This isn’t the City I moved to.
I’ve always expected to live in New York City for as long as I remember; it’s where both of my parents are from, where I stole away as often as possible as a music-obsessed kid on Long Island, and the place I always came back to recharge for the twelve years I lived in DC. But now that Rachel and I live here, as much as I love it, I’m astonished every day by how fast it’s changing, and the place I knew is slipping away. So many things I thought could never change are changing, and often the city feels overrun, overpriced, and sometimes just over.
I’m sure this is something people have always felt in New York — the only thing that’s probably constant here is change, and the feeling that the city you imagined is somewhere else — but sometimes something just hits you in the gut. Like reading a few minutes ago that Pasticceria Bruno has closed down, or earlier this week that the Chelsea Hotel is getting Schragerized. A couple weeks before Christmas last year, I was walking down Bleecker Street and happened to pass by Bruno, and looking at the cookies in the window, felt my entire childhood coming back to me. On the way out to visit my parents for dinner for the holidays, I made a point to stop and pick up a couple of pounds of cookies and struffoli, honey balls like my great-Grandma Anna used to make. I knew my mom would get tears in her eyes when she saw them, and she did. I couldn’t believe my good fortune, that I lived in a city where I could still get something like this, something I remembered from almost thirty years ago, whenever I wanted. I figured I’d be going to Bruno’s, like the people double-parked that evening outside the bakery in cars and SUVs from every surrounding borough and state, to buy holiday cookies for the next thirty years, for sure.
Gone.
New York, I love you, but you’re bringing me down. Song of the year, so far, for sure.
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