Categories
Reflected

NYC 10: Twenty Years Ago, A First Visit

This month marks 10 years since we moved to New York City. I’m writing on a variety of topics to reflect on a decade in one of the best cities in the world. Read all the posts.

I’ve been told that some people have grand dreams of where they want to live when they’re growing up. There’s usually some story about a brilliant visit, some magical moment that sparks the thought in them that they want to live there later in life.

I didn’t have any dreams of moving here before it ended up happening. And I certainly didn’t have a magic moment, although I do remember my first trip to NYC somewhat clearly.

It was July 4th weekend of 1993; we were visiting the area to see a friend of my parents in Yonkers. And one of the days we were downstate, we drove into Manhattan to…well, I don’t quite remember the point, exactly. Some very light sightseeing.

We parked in Midtown; we walked along Fifth Avenue, not really doing much shopping. There was a stop in a Software Etc. on 48th Street, where I remember being mortified at the price of SNES games ($100!). We ate lunch at the cafe where the skating rink is. And walking back to the car, my mother tried to give the leftovers of my giant hamburger to a homeless guy, who promptly rejected it.

That was really about it. It was a tremendously short visit, and perhaps a bit self-explanatory why I didn’t get any lofty dreams of NYC at that point in my life.

Last year, though, I began making a detour on the way into the office: getting off the E train a stop early, walking over to Rockefeller Center, grabbing a coffee from the Blue Bottle that had recently opened in the Concourse, and then walking the few blocks cross-town to my office. And on one of these caffeine-motivated walks, I remembered that little time I spent on Fifth Avenue about twenty years prior.

And this is the thing, above all, I’ve grown to love the most about this city, that it is shaped and defined by memories, even those one would chalk up as innocuous. Even as New York rebuilds and reshapes itself – as the facades and storefronts change, as the skyline changes shapes, as people come and go – ultimately, your own mental map and memories are what make the city what it is for you.

Categories
Happened

Coming Up: “NYC After 10”

I do love me any excuse to celebrate a good ten year anniversary. And another big one approaches – September 27th will mark 10 years since Katie and I moved to NYC.

To celebrate such an occasion – and to once again give myself a fixed writing target so that my blog is not stagnant – I’m planning a month-long writing exercise of posts about New York, about how it’s changed, and about how it’s changed me. The intention is one post a day, in the style of my Games Of 20XX yearly things.

But, of course, I want it to be interesting and relevant to those who might read it, so – if there’s something in particular you’d like me to make sure I cover, please leave a comment or ping me on a social network and I’ll add it into my planned post list.

Categories
Happened

The Bearded Face Of A Media Villain

If it’s not already painfully clear to my friends, I love anecdotes. I love minutiae and trivia and obscure statistics. And I think that’s a big part of why I’ve taken to this whole sports journalism thing as a hobby: soccer is full of metrics (that are often meaningless), and every game I cover gives you a moment or two to hang on to longer term.

Take Thierry Henry. Thierry has won practically everything there is to win in the sport: Premier League, Champions League, World Cup. He is an intense competitor, and more than a little prickly in the locker room. So much so that I’ve only ever asked him two questions in the 18 months I’ve been “on the beat”, the last of which earned me a mild bollocking which included the phrase “I don’t know if you know what it’s like to play in a pre-season friendly”. (No, Titi, I don’t, but thanks for asking.) Even getting sassed at by Thierry is a fun memory, not a point of shame.

Sometimes, though, you don’t know an anecdote is happening until 9 months later. And that happened to me recently thanks to one Tim Cahill, although it wasn’t intentional on his part.