Weddings

…in DUMBO. Three, to be exact, in one day. The first we pretty much attended, at Empire Fulton Ferry. It was hard to hear with the dinky P.A. system that looked like a boom box and trains roaring over the Manhattan Bridge, but I teared up when they kissed at the end. It was romantic.

Coming home

Around 5:20 this past Monday evening, I landed at John F. Kennedy airport. I had been gone from New York for eleven full days; it felt like a lot longer. I’ve always thought New York is the kind of place that changes shape to reflect your mood—if you’re cranky, it’ll be the most frustrating place you can imagine. If you’re happy, it will elate you. It’s often very polarizing, without much gray area, and those polar opposites can apply to one person’s experience in the span of just one day.

Monday was the first time in a while I can remember not wanting to return to New York. With other recent vacations, even as I didn’t want them to end, a mellow sense of comfort and familiarity awaited me when I arrived in the city. This time was harder—I had been sad before I left and was unsure of the feelings that would envelop me when I was back. I have also only been in my current apartment since March, and it still feels new, not 100% like home.

Growing up, or, will I ever live in Boston?

A few weeks ago, I spent the weekend in Boston. I was there seeing a good friend and old roommate, one of those people I’m not very good at keeping in touch with but who, when I see her, I immediately tell her every detail of what’s going on in my life.

We were catching up, as you do with friends in other cities, and she was telling me about her life in Boston. It differs substantially from her former life as a New Yorker: here she was single, had a job, plans most nights of the week, and a handful of men whose presences in her life were best characterized as ambiguous. Now she is in school, has a boyfriend, and rarely goes out.

When describing the ways in which her life now feels different, my friend told me that she missed going out and missed New York. (She had lived here for seven years before relocating.) In pretty much the same sentence, however, she said something else that struck me—that she felt like she had grown up since moving to Boston. That statement got me thinking about other friends of mine who reside there. One moved there to live with her boyfriend. A freelance writer and editor, she is now considering becoming a therapist. Another friend is engaged and owns a condo and a dog with his fiancé; the wedding is in September. Yet another friend lives with his girlfriend and although they aren’t yet engaged, he spoke to me about the possibility of it. “Wow,” I thought, “my friends in Boston are so settled.” That brought me to a seemingly important question: is it possible to grow up in New York?

Orchard Corset

On Monday, two of my coworkers and I left work in a hurry at 5 o’clock. For me this meant leaving early—half an hour early—but our mission was important. We were venturing to the Lower East Side to find the supposed bra/lingerie store to end all bra/lingerie stores.

Orchard Corset, as the store is called, has the most uniformly positive reviews of any place/thing I’ve ever looked at on Yelp. Twenty-five happy ladies, particularly happy ladies talking about their breasts, cannot be wrong. Or can they? After making the pilgrimage, I’m still not entirely sure about the answer to this one (nor are my friends who went with), but for me, at least, Orchard Corset was well worth the trip just to see the place in all its quirky glory.

Subway etiquette

Last week, one of the entries in my daily ArtsJournal newsletter was curiously headlined, “The Best Sign in the History of the World.” Clicking on it, I discovered that the writer of the blog, Laura Collins, was referring to the above poster, which I would agree is, disregarding the bad grammar, possibly the best sign in the history of the world. (Non-New Yorkers might demur to this statement; I welcome other suggestions.)

It turns out the poster is one in a limited-edition print run by the artist Jason Shelowitz. According to the Daily News, which picked up the story this week, Shelowitz polled 100 people for their biggest subway etiquette complaints and chose the top 10 as subjects for his screen prints. He printed them in MTA colors, appropriated the MTA logo, and changed the “T” to “E” for “etiquette.”

The kindness of strangers

The weather was beautiful—clear blue sky and 70 degrees. It was a Sunday morning that was really an afternoon and ripe for brunch at Tom’s Restaurant, where I had just joyously consumed apple walnut pancakes with cinnamon butter. My old roommate was visiting but now leaving, and when we left the restaurant, we made a right on Washington Avenue and headed south to the subway: Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum, where I spend almost all of my time these days.

Being present

Marina Abramovic at MoMA. Photo by C-Monster

In the second-floor atrium of the Museum of Modern Art, an artist is sitting right now. Wearing a long garment that trails on the floor and looks like a well-fitted, mock-turtleneck Snuggie, she occupies a chair at one end of a small wooden table. Across from her is another chair, unclaimed, which visitors may sit in for as long as they like. Once in that seat, they lock themselves in a gazing embrace with the artist until deciding they are done and making way for the next person.

The artist is Marina Abramovic, and as the title of her current retrospective at MoMA states, she is present. She plans to be present every minute of every hour of every day that the museum is open until her exhibition closes. No bathroom breaks or meals for the artist, who is 63; she will be present, focused on the stranger in the chair opposite her, through May 31.

Changing boroughs

After months–more like years, actually–of saying I’d never do it, of denying I had any interest in it, I went and did it. Two weeks ago. I moved to Brooklyn.

Countless friends and acquaintances can attest to countless denials on my part–“But it would be so much easier to get to work.” “No.”; “But we live here.” “No.”–and they have now earned the right to mock me for an extended, though ultimately finite, period of time. Here I sit, in a Brooklyn coffee shop around the corner from my Brooklyn apartment and a 10-minute walk away from my Brooklyn job. Ah! My resistance to becoming a cultural New York stereotype has bit me hard in the ass. Even my outfit today is Brooklyn.

A pair of legs

Last Friday morning I felt tired and weary as always, although a little moreso than usual because of a late-ish night involving alcohol consumption. Walking down the subway platform toward my regular waiting spot—three or four steps past the pay phone, which in turn deposits me precisely in front of the staircase at Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum roughly 45 minutes later—all I could think of was how much I hoped to get a seat on the train so I could nap away some of my stupor.

Now a few feet before the pay phone—which by my calculations maybe one person has used in the past three years—comes the trash can, a somewhat imposing and battered black vessel where 2/3 subway riders deposit their miscellaneous crap.  It is a heavy object, rounded at the top, and it would look suggestively futuristic if it didn’t look so sad. In other words, it’s your basic New York City subway trash can. Today, though, there was something different. Today a pair of legs was sticking out from behind it.

What, me worry?

Happy belated New Year! Now that I’m back from a long hiatus, I can finally address something I’ve been meaning to write about for over a month: this.

In short, back in December, the New York Times reported on a happiness study that ranked the the state of New York dead last in the union in terms of the happiness and fulfillment of its citizens. The research was conducted by two economics professors who measured Americans’ self-assessed levels of satisfaction with their lives alongside objective factors like air quality, commute time, cost of living, taxes, etc. The two correlated remarkably, providing, according to the press release about the study, “the first external validation of people’s self-reported levels of happiness.”