Officially a New Yorker

photo by Gina Zeidler, way before I achieved my New Yorker status. I’m much more badass now.

There is a saying that once a person has lived in New York City for ten years you officially become a New Yorker. Well, I don’t have the accent, but I hit the ten year mark last week.

I moved into an apartment in Astoria with my first cell phone, first laptop, and the most inexpensive ikea furniture available, on the day of the blackout in 2003. My dad put together my bed by candle light. I’ve lived with horrible roommates, awesome roommates, and roommates I’ve never seen. The first three years I lived in NYC I occupied four apartments and had eight different waitressing jobs (four of which I was fired gracefully let go from). I’ve made $400 in one night and I’ve made $8 in a 16 hour shift (tip your servers!). Adam and I had our first date at a bar on the Lower East Side. We were engaged at Rockefeller Center. I launched this business from a Starbucks uptown. I’ve sobbed walking down the street and didn’t care if anyone saw. Look around the next day you are in NYC, I bet you you’ll see at least one person crying.

This place kicks the sh*t out of you.

But then, you wake up the next day and order pancakes for delivery from an app on your phone, pick up your freshly folded laundry, visit all the best museums and stores and restaurants in the world, and keep living here.

Then a day comes when there is literally not one more space in my apartment for one more thing, some loser dude cat calls me on the street (hey, I still got it), our driver’s side mirror has been broken (again), and I get home with bags of groceries that I can hardly carry to a broken elevator and hoof it up six flights.

And we keep living here. The suburbs might come calling, one day, but until then, I’ll walk around with my New Yorker hat complaining about all the tourists clogging the sidewalks.

 

 

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