A Year In New York

Today I’ve been running last-minute errands and pondering what it all means, spending a year in New York City. I’ve worn through a lot of shoe leather in this crazy town and learned some hard lessons,  and now it’s time for me to pass those lessons on to you.
Here goes:

1. The World Won’t End If [...]

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The crags of Mordor? A visit by Martians? No, the subject of this photo is Manhattan from Roosevelt Island in the midafternoon (not bad for a squinty iPhone shot).  Yesterday I saddled up the bicycle and visited the island for the first time.
The Roosevelt Island Tram lifts off silently from 59th Street and Second Avenue [...]

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As I type this post, my body vividly remembers yesterday’s maiden snowboarding trip to New Jersey, in the form of a stiff shoulder and a chest that is so bruised it hurts to exhale. Other memories are less painful.
For example, driving up Route 23 into the Kittatinny Mountains, Joo and her friend Bobbi snoozing in [...]

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I have neglected to mention Thanksgiving and the utterly different side of New York I saw over the long weekend. I rented a car and took a five-hour drive upstate to Wellsville, New York, all the way to end of a dirt road where my friend Rich Shear owns a farm. I met Rich on [...]

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I went out of town with a few friends this weekend to visit the Pocono Mountains and see the leaves turning. Much like my visit this summer to the Hamptons, a pilgrimage to the Poconos has a mystique that is attached to books I’ve read but whose titles I’ve forgotten. The Poconos are fixed in [...]

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The day in the Hamptons had started so well. After yesterday’s jellyfishing in Long Beach, Joo and I took the LIRR all the way to Montauk, on the far eastern tip of Long Island. Moment after Kodak moment, like these:

I always imagined the Hamptons as the sort of place where Gaylord plugs in the golf [...]

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So far the closest Joo and I have come to the Atlantic is the grilled red snapper we ordered from Spice Thai. To address our saltwater deficiency we boarded the LIRR, and one hour out of Penn Station we stood ankle deep in the fine, powdery sand of Long Beach, wondering why nobody was in [...]

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I have gathered only a couple regrets during my first 65 days in New York, and one is that no one informed me sooner what a majestic trip can be found on the Staten Island Ferry.
Its municipal-orange bulk squatted at the edge of Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan, obscured from view by [...]

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I drove around Los Angeles today, doing research for a magazine story I am writing about trash. In addition to getting a tan, I gleaned an insight into how living in New York is changing my opinions about California’s two city-states, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
So you New Yorkers can make sense of it, let [...]

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Today Joo introduced me to her favorite tree. A Seattle native, she had beat me to the West Coast by a few days and by the time I arrived she had already settled into its green, sap-scented vibe. I was irritable on the drive out to Anacortes, jogging my foot against the floorboards, still in [...]

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