Why You Hate the Upper West Side
✍️ • 🕑 2019 through early 2020 • Series: My Days in New York City • Tags: New York City • complaining • Places: Whispers Bar
I wrote this post a fair while ago (2020), as part of an elegy to my stint in New York City.
It is part of my answer to the age old question, ‘How could you leave New York?’ (pandemic notwithstanding)
You stop to catch your breath inside the shoebox you call “a New York City apartment,” arriving again at the realization that the city is unspeakably lonely.
You scarf down two pizza slices on paper plates, thinking back to your near run-ins with Empire State Building ticket hawkers and tourists who suddenly stop in the middle of the sidewalk, and you shudder.
Some days it feels like it’s only through advance planning and effort that people connect with anyone at all. Your breath is caught, but maybe it wishes to escape again. You think to yourself, “what’s it all for?”
At least you have your neighborhood?