When New York City still had an air of romance, especially for an artist, when the city inspired and intrigued a person, and when NYC was a place of distinction, I was drawn to it as a young writer looking for influence. I had driven across the country looking for an opportunity to explore things about myself that I was encouraged to reevaluate and found myself living in Idaho. Idaho’s not a scene of explored inspiration. There’s a certain beauty about northern Idaho but not so much where I was living. I was looking for more. After spending a year or two in Utah I finally acknowledged that I should be in New York. So, I went about making a move to New York City a reality.
I flew into Newark. Not only was flying into Newark cheaper, but it was easier to get from the Newark airport to Manhattan than flying into either La Guardia or JFK. I finally decided to move to New York after my ex-wife and I separated. Emotionally it was a confusing time, but when I moved to Idaho, I wanted to develop myself as a writer but instead focused on building my relationships. I was young and used to having a network. I gave that up when I moved to Idaho. My sacrifice invited co-dependence into my life and my focuses were redirected. Moving to New York City was my opportunity to remedy my mistake. At least that was my hope.
I brought only two rolling suitcases stuffed with clothes and a small heirloom [or two] from my childhood wrapped in T-shirts. The train from Newark Liberty International Airport took me to Penn Station and from there I walked with my bags in town to a hostel I booked for a few nights near 42nd Street while I organized my affairs. I was nervous walking from Penn Station to Times Square. I was alone in New York City. And not even 25 years old. I had no idea what to expect. I had been to New York twice before. The first time was the summer after graduating from middle school. It was a class trip. We spent two nights in the city before traveling by train to Washington D.C. My second New York City experience lasted all but a single afternoon. Years after my class trip to New York City and Washington D.C., my parents started keeping an apartment in the Capital, we took a train ride to New York and aimlessly wandered like thoughtless tourists.
I had never stayed in a hostel before. I became very familiar with them in New York. I wouldn’t even consider staying in a hostel in the States today. I would consider hostels overseas, but the United States is a social mess, and the thought of trusting cheap American millennials (or younger) with my belongings is laughable. Walking the streets of New York and especially going into and coming out of the subways, I tried hard to look like I belonged, even though I was clueless. Those first few days were a culture shock. It’s one thing watching life in New York City on screens and reading about it in books and it’s another thing entirely walking the streets shadowed by towering skyscrapers, I have never felt smaller and more confined while also free and limitless to possibility.
For weeks, as I walked up to the streets from the subways underneath, I would walk in the wrong direction for blocks, because 1.) everything looked the same and my internal bearings seemed trustworthy, and 2.) I didn’t want anyone to think I was a tourist. I remember feeling comfortable walking in the direction I intended to after stepping out of the station and onto the sidewalk. I felt like I finally belonged. Before moving to the city, I found an apartment in the Bronx, in Bronx Park East across from the Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Gardens. I exchanged a few emails with my landlords and explained to them my plans. After settling into the hostel in Times Square, I called my landlords and left a message, but they didn’t answer. Instead, I went to the offices of my new job and met with my bosses. I was helping to open a new Barnes & Noble Bookseller on New York’s Upper East Side. I was excited, I’d worked in a few bookstores, including a Barnes & Noble in Salt Lake City, and had a knack for books, and people.
I was more excited about my apartment. My window would overlook a park and beyond that was the Bronx Zoo and the Bronx River running between me and animals, on the north side of the park are the New York Botanical Gardens and the Thain Family Forest. I would be living a little further from Manhattan than I originally wanted but the more I thought about it, the more excited I was about it. Besides, the 4, 5,6 (green line) had two stops only steps in either direction from my front door. In some ways, it seemed too good to be true. When I didn’t hear back from my landlords, I took the subway and found my building. It was an old, beautiful brownstone with a granite stoop and the park was just right there, right across the street. I could imagine the hours I would spend in the park, going on walks, writing while sitting on a bench as leaves fell on my lap in the fall. I called my landlords again, and again there was no answer. I sent an email, expecting a response by morning at the latest.
I walked around Times Square that night and later found something to eat in some hole-in-the-wall on a side street, an Italian place, and ordered a pizza. I sat on the steps of the TKTS Booth on Broadway, people-watching. The energy of New York City enveloped me. I remember being so happy and in disbelief that I was there. I was there, on the streets of New York City, at that moment surrounded by the theatre. I had grown up listening to the music of the shows surrounding me. My mom is a musical theatre enthusiast. To me, the energy was the collective unconscious and creation of decades of artists, musicians, authors, actors, designers, engineers, painters, and the like, that night was an incredible experience simply being in the moment.
