It's Still 🗽 or Nowhere
My 11-Year New Yorkiversary
Well, I’m Back
If my life were a TV show, the pilot episode would have opened on February 10, 2024. The protagonist would be coming back to Gotham after being away for over a year. There’d be lots of flashbacks as he encountered familiar places and met old enemies turned friends and friends turned enemies.
He could show, not tell who he is through his actions: visiting donut shops, attending an episcopal church, mixing cocktails in his home bar.
Then there’s the juicy stuff. He’s 36 and single. He once worked for The New York Times. Why did he leave New York after ten years? And why did he come back?
But any show set in New York is really about the city itself. So the real question to explore, once all the backstory was laid bare and the plotlines exhausted, would be a simple one.
What Even is New York?
It’s taken me over a decade to understand the city, as much as anyone can anyway. New York isn’t the Empire State Building or Times Square or Broadway shows. It’s not a mean place where people yell at you for no reason. And it’s not a playground for the rich or an unsolvable maze of subways.
New York is chopped cheese and people-watching at Peter Pan Donuts. It’s working-class heroes delivering packages, guarding apartment buildings and running halal carts. It’s a network of cafes and watering holes where people swap gossip and strike deals. It’s Facebook groups that will get you an apartment or baby goods.
It’s book clubs and dog parks and pickup basketball games and $5 noodle spots that you can’t find on Google Maps or Yelp. It’s a small town — or small towns — that yuppie transplants like me can easily miss. And it’s filled with people who aren’t nice but are kind.
New York is:
Faith that when you wake up today, most of your 9 million neighbors will do the right thing most of the time
Hope that we can all make it despite the rising rent and grocery bills
Love, begrudgingly expressed in quiet courtesies.
The Greatest of These is Love
Every few days, I’m embarrassed to admit, I rewatch a clip from the ending of the 2022 superhero film, The Batman.
When Robert Pattinson’s Batman cuts the cable, risking electrocution and drowning, it’s the first time in the entire film that the people of the city see him risk his life for them. Until then he’s been a bogeyman in the shadows, taking out his childhood trauma on criminals. His selfish quest for vengeance even helped inspire the very evil he’s fought throughout the story.
Director Matt Reeves has said that the fall into the water is a baptism for Bruce Wayne. The creature of vengeance dies. The mission changes: “People need hope, to know someone’s out there for them,” Batman says in his closing monologue.
I’ve been waiting for a baptism of my own.
In the months in the suburbs of Jersey, I was forced to think about how I treated the people in my life. I had to face my self-righteousness, judgmental attitudes, internalized racism, misogyny and other assorted sins. It was not pretty.
Forgiveness came on Easter. Part of Sunday’s service was a renewal of baptismal vows. Together with the whole congregation, I pledged my fealty to Jesus and renounced the works of the devil.
There’s one other vow I’d like to renew with you today if you’ll permit:
Et Lanallo Mannahattanna utúlien. Sinomë maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta.
Out of the great plain to Manhattan I am come. In this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world.
"New York is filled with people who aren’t nice but are kind."
Well said.