New York, Part 1

Eve Dmochowska    Uncategorized     NYC

So I’m in New York.

I’m no travel noob, but there is something about visiting New York that is different to visiting any other city. It’s almost as if it is “The.City”. And in a way I guess it is.

Last time I was here (eons ago) I was a student in Boston, about 4 hrs north of New York. Even then I remember it took a couple of visits for the City to grow on me. At first I found it too haphazard, too busy, too lonely. But that soon changed. The energy of the City takes over, and there is a definite promise of potential in the air. I would walk past the 5th Avenue shops, knowing that one day they would be mine. My boyfriend’s apartment was slightly bigger than his bed, and that was great too, because I knew that that would all change when we grew up to be responsible adults.

So here I am, the responsible adult. With no apartment on 5th Avenue yet, and with great disdain of the shops that charge $400 for a belt. So at least the responsible adult worked out right ;-). As I walk the streets of New York now, impressed by little that is in the shops but more by the sheer energy and life of the place, I find myself wondering if I could live here permanently. I am still not sure, but I suspect the answer is “No”.

It’s just too busy. I think that that works in ones favour when one is at the beginning of a career, or at the end (with retirement). But in the middle, it must just be exhausting. Life is a battle here, that much is quickly obvious. People are focussed on money. Most conversations I eavesdrop are related to job security, money issues and so on. It’s on the people’s minds all the time.

It doesn’t help that New York is ridiculously expensive. To rent an apartment that could even mildly compare to my living conditions in SAfrica would cost about $5,000 per month. And I must emphasise “mildly compare” … that would get me 2 bedrooms in about 100 square meters, which is about a quarter of what I have now, minus the garden and pool. Kid’s school would be another $3,000 pm and the other costs are equally astronomical. A coke in a restaurant is $4, a movie $12.50 and so on. So the bottom line is…you need to be pretty loaded.

Of course, New York offers you the opportunity to get loaded pretty fast. Be good at what you do, and recession or not, you are going to take home the salary that is needed to pay those bills. My problem is that I have never been the salary kind of girl.

So in some ideal wish-I-wish-I-might world, I guess I could have an apartment here, and visit for short trysts of shopping and theatre, maybe a bit of business but always with the option of going back home. I wouldn’t mind spending a full summer here though, especially with my kid. She would definitely benefit from the very different cultural environment.

And I guess that is new York’s biggest pull: there is just so much to do here. You could never be bored…at worst you could simply be overwhelmed. In that ideal world I mentioned earlier, I would sign up for photography classes, explore museums, take up roller blading again, learn French, take some college classes at NYU…maybe even learn to cook. But I am smart enough to know that the reality would be far harsher, because the pace of life needed to keep head-above-water here would probably not allow me to do many of those things.

One caveat that needs to be mentioned: I purposefully wrote this before I had any business related meetings etc, which start tomorrow. I am fully aware that once I meet people in my industry, or potential future business partners my enthusiasm for the city could increase drastically. And if it does, I will note it duly here.

Photo by Sunsurf, via Flickr

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