New York, I love you but you're bringing me down.

Things that I will miss about New York City.

1) The accessible public transit

I got into a bad and lavish habit of taking cabs near the end of my stint in New York, but that didn't detract from my love of the New York subway system. I had approximately nine subway lines running close to my apartment and I was always blown away by the comprehensiveness of the system.

2) The restaurants on 9th avenue

Small, ethnic restaurants (I love that description - ethnic - as if there is a type of food that doesn't have an ethnicity. Water, maybe?) abound between 42nd and 59th on 9th ave. Wondee Siam, Bombay Express, Island Burgers, booyah.

3) Greenpoint

The one place in New York that I would truly love to live in, were I able to ignore the potentially cancer-causing underground oil seepage. Blooper! I have a perverse love of suburbia that Greenpoint fulfills in every way possible. It feels like a neighborhood, it's full of families, and you get a gorgeous view of the Manhattan skyline from the roof of any building.

4) The concert venues

Music Hall of Williamsburg, Bowery Ballroom, Webster Hall, and Irving Plaza all in the same city. Incredible. My fear of spending money kept me away from the majority of concerts in my first year, but I eventually got my head out of my ass and took advantage of the bustling music scene.

5) Drinking beer in movie theaters

This is a weird one, but I developed this habit of going to movies (sometimes alone) and smuggling in Bud Lite tallboys. The monolithic, faceless movie theaters on 42nd St. made this an endless possibility. It added an illicitly fun element to movie-going that I probably won't be able to recreate elsewhere.


Things that I will not miss about New York City.

1) Summer trash smell

Mmmmmm, what is this wafting into my nostrils? Feces. Feces and milk.

2) Surliness

Call me a softy but I don't love the tacit agreement in New York that everyone is allowed to be a huge dick. People on the street, people serving you food, people in the subway: dicks. It infected me after a while as well. At one point recently, I got bumped on the street and turned around ready to glare. It was a mother with a kid in a stroller who apologized profusely. I felt sad about myself.

3) The scene

Everyone's a little obsessed with image in New York. Even hipsters, who aren't supposed to care about anything, name-drop endlessly. The anti-scene is itself a scene. Again, I don't absolve myself of this sin. I got a little caught up in the restaurant-going, the bar-knowing. I spent some time in the West Village. None of us is clean. None of us.

4) Critters

This isn't a characteristic of New York alone. You'll find creepy crawlies anywhere in the world; in fact, they're probably more prevalent in non-urban areas. But the confined spaces in New York make everything a little more unsettling. I saw a house centipede (I dare you to google-image that shit and not get creeped out) in my apartment in the first month of my New York stint and had trouble sleeping for weeks. On my birthday in 2007, my friend Liz bent down to pick up her shoes in my living room and saw three mice caught in the same trap. The night before I left New York, my girlfriend awoke at 4:45 with a sizable cockroach on her face. Enough. Said.

5) The weather

New York spends ninety percent of the year in meteorological extremes. The temperature is either less than forty degrees or more than eighty. Spring and fall tend to last about two weeks tops. At any given time I am either wearing three sweaters or sweating my balls off.


So.

Goodbye, New York. You were good to me. It took me a while to get used to your ways, but I acclimatized and it was...exciting. I've never spent less time being bored, and for that I will always thank you. And chances are I'll be back in two years, so see you soon.