The day I outgrew THE city...

Growing up, New York used to be THE city to me. I would cut school to drive up there for the day, wander aimlessly through the streets before picking up my latest favorite cd for $2 on Canal Street (obviously this was the pre-iPod era), happily eat two slices of phenomenal pizza, and drive back home to make it just in time for my parents to not realize that I hadn't been in school. Then, in college, I repeated the process - but this time, my trips would involve long nights of intense dancing and drinking in the LES, eating a $6 lamb-and-rice platter afterwards (with extra white sauce and hot sauce, of course) at 53rd and 6th (the one across the street from the official "Platters") and then driving back home to Jersey at sunrise. Every major event HAD to be held in NYC and every weekend involved a rotation of who would be the driver. It wasn't until this year that I realized that the thrill of NYC for this Philadelphian-female has come and gone.


When I first graduated from college and moved to Philadelphia, I was miserable. All of my friends were either still in North Jersey or had moved into Manhattan.  I could count on one hand how many times I had been to Philadelphia (although growing up, I was equidistant from both NY and Philly). As an engineer, there were no jobs in NYC and Philadelphia was as close to the major Northeast metropolitan area that I was going to get. I took the offer and moved into my Philly apartment, but spent every single weekend driving back up to NY. As I started making more friends and establishing my own life in Philly, my trips to NY became more and more infrequent, until I realized that before this past weekend, I had not been to NYC in over six months.


My sister wanted to celebrate her sixteenth birthday in NYC (of course), so I took her to spend the day in Manhattan with her friend and my little cousin. I let them wander around while I spent the day with Priya. It was, at this point, when I realized I was over the thrill of the big city.


First, I had to drive around for forty-five minutes to try to find a parking spot in Midtown because I refused to spend over $75 to park my car in a lot for six hours. The only spot I could find was a two-hour metered spot that was two AVENUE blocks away, which meant that every two hours, I had to walk these two blocks (which seemed painfully longer and longer each time) to put more money in the meter. Of course, the walk isn't just a normal walk because it's 60 degrees out in January in Midtown West, which means EVERYONE and their mother is out on the street - it's a dodge-people-and-bicycles-and-children-and-rollerbladers-and-strollers-and-dogs-walk, while trying to maintain a steady pace. As I'm making one of these unfortunate walks back to Priya's apartment, I notice two guys yelling at each other as I try to speed-walk past, and just when I feel as though I'm comfortably past the argument.... I get nailed in the back of my head with a rogue CD case that one of the argumentative guys had thrown at the other [sidebar: this is in the midst of the iPod era, by the way, which makes me question the quality of individuals that still carry CDs] . I respond with a "WHAT THE [insert multiple expletives here]?!?!?!" And of course, because it's Manhattan, and people here don't have the general social etiquette that regular human beings have, they don't even look twice at me, and just proceed on their way like nothing happened.


The second incident of the day involved Priya and my attempt at getting our eyebrows done.  As we walk back from the nail salon to her apartment in search of a salon, we see a sign that says "Eyebrow Threading" and we decide to go in.  Upon first glance, the place looked a little questionable, but nonetheless, this is Manhattan and 'questionable' is not an unusual adjective to describe ethnically-owned local spots, so we went inside. We climb up a flight of stairs, which lead up to another flight of stairs, plus a row of deadbolted doors that look like they hadn't been opened in years.  A sign, that looks like it had just been printed on an old inkjet, says to continue upstairs for the spa. So we continue. Up 7 more similarly labeled flights of stairs, at which point I am gasping for breath and sweating profusely - because again, this is Manhattan, and central air in the questionable hallways of 'spas' is not expected. The final door to the 'spa' is also deadbolted and locked. We knock on the door and an Asian lady cracks the door open and looks at us, puzzled. We ask to get our eyebrows done and she firmly says, "We don't do that here." As I look behind the cracked door, I notice a "massage" chair, and a security camera outside the front door, and I simultaneously realized, this was not an eyebrow threading salon.


So, in conclusion, the thrill of living the fantasy life of Carrie Bradshaw, has now passed. I want to live somewhere where I can walk freely down a city block at a normal walking pace, with minimal concentration required and little consequence, and where I can just find out if a "spa" is a "spa" before painfully climbing a mountain of stairs without air conditioning. After having realized that I can no longer make spontaneous trips into NYC and that I need to mentally (and physically) prepare weeks in advance for any potential visit, I also realized that I have now surpassed the bright-eyed-bushy-tailed-and-whimsical-era of my early 20s and am ready to settle down in a much more manageable, and less-stressful city like Philadelphia.