It's June 2008. I'm 20, and I'm about to hear something I won't remember until three years later.
It's an impossibly nice Friday afternoon in New York City, the type of afternoon so nice it upsets you at work. People unaware of their net worth just don't get to enjoy an afternoon like this. But here's me, an unpaid college intern so new to Manhattan that I get lost on numbered streets, and I'm having the prix-fixed lunch option at a crowded sidewalk cafe on a secluded cobblestone street. We're outside. There's a building blocking the sun just enough that I don't have to keep checking the tops of my hands for sunburn. And to top it all off, the waitress seems French but understands just enough English to know that I ordered the pistachio gelato, NOT the mango.
Since you're reading this now, you know I spent the summer of 2008 in New York City as an intern at a well-known television network and only left to celebrate my 21st birthday (since my mother might read this) with several nice, low-key nights in Las Vegas. When ranking my summers of the Post-Football Camp era, Summer 2008 is the undefeated and un-scored-upon juggernaut champ. George Costanza had his summer. This was mine. And it was great.
What I realize now, though, is that my Summer of 2008 was an elaborate sandcastle built at low-tide. I'm 23 now, back in New York and still come out of the subway and walk halfway down the street before realizing I'm going the wrong way. I've returned to where I built my wondrous sandcastle (much cooler than yours) three summers ago, but all I see now is an ugly brown lump. High tide came, and I suddenly remember seeing a warning sign on the dunes.
Back to the sidewalk meal ...
I was there because my co-workers took me out for lunch to celebrate my 21st. Upon arrival, I saw 'Prix-Fixed' lunch written on a chalkboard and asked the three of them what the 'Pricks-Fixed' lunch was. After pronouncing it correctly (pre-fixed) to the French waitress who may or may not have known the difference anyway, the four of us chatted while waiting for the food to come. At the time, the three of them were my age now, so, like, 23 or 24, and they started talking about where they live and how much they pay for rent in these places. The numbers that followed included the word 'thousand,' and my initial reaction then was that they must pay their rent yearly, maybe even in intervals longer than that. Not the case. That's monthly rent, in the thousands.
At the time, I said something like, 'These numbers are frightening me," and they laughed. But I was serious. I was legitimately appalled. However, like many other encounters I had with real life while in college, I chose to ignore these numbers and keep my focus on more immediate matters, like what the difference is between gelato and ice cream (You can't tell me they're not the same thing). After all, I had all of senior year left! And rent at 353 Semple was a robust $400 a month. Life after that? Psh! SENIOR YEAR!
Fast forward from that carefree summer, and here we are now. Back to New York, like Coral and The Miz. Just like I drew it up, only with a slight delay in Pittsburgh and a random, way-out-of-the-way-but-not-necessarily-unwelcome detour through Colorado Springs. Honestly, I've wanted to come back to the city here since I left, thinking I'd just get a sweet/awesome/cool job and my whole life would be the Summer of 2008 again.
Again. Not the case.
A sweet/awesome/cool job I have, and I'm happy to have it. I am. But having a cubicle on the island of Manhattan cannot be taken at face value. Life in New York City comes at a price, and that price is steeper than the eastern face of the Flatirons in Boulder (Yeah, what up Colorado, I got you). I realized this during the Summer of 2008. However, I chose to ignore it then in lieu of good times, because everyone likes good times. Then, while paying zero dollars in rent for close to a year and really no prospects of returning to the island here, I kinda forgot about the offensive cost of living in New York. In Colorado Springs, I paid more than I should have in rent, but I had a very nice apartment with a pool and mountains in the background, and I didn't feel like I was being swindled or bamboozled in any fashion.
Then I got the job in New York, and I started looking for a place to live. Most of the bus shelters, public bathrooms and overpasses were already spoken for, so, begrudgingly, I hit Craigslist to try to find an apartment in a part of Manhattan that doesn't sound like 'Harlem.' For some inexplicable but inescapable reason, people value those properties more than the prime piece of real estate at 353 Semple Street. And the bidding starts at one thousand dollars.
Monthly rent in the thousands. I know, tastes like pistachio ice cream.
This is how New York works. It punishes you for being here. For a city that's glorified in pop culture as much as it is (we'll get to that in a second) and with so many cool things to do, it sure does its best to financially dismantle you. Again, I knew this. But I forgot.
How do you forget something like that? You just do. You live somewhere long enough and you get used to a certain way of life. I didn't live in New York too long the first time, but I was here long enough to get used to things being expensive. When I left and things got cheaper, I got used to that just the same. I used to tell a story a lot when I came back to Pittsburgh from New York the first time. It involves the cost of a certain type of beverage and said cost, on average, being exponentially higher in New York than in Pittsburgh. I got used to that while here the first time. But when I went away for a few years, I forgot about it. So when I came back up and met a buddy at an establishment that serves such beverages, I asked this:
"What's the special?"
He looked at me.
" ... There's no special."
And that's how it is. It can't help but make you think of Alicia Keys singing 'In Neew Yooooooorrrrrrrk! Con-crete jung-les where dreams are maaaaade of, there's nothing you caaaaaaaan't dooooo ..." It sounds so glorious. But think of who's singing it. Alica freakin' Keys. She's filthy rich. And she's only half right. There's nothing you caaaaaan't doooooo .... with enough money. There's tons you caaaaaaan't dooooo on a budget. Of course, there's plenty of hip-hop dedicated to New York's armpits and being strapped financially (and being strapped in other ways), but they're not singin' those on Glee.
The two most important lines from Jay Z in that song are these: if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere. Somewhere, Frank Sinatra is going, 'Hey ...' Nonetheless, it's true. The other is 'half a y'all won't make it.' Now, Old Blue Eyes is probably like, 'Well, I never said that,' but, nonetheless, that's true, too. Be the king in New York, and you're the king pretty much all over the place. But the overwhelming odds of you becoming the king everywhere aren't good.
Can it be done? It can. But I'm not sure how large the marketplace demand is for another white rapper. Or another rapper from Pittsburgh.
Hey, in New York, Wiz wouldn't even have a car to rap about, or he'd start including rhymes about the cost of parking, traffic, bad drivers and pedestrians who think the big orange hand means 'walk.'
A few other 'only in New York' tidbits:
- I met a guy who played hoops at Columbia, which is on Manhattan's Upper West Side. (Speaking of which, remember when everybody started saying 'West Side!' only pronounced it like, 'West SOID!' Remember that? What was that even about?). Anyway, yeah, Columbia hoops. The story as he told it was about a game they were set to play at Hofstra, which is on Long Island, about 30 miles away. Apparently, it was kind of a big game. 'The Battle for New York' or something like that it was called on ESPN radio. Well, the Columbia team bus set out to make the 30 mile drive to Hofstra about 4 hours before game time. And never made it. Why?
Traffic. So the game was canceled. A basketball game ... called off. Because of TRAFFIC.
- I was walking up the steps out of the subway the other day and spotted a paper bag overflowing with some type of brown substance that smelled like neither chocolate nor mud. Just ... layin' there.
- Granted, the news anywhere can be desensitizing (I'd like to create a new word for this: labotomatic. And I just named my first LP.) But the news teasers during Sunday night football here are strikingly matter-of-fact. For instance:
'A gruesome murder in Brooklyn. Details after the game.'
'Armed robbers strike in pure daylight. More after the game.'
'Deranged serial murderer at large in Manhattan, armed and dangerous. Details after the game.'
... I made the last two up.
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