places that defined me in different times in different corners of this town.
When I lived in upper TriBeCa, we would gather at Teddy’s on warm nights to drink Margarita’s by the pitcher, then move to the dive bar at the corner of White Street where we grabbed beers and had pizzas delivered to eat at the outside tables late into the night.
These places are all long since gone.
This city is like a flywheel of change and discovery though, with new things popping up as the old disappear.
Being able to jump on a CitiBike and ride along Hudson River Park to the Water Taxi Terminal, catch a ferry uptown, or the Bronx even, or anywhere in Brooklyn, not to mention the Rockaways.
Or ride my bike from Wall Street to the GW Bridge listening to a podcast, stopping at the marina to grab an expresso and take a call.
Or like today, moving my mid-day meetings to Bryant Park with fast, free WIFI, finding a casual table on the lawn, under the greenery to work and watch and simply take a moment.
There is also something about the pace of life on the sweltering streets here in the summer that I had forgotten.
The leisure of stopping by my local wine shop and lingering as friends who work there take out a bottle the staff tasted to share.
The easy generosity of stopping by one my local natural wine bars for a Pet Nat at 5 or so on a hot afternoon to shoot the shit, talk spontaneous fermentation, or get a spot education on how to make Picquette over a bottle from the Hudson Valley.
That unshaved lackadaisical meandering that comes not from vacation, but from life with a summer pace in the heat of the city. The casualness of falling in love with something that is familiar, but still with a buzz of allure and excitement to it.
To me, this is a re-energized discovery of the never ending pull towards an always changing yet familiar status quo.
The magnetism and comfort of a place that is rapt with memories, yet in constant flux.
Images float to the top of my mind every day.
Proudly going to work with my grandfather as a young boy at the factory where he labored on a sewing machine in the garment district. Saturday visits to the Museum of Natural History with my dad, then strolling the sidewalk book stalls downtown. Visiting Aunt Molly on Sundays at 181st and Cabrini Blvd, her singing opera as she set the table, and the memory of the impossibly steep escalator at the subway stop there.
All those people and memories, woven into the fabric of this place in a new way.
Ever changing as I am.
The circumstances that made this summer more static are honestly not great. But my rediscovery of why I love this place and a vision of myself in it, is a wondrous gift.
To my community of readers, this is a nudge to look at where you are with new eyes.
The summer doldrums may just be the platform for innovation and renewal you need.
To me, this year, they certainly are.
