Enjoying New York: Faith Healer
May. 25th, 2006 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
connaticI've lived in New York for close to ten years now - four years on and off, shuttling between London, Europe and NYC every few weeks, and six years full time. I've loved this city from the beginning and cannot imagine living anywhere else.
According to Heidi, New York is our religion - and we must be hardcore fundamentalists, as we demand to live in Manhattan...
Friends who haven't quite caught the New York bug often ask us why we care so much? Why do we pay the inflated rent for a small apartment, put up with noisy neighbors, take the crowded subways, etc? Why not move to the suburbs and commute?
The answer comes in many parts. We just like big cities - the crowds, noise and smells are as much an attractions as they are occasional drawbacks. We like eating out, and there's hundreds of good restaurants within a few blocks of our apartment. My job is in Manhattan and requires occasional emergency visits to the office (more so when I was on call a few years back); Heidi's studying at NYU end needs to go into the osteo and DNA labs at crazy hours. Then there's the museums, theaters, bookstores, obscure movies, concerts, specialty stores, all the things that a big city provides.
Strangely, we don't actually go to any of these things all that often. We go to a museum maybe once a month; see movies weekly, but often those that also play in the 'burbs; I'm trying to cut down on the bookstore visits (and anyway there's Amazon for new releases); and we go to the theater maybe twice a year. You'd think the same could be done while living in the suburbs, right? It's hard to answer such a question conclusively - yes, it could be done, but would it be as much fun?
I guess we tested that yesterday. There's a newish play on Broadway, Faith Healer, with Ralph Fiennes in the lead role. Heidi's got this thing for Mr. Fiennes (he's on her freebie list, something I'll have to explain at some point), so she got us tickets as soon as the play was announced and before there were any reviews. We went yesterday evening. And oh my - she got us great tickets - front row of the balcony, close to the middle of the row, with a fantastic view of the stage. (And she paid less than half than poor seats got for now - I love my wife...)
Anyway, the play was great - we had a really good time. And thanks to living in the city, it wasn't actually a big deal to get there or get back home. We took a cab both ways, but that was largely because Heidi was wearing fancy shoes - if she's brought flip-flops as a change of shoes, we could have walked it in 20-30 minutes. Living in the city allows us to do these kinds of things with minimal planning - no parking the car, no overnight stay in a hotel, no coordination between our jobs and meeting for the play - we just show up, enjoy the play, go back to our place, and that's it.
It's unlikely to be enough to convince my suburban friends that living in the city is worth it. But the accumulation of small things - walking to a great restaurant, seeing an obscure movie just a few subway stops away, stopping at the Strand on the way back from work, tall buildings surrounding me most of the time - is what does it for me. I worship at the temple of New York City, and plan to do so for a long time to come...
According to Heidi, New York is our religion - and we must be hardcore fundamentalists, as we demand to live in Manhattan...
Friends who haven't quite caught the New York bug often ask us why we care so much? Why do we pay the inflated rent for a small apartment, put up with noisy neighbors, take the crowded subways, etc? Why not move to the suburbs and commute?
The answer comes in many parts. We just like big cities - the crowds, noise and smells are as much an attractions as they are occasional drawbacks. We like eating out, and there's hundreds of good restaurants within a few blocks of our apartment. My job is in Manhattan and requires occasional emergency visits to the office (more so when I was on call a few years back); Heidi's studying at NYU end needs to go into the osteo and DNA labs at crazy hours. Then there's the museums, theaters, bookstores, obscure movies, concerts, specialty stores, all the things that a big city provides.
Strangely, we don't actually go to any of these things all that often. We go to a museum maybe once a month; see movies weekly, but often those that also play in the 'burbs; I'm trying to cut down on the bookstore visits (and anyway there's Amazon for new releases); and we go to the theater maybe twice a year. You'd think the same could be done while living in the suburbs, right? It's hard to answer such a question conclusively - yes, it could be done, but would it be as much fun?
I guess we tested that yesterday. There's a newish play on Broadway, Faith Healer, with Ralph Fiennes in the lead role. Heidi's got this thing for Mr. Fiennes (he's on her freebie list, something I'll have to explain at some point), so she got us tickets as soon as the play was announced and before there were any reviews. We went yesterday evening. And oh my - she got us great tickets - front row of the balcony, close to the middle of the row, with a fantastic view of the stage. (And she paid less than half than poor seats got for now - I love my wife...)
Anyway, the play was great - we had a really good time. And thanks to living in the city, it wasn't actually a big deal to get there or get back home. We took a cab both ways, but that was largely because Heidi was wearing fancy shoes - if she's brought flip-flops as a change of shoes, we could have walked it in 20-30 minutes. Living in the city allows us to do these kinds of things with minimal planning - no parking the car, no overnight stay in a hotel, no coordination between our jobs and meeting for the play - we just show up, enjoy the play, go back to our place, and that's it.
It's unlikely to be enough to convince my suburban friends that living in the city is worth it. But the accumulation of small things - walking to a great restaurant, seeing an obscure movie just a few subway stops away, stopping at the Strand on the way back from work, tall buildings surrounding me most of the time - is what does it for me. I worship at the temple of New York City, and plan to do so for a long time to come...
