Return to the Big Apple
When I moved to San Francisco after 13 years living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, I desktop-published a newsletter called Bicoastal Living that I stuffed in envelopes and mailed to new friends on the West Coast and old ones on the East. It included such social advice as: “When in doubt, say chardonnay” and never, ever refer to “pate” as chopped liver. This was before blogs. Sure, I had email in the late eighties, but “the cloud” was still the realm of planes and precipitation.
When a career move brought me back to New York in 1993, I felt no compunction to write a tell all about readjustment. Being a fast walker on Broadway felt natural. I needed to keep going, dodging tourists who seemed frozen in place as they gawked at skyscrapers and took pictures. In fact, my readjustment took a New York minute.
The big difference was lack of a private automobile — using one was a must in California, even if the store was two blocks away. But in Manhattan wheels were a liability. You either had to spend an inordinate amount of time searching for parking or almost as much money housing a car as housing yourself. So, dispensing with a car was liberating.
After five years of being away, you’d think subway skills would atrophy. They hadn’t. I still knew enough while waiting for a local on a hot day to raise my soaked armpits toward an express as it sped by. The air in the station was stifling but the momentary breeze was a welcoming perk of my fare. I also knew how to leverage the West Fourth Street Station by heading there on a downtown train though my goal was to boomerang back uptown to be deposited on a different avenue.
I still retained subway math. I knew that a ① at an express stop was worth more than a ② or ③ to come. I knew where to wait on a platform so as to be in the optimum car of the train when exiting.
One thing I never got used to in the Bay Area was the traffic. Sure, you can grow frustrated sitting on a New York City subway when the train ahead isn’t leaving the station “due to a sick passenger.” But those occurrences paled by comparison to the more frequent times I was stuck in a car by myself on the freeway with nothing moving.
Also, the weather seems more natural in New York. In Northern California, seasons were defined by distance: cold on the coast, warm where the fog had lifted, hot in the interior, snow in the mountains. You couldn’t drive from the Golden Gate to San Jose in a convertible without starting out with the heat on, then a few miles later turning the heat off, rolling down the windows and putting the top down, then after more miles snapping the top back in place, closing the windows and turning on the air conditioner. It all seemed too much trouble for a 60-mile drive.
New Yorkers are mainly in sync with winter, spring, summer, and fall according to the calendar. Sure, global warming has muddied the seasons, but the weather in my native state has always made more sense than weather measured by driving distance.
In New York, we appreciate the crisp detail of Fourth of July fireworks. In San Francisco, they’re more like smudges in the miasma. In New York, you go to the beach and tan. If you dare take off your two sweatshirts at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, you chill and get sandblasted.
In New York City, you had to drive to the suburbs to visit a drive-in movie theater. In San Francisco, when I was there, one operated adjacent to the Cow Palace, where the Democratic National Convention was held in 1964. (I watched it on TV while making model airplanes.) The thought of going to an actual drive-in in San Francisco was intriguing. So, I drove my date there to see Godfather III. Halfway into the movie, the fog rolled in. If you thought the catacombs scene was dark, try watching it through dense fog and a condensation-plated windshield. It was more like radio than theater.
On a Manhattan movie screen, you can pretty much count on the view not degrading halfway into the picture. Sure, there was the time at the Village 7 in the East Village when the projectionist failed to show up on account of Yom Kippur, but we did get vouchers for another show. Try asking the attendant at the Cow Palace Drive-In for your money back. He only laughed and said, “This is San Francisco. Never seen fog before?”
I feel at ease back in New York. The only time the ground shakes is when a subway is rumbling under the street. (A woman I knew from California who had just arrived in New York grabbed my hand tightly on Sixth Avenue, certain we were in the midst of an earthquake. She thought I was uttering an expletive when I shouted it was just the F!)
With one-tenth the population of New York City, San Francisco is like a bubble in which you’re likely to run into the same people. That’s great if you’re friendly. I’m not. I cherish anonymity, something with which NYC has an abundance. In the Big Apple everyone is essentially a stranger, and it’s easy to be private in public. Just the way I like it.
Maybe it’s because of the population density or the fact that most people don’t isolate themselves in private conveyances that it’s only natural I resumed my lack of eye contact. New Yorkers tend by default not to smile, unlike in California. Upon returning to the Big Apple, I have had no trouble maintaining a blank look. I wear it not just with abandon but with glee. Things have returned to normal, and I feel at home.
