I ♥ NY
This wasn’t always the case, me involved in a love affair with New York. No, my first few trips were like bad dates that you just keep accepting because you’ve got nothing better to do on a Friday night. Manhattan was overwhelming to me—the noise level, the grittiness and brashness, the crowds, the lights, and the neighborhoods—all of it made me just want to stay home in my stereotypical sweats and watch a Rom-Com while eating takeout. Because of this, I never got to know the real New York until very recently—the one without cab drivers trying to rip off naïve girls from Kansas the second they step off the plane with their sleek black town cars sounding like a good idea in lieu of a grody taxi, one without harsh winters or sweltering summers, and void of tourists that stop to gawk in the middle of heavily trafficked sidewalks like they’ve just hopped off the turnip truck that I couldn’t look past.
I’ve been to New York a fair amount. My first trip, I wrote about here, in Holiday Bound, recounting the first Christmas after my father died. Every other trip after that initial one was for work (since when I worked in television my show was based there), so I made the jaunt often enough. Through it all, I’ve discovered in no other place does where you live exemplify who you are. Atlanta has neighborhoods, but our ‘hoods don’t necessarily define you as a person. In NYC saying you live in Battery Park, Alphabet City, Williamsburg, Hell’s Kitchen, or Morningside Heights says more about you than what line of work you’re in, whom you date, or the shoes you wear.
