New York City will always hold a special place in my heart. I spent several summers of my youth there – bopping between my aunt and cousin’s apartment on Macombs Road in the Bronx and my aunt and uncle’s place in Harlem’s Sugar Hill. Coming from a quiet suburb in North Carolina, I flirted with danger everywhere when I was in NYC. Clinging to my teen cousin’s coattails, I would ride the train to Coney Island, hang out on the fire escape, and eat from questionable food stands. I thought she was so lucky to live in this fantastical world of bodega quarter waters, snow cones on every corner, and impromptu splash parties at the fire hydrant.
I had never felt more alive than during those summers. Every year, I would return to the South, vowing to make New York my home one day.
The summer after graduating from college, I sold my car, gave away most of my (few) possessions and bought a one-way Airtran ticket. I was going “home.” I spent the next decade living my dream and racking up “only in NYC” memories.
- The sound of Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in the Bottle” blaring outside my apartment every weekend night for an entire summer.
- The crazy landlady who turned my dream of living in a Harlem brownstone into a nightmare.
- (Almost) moving into the same brownstone as Kelis. (The upstairs flat was too small for me and my roommate to live without killing each other. But Kelis was warm and beautiful and even showed us her place.)
- Working with the legendary Patti Wilson as an assistant stylist.
- My first blizzard in 2003. Being from North Carolina, I had never seen so much snow in my life.
- As if 2003 wasn’t enough, I got caught in the 2006 blizzard and had to walk 20 blocks home while snow was beating me in the face.
- Subsisting on a diet of Parliament Lights and Diet Coke, neither of which I cared for.
- Enduring the Northeast blackout of 2003. I stopped eating canned beans for a good year afterward.
New York built me up and beat me down. But New York also gave me the love of my life. And for that New York, I’ll never get over you.