The email I was expecting in the morning didn’t come. I walked downtown along Fifth Avenue, passing the Empire State Building, Madison Square Park (peeking my head in on the famous Shake Shack), the Flatiron Building (which is so much cooler in person), and right up to the Arch at the entrance of Washington Square Park. There was a fence around most of the park, they were renovating the fountain. It was the tallest chain link fence I’ve seen in my life. I was disappointed. I’ve had a soft spot for Washington Square Park for years, the scattered history of the park, with ties to various artists and musicians, visiting the park was among my top few things to do. I sat in the park for a while before I wandered toward the Village.
That afternoon, when I still hadn’t heard back from my landlords, I moved into a cheaper hostel, in Brooklyn. It was nice, there was a lush courtyard, lots of green, and a community area with a sliding garage door that opened into the green courtyard. I wanted to familiarize myself with the neighborhood around the store I’d be working in, so I walked the streets of the Upper East Side. It’s an affluent neighborhood. At one time more millionaires were living there than anywhere else. I had dinner at Blockheads Burritos on 2nd Avenue. It was good, over the years my friends and I would spend a lot of time at either the 2nd Avenue location or the Blockheads in Worldwide Plaza. I went back to the hostel that evening to find a vest that I’d left under my pillow missing. I loved that vest. I never saw it again. Damn Millennials.
The next morning—I still hadn’t heard from my landlords—and wasn’t going to risk losing anything else, I found an even cheaper hostel. I walked into an open warehouse with concrete floors and columns. At the center was a plywood box, probably 40x50 yards. Plywood cubicles were fashioned inside, and two hallways split the plywood box into four rows of cubicles. Each cubicle had a cot, a table, and a chair, there was no electricity, and a key lock would either lock guests in their room or lock guests out, the only thing that kept the door shut. The ceiling was a black fishing net stapled to the top of the plywood walls. It was the shadiest thing I’ve ever seen. I lived there for a week, waiting to hear from my landlords. I never did.
Before the end of my week in the shady hostel, I started working; we were opening a new Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side, pulling books out of boxes, organizing them, and putting them on the shelves. It was a huge store, and we were sifting through hundreds of thousands of books. In the meantime, I was thinking about finding a new apartment. It was clear I wouldn’t hear back from the apartment owners in the Bronx, and I couldn’t live in hostels for too much longer, I was spending way too much money eating out for every meal. Fortunately, I practiced intermittent fasting, and only ate two meals a day, because I had nowhere to store food, I was needlessly spending a lot of money. I decided to leave my two rolling suitcases in the Barnes & Noble breakroom and sleep in either city parks, subways, or subway stations.
Apparently in Central Park after dark people would hide in the bushes waiting for others to walk by and then jump out, hit them in the face with cinder blocks, rob them, and disappear again into the bushes. That wasn’t in the Park’s brochure. I didn’t want to get hit in the face with a cinder block, so I excluded parks from my options. I made trail runs on the subways. I tested a few lines, sitting on the train from end to end scouting the people riding and the neighborhoods that trains passed through. I never found a train I felt safe on from one end to another, so I excluded subways. It was my last option, I wanted the subways themselves to work (at least they were heated or air-conditioned, depending on the season), and subway stations, depending on the neighborhood and block seemed safe enough, so I started sleeping on the wood benches or the floor in an obscure corner of the station.
I didn’t sleep every night. Most nights I walked the streets of New York City, scouting coffee shops, bars, restaurants, and other businesses, discovering parks, street art, and buskers, and learning about the city once everyone was asleep. Despite popular belief, New York City does fall silent. Even the flashing neon lights of Times Square eventually shimmer for an empty, littered block with the sound only of discarded Playbill and wrappers rustling in the wind. One night I slept for a few hours on the plastic hand, an art exhibit/seat near the TKTS Booth before I was told to move along by a couple of NYC finest. Every 36 to 48 hours I would sleep in either the 86th and Lexington, Union Square, or Grand Central Station, sometimes I was kicked awake by cops, and other nights I woke up rested in awkward positions on the tiled floors or uncomfortable wood benches.
I lived like this for three months saving my money. I moved into an apartment in Brooklyn on the Eastern Parkway. Across the street from me was the Brooklyn Museum (one of my favorites, but I did spend a lot of time there). Many New York City museums participated in free Fridays, the museums oscillated Fridays, and in the evening, there was live music, vendors, and events, and museum entry was free. The Brooklyn Museum was only steps from my stoop. Prospect Park is right behind the museum. The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and Prospect Park Zoo, that detail was a welcome coincidence. My favorite part of living in the building however was the roof access. That building was the only building that allowed roof access I lived in in NYC. I had almost the perfect view of the Manhattan skyline from that roof.
My experience moving to New York City was not just about chasing a dream, but about discovering myself. The city’s relentless energy and creative spirit pushed me to embrace my passions and find my voice as a writer. The path was not always easy, the experiences I had, from the hollowness of Times Square to the peaceful green oasis of Prospect Park, helped shape me into the person I am today. New York City is a city of endless possibilities, it is also a place of transformation. And for me, it was always the place where my story truly began.