I’ve only been to New York a few times in my life (relatively speaking, of course, to most of my good friends, who seem to actually live in New York or take regular long weekends here). Probably 15 times at most. And every time, I’ve been amazed at how much the city seems to speak to my soul.
Always awake and vibrant, even at 4 a.m.,
An energy that you can literally feel in the sidewalk beneath your feet,
A place of incredible diversity, where people really don’t care who you are or who you love,
And something that’s always just made the place magic.
I’m reminded of all that tonight, spending the weekend with one of my best friends at his apartment, literally spitting distance from Times Square, the place that has felt like it’s always been my Mecca. “The City” is a place where you’re never alone, and yet, you’re always alone.
I still wonder what it would be like to live here, especially now that my career is actually going somewhere. It won’t be like the first time I moved to “The City,” which, in that case, was Washington, D.C. I was 22, scared shitless, exceptionally poor and just a lonely kid who was literally fleeing from the ills of the extra-rural Deep South.
But could I make it here, in the Big Apple? PR in New York is a totally different ballgame then doing PR in D.C. Though if I was in New York, I’d go back to journalism in an instant and really make something of myself 😉
So for me, the old slogan “I (heart) NY” is a mantra. Still, I’m quite happy where I am, in the U Street neighborhood of our nation’s capital, albeit the country’s 21st-largest city.
No, you can’t feel Washington’s energy underfoot. In fact, I hate to say, in D.C., if the ground starts rumbling, you’ve got to duck for cover because another manhole cover is about to blow into the air.
Sure, our city is a little frayed around the edges, but we are who we are. It’s a strange place, actually, because there are two entirely different worlds that co-exist in Washington. There’s them, the political types who don’t actually pay taxes here, yet they act as if they are our self-appointed monarchs. And then there’s us, the regular people who live in the neighborhoods, pay the taxes and keep the rest of a vibrant, flourishing smallcity going strong.
It’s Washington. It’s my home. Sure, it’s got some warts, but there’s another side that, while not quite New York, does have a little bit of magic all its own.