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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At 6:30 this morning, a small family of raccoons crawled from the shrubs in Central Park. Mom flattened herself under a green wire fence while two little ones scrambled over. They had just collected themselves for the journey across East Drive when they looked up to see a giant! Their mouths almost formed into little [...]

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It still hurts to take a deep breath after the snowboarding injury I got a few weeks ago. Joo thinks I bruised or even broke a rib. No treatment is available but rest, so I resort to only exercise that doesn’t hurt. I walk to work.
I’ve experimented with different routes and today I walked down [...]

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My wallet lacked $20s, so I visited the WaMu down the street. This particular block has a coffee shop,  a frozen-yogurt place and a cigar store with a wooden Indian outside, yet I like the bank the best. That’s because it’s a WaMu.
WaMu is Washington Mutual, the Seattle bank known for its open floor plan [...]

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The outward sign of hardship here in Manhattan is the empty storefronts. One walks along a bright, continuous smile of retail establishments, and suddenly there’s a gap where a shop used to be.

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A few weeks ago Joo and I traveled to Boston, where temperatures were in the twenties, and the clothing dilemma that I had mothballed for months gained a sharp, aching clarity. Winter is coming, and this Californian had arrived on the East Coast woefully unequipped.
The problem isn’t staying warm, exactly; it’s staying fashionable. I had [...]

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Since I got to New York I have been spotting this big blow-up rat standing on the curb. It moves from place to place and clearly is bidding for attention – but whose? Sanitation workers? The Goth people? Clubhoppers who take the word “underground” a little too literally?
This morning the rat appeared right across from [...]

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I just started a 10-week skills clinic offered by the New York Road Runners to get a swift kick in the butt. Running in Central Park is pleasant, but these sleek New Yorkers keep passing me.
Class met at P.S. 6 (that’s Public School 6) on East 81st Street and I expected that, who knows, 20 [...]

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This evening I unexpectedly find myself at dinner on the Lower East Side with a columnist for a big New York magazine and his girlfriend. (Don’t ask.) There had been no warning, no time to prepare.
I smile and nod gamely over the eggplant lasagna and wish I’d shaved, or combed my hair, or gotten around [...]

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At 80th and Lexington, immobilized behind a garbage truck, I drum my fingers on the dashboard and contemplate the cruel irony of the term “parking space.” To park there must be space, and in Manhattan there simply is none.

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