Vagabond Shoes

There's a mediocre movie Wayne Wang and Paul Auster made as a quickie sequel to Smoke in the mid-nineties called Blue in the Face. It was one of those projects where the filmmakers called up a bunch of famous friends and asked them to improv for a few days and then released the resulting mess to unsuspecting audiences.

Anyway, throughout the movie, there are snippets of Lou Reed either as himself or a character (it's hard to say) smoking and talking about the city and at one point he says:

I don't know anyone in New York who doesn't say 'I'm leaving'. I've been thinking of leaving New York for... uh... thirty-five years now.

I always liked that. If even Lou Reed (and who's more New York than Lou Reed?) can cop to a love/hate relationship with the city that validates the rest of us.

We're leaving. And saying all the things you say at times like this, and even meaning most of them:

• It's the right time.
• Fiona will be in school soon, and while you can get a decent education in New York, you're either going to have to be ridiculously wealthy (which we're not), or possessed of limitless energy (which we're also not) in order to navigate the public school system to make sure your kid winds up in the better schools.
• The cost of living is absurd.
• Fiona could use a back yard.
  
• With Fiona being so young we don't get to go out often enough to take advantage of the amazing culture that's going on a few minutes away.

All of the above are true, and combined with job opportunities that have come up we'd be lunatics to stay. And yet.


I was born in New York and moved away when I was basically Fiona's age. My mother talks about crying when it was time to leave New York, and growing up I thought that was silly, as young boys do when they ponder attaching emotion to... much of anything, but especially a place that had dirty sidewalks and was too hard to drive.

Then I grew up, moved to New York, moved away, moved back. And there are things I'll never understand about the city and still drive me crazy. Why people will double park in front of an empty spot, blocking the street rather than spend 10 seconds pulling to the curb. Why people love sidewalk cafes and leisurely bike rides (New York is a beautiful city from a distance -- that skyline! -- but up close it ain't Paris or Italy)

But now I'm moving away again, and I have a list of all the things I'm going to desperately miss about the only city Fiona's ever called home:

• Living in a pedestrian city where everybody uses public transit. In New York the bus isn't just for the poor, and when I used to commute into the city I was polishing off 3-4 books a month just reading on the subway. All that bumping into each other on a daily basis will drive you nuts, but it's good for democracy (yes, I'm serious about that).
  
  When you live in a pedestrian city you never have to compare how much you've had to drink against what time you need to drive. You stay in touch with all the changes in your neighborhood. You make random discoveries when you turn down a side street. These things are possible in driving cities (well, not the drinking without fear part), but they're harder.
  
  
• Parallel Parking. In direct contradiction to my first point, but important if you do have a car. I remember driving with my father-in-law, coasting up the street, slamming on the brakes, pulling quickly into a spot that left a few inches to the curb and on either side of the bumpers, and my father-in-law letting out a "wow" while I hadn't even thought I was doing anything unusual. This is a skill that's going to go to waste in most parts of the country.
  
  
• The Natural History Museum. I've written about this before. Pretty much the coolest place on the planet.
  
  
• Pizza, bagels, pastrami on rye. I mean, of course. There are a few other cities that do the first as well (or even better). No other American city does the latter two anywhere near as well. When I travel on business and the breakfast spread at a conference has a plate of "bagels," I steer clear.
  
  
• The Astoria Park Playground. A few weeks ago on the first really hot weekend of the year, I watched Fiona in her swimming suit running through the sprinklers (they turn those on to spray the kids in the playground) at the same time as about 30 other kids. Back yards have their upside, but that was an image that felt very New York to me.
  
  
• Yankee Stadium. This place was more fun when the bleachers still served beer and were $6 (or maybe it was just more fun to be 23 and grabbing a cheap seat). I've even come to terms with the idea that they could use a new park (not necessarily the tax burden on the city, but 55,000 people now show up every night and the park just isn't built for moving that many people in and out on a daily basis). Still, there are only a few ballparks in the country where you can count on such a large portion of the crowd really knowing what's going on, not just within the game, but with a sense of history. And when something exciting happens, the place shakes.
  
  
• Fatty's. There will be other restaurants, but that was our neighborhood place, and Fiona loved it there. We're still planning to have our last dinner before the move there.
  
  
• The Weather. No, really. There are many people I know, including several members of my own family, who will disagree with me, and on days where it's 15 degrees and windy or 98 and humid I might not be so enthusiastic, but: I really like being somewhere where the temperatures run across a broad range. At the very least it forces you to rotate your wardrobe regularly, and it also gives structure to the year.
  
  
• The Arrogance and Kindness. There's a joy in feeling like a "real New Yorker" that you get when you know the exact time to leave and shortcut to take that will get you to BAM right at the point where parking becomes free, or being able to navigate the subway without a second thought. We'll come back a lot (we still have family here, for one thing), but there's a level of knowledge that's going to atrophy, and in a few years we won't be able to pass for local.
  
  I've always maintained that New Yorkers generally get a bad rap for rudeness. We move fast here -- we have to -- but all a lost pedestrian or subway rider has to do is ask and five or six locals will descend to offer assistance. We all remember what it was like to arrive and spend the first few months wandering around without a clue.
  

Well. Our life will almost certainly get easier after the move (and the movers show up on Monday morning, so that's not long now), and there is a great deal to look forward to as we settle in Tampa. But that will be for later posts.

We moved here just before Y2K and have since dealt with 9/11, the 2003 blackout, and a transit strike, none of which I'd want to relive. But I'm going to miss the city terribly, and there's a part of me that hopes to be back again someday--one of those fools who keeps moving back and away, back and away--and that Fiona retains enough affection for the place to spend some years here in her twenties (or whenever) herself. That there's no goodbye, maybe another try at becoming king of the hill, top of the heap...

If I haven't lost you already, with this way-too-lengthy post that's only partially about Fiona, there's an short album of New York shots (mainly Fiona-in-New-York shots, since she tends to be our favorite photographic subject) here.