Thanks for the shoutout for Sidewalk Chorus, Kasra!
*You* played a big role in setting me on a path towards researching, writing, and sharing my hope for a greater and more prosperous future for New York. Seeing the quality and reach of writing is super inspiring, and your recommendation a couple of years ago that I take Daniel’s Maximum New York class led me to the work I’m doing today. I’m very grateful for this.
Especially: “New York is teeming with people who could be your friend, and suffused by a corresponding loneliness. There is so much to do, so a moment alone has all the more weight and regret wrapped up in it.”
I’ve often had a lingering feeling of missing out in big cities, like there was an awesome time to be had that I wasn’t having.
But, as you make me think, perhaps I haven’t been patient enough to sink in.
thanks tommy! I will say one reason I'm glad I've lived here is that I've been able to see the other side of the fomo...it's a special place, but also an ordinary place
I found myself reading this and relating enough to autocomplete your thoughts along variously similar and parallel tangents. Of course it's the smells, and the people, and the spectacle, and the loneliness. That's all included in the cultural welcome pack, indeed it echoes in the background of whatever song you pick to be your anthem as you come to know the streets. The tropes of New York city and what it represents to a wide-eyed ruralite (where ruralite simply means, from any-where else) are part of your password that grants access to a new layer of the city.
I have myself spent a month or two over the course of a few visits getting to know the city. In those times I allowed myself to cosplay as a resident knowing that my own roots would take some engineering to find anything like the grip you've made for yourself. Despite feeling in tune with the spirit of the city, I managed to have a perhaps impressively shallow social experience there, making friendships more with its vistas and spaces than its people, and yet as a voyeur feeling nourished to witness those dreams and ambitions harbored by those with the confidence to stay longer, to risk the vulnerability of offering some part of their own soul in exchange for that time there.
Amidst all that blunt honesty I found a deep sense of inner calm. You impart your deepest dreams, ambitions to casual acquaintances and while the ambition is bubbling inside of everybody, it feels like there should be more competitiveness - after all, Noah's ark only has so many seats, right? - but that simply is not a vibe that survives the reality of the place, where the open secret is that there's no real mechanic to be gamed, only that unpredictable zoo of serendipity and the gulf in between each inevitable jackpot. They don't shoot you down because there is a camaraderie even within the indifference and barriers erected by the culture and norms and taste of each person. I regret not trying to stay longer, yet I also know it's not going anywhere. Thank you for writing so evocatively about your experience, it brought me back there for at least a few minutes. I hope you keep exporting the riches you find, for even when we leave we are all still there.
love to hear a familiar take on the glory and glamour of nyc! I too dreamt of the city thru HONY and HIMYM, finally landing an apartment in East Village above an Irish Pub while working at an architecture firm.
the juxtapositions you speak of are always highlighted in my favorite street photographers’ works - I’d encourage you to check out @sleepingonplanes, @illkoncept, and @monaris on Instagram.
Beautiful writeup man! Adding this to my list of "favourite essays about cities". The one other entry in that list is this unforgettable piece I read about LA, you might like: https://bldgblog.com/2007/10/greater-los-angeles/
Can really empathize with a lot of things said here! Sharing my favorite quote about NY from James Baldwin:
“[New York] seemed to have no sense of whatever of the exigencies of human life; it was so familiar and so public that it became, at last, the most despairingly private of cities. One was continually being jostled, yet longed, at the same time, for the sense of others, for a human touch; and if one was never — it was the general complaint — left alone in New York, one had, still, to fight very hard in order not to perish of loneliness.”
Thanks for the shoutout for Sidewalk Chorus, Kasra!
*You* played a big role in setting me on a path towards researching, writing, and sharing my hope for a greater and more prosperous future for New York. Seeing the quality and reach of writing is super inspiring, and your recommendation a couple of years ago that I take Daniel’s Maximum New York class led me to the work I’m doing today. I’m very grateful for this.
so glad to hear that <3
Loved this essay, Kasra.
Especially: “New York is teeming with people who could be your friend, and suffused by a corresponding loneliness. There is so much to do, so a moment alone has all the more weight and regret wrapped up in it.”
I’ve often had a lingering feeling of missing out in big cities, like there was an awesome time to be had that I wasn’t having.
But, as you make me think, perhaps I haven’t been patient enough to sink in.
thanks tommy! I will say one reason I'm glad I've lived here is that I've been able to see the other side of the fomo...it's a special place, but also an ordinary place
I found myself reading this and relating enough to autocomplete your thoughts along variously similar and parallel tangents. Of course it's the smells, and the people, and the spectacle, and the loneliness. That's all included in the cultural welcome pack, indeed it echoes in the background of whatever song you pick to be your anthem as you come to know the streets. The tropes of New York city and what it represents to a wide-eyed ruralite (where ruralite simply means, from any-where else) are part of your password that grants access to a new layer of the city.
I have myself spent a month or two over the course of a few visits getting to know the city. In those times I allowed myself to cosplay as a resident knowing that my own roots would take some engineering to find anything like the grip you've made for yourself. Despite feeling in tune with the spirit of the city, I managed to have a perhaps impressively shallow social experience there, making friendships more with its vistas and spaces than its people, and yet as a voyeur feeling nourished to witness those dreams and ambitions harbored by those with the confidence to stay longer, to risk the vulnerability of offering some part of their own soul in exchange for that time there.
Amidst all that blunt honesty I found a deep sense of inner calm. You impart your deepest dreams, ambitions to casual acquaintances and while the ambition is bubbling inside of everybody, it feels like there should be more competitiveness - after all, Noah's ark only has so many seats, right? - but that simply is not a vibe that survives the reality of the place, where the open secret is that there's no real mechanic to be gamed, only that unpredictable zoo of serendipity and the gulf in between each inevitable jackpot. They don't shoot you down because there is a camaraderie even within the indifference and barriers erected by the culture and norms and taste of each person. I regret not trying to stay longer, yet I also know it's not going anywhere. Thank you for writing so evocatively about your experience, it brought me back there for at least a few minutes. I hope you keep exporting the riches you find, for even when we leave we are all still there.
love to hear a familiar take on the glory and glamour of nyc! I too dreamt of the city thru HONY and HIMYM, finally landing an apartment in East Village above an Irish Pub while working at an architecture firm.
the juxtapositions you speak of are always highlighted in my favorite street photographers’ works - I’d encourage you to check out @sleepingonplanes, @illkoncept, and @monaris on Instagram.
Beautiful writeup man! Adding this to my list of "favourite essays about cities". The one other entry in that list is this unforgettable piece I read about LA, you might like: https://bldgblog.com/2007/10/greater-los-angeles/
thanks man!
Can really empathize with a lot of things said here! Sharing my favorite quote about NY from James Baldwin:
“[New York] seemed to have no sense of whatever of the exigencies of human life; it was so familiar and so public that it became, at last, the most despairingly private of cities. One was continually being jostled, yet longed, at the same time, for the sense of others, for a human touch; and if one was never — it was the general complaint — left alone in New York, one had, still, to fight very hard in order not to perish of loneliness.”
beautiful, thanks for reading angela!