Last month, for the first time in my life, I went to the Big Apple. The melting pot. The city that never sleeps. The concrete jungle.
I went to New York City.
I’ve wanted to go to New York since I was a kid. I told my mom and grandma since fifth grade that I wanted to be a writer in the big city.
I looked at the tuition requirements and costs for New York University my junior year of high school and swiftly realized my dreams of being Patti Smith or Carrie Bradshaw would have to wait.
I graduated college, planning to save money back home for a few months and then head east.
I lived at home for two years and decided it was time to make the big move. But I went further north than I had planned. I decided to live in Boston.
Why? I couldn’t really tell you. I hadn’t even stepped foot in the city before I moved.
However, I’ve loved my time in Boston and I’m so glad I chose to live there.
I had been putting off visiting New York for years, due to my romanticization of the city.
Coming from rural America (South Dakota), when I told people I wanted to live in New York when I got older, they’d say things like, “Who would want to live in a human zoo?”
Me. I want to live in a human zoo.
Yet, I was terrified that the cowboys were right and I’d hate the city.
My friend Dee was planning to go to the city two Saturdays ago and called me, asking if I wanted to tag along.
This was it. This was what I had been dreaming about my entire life.
So, I headed out Friday night after work and met her in New Bergen, N.J.
The first thing Dee showed me was the Manhattan skyline at night. I’d never seen so many tall buildings jam-packed together, glistening underneath the night sky.
“I’m finally in New York City,” I said to myself, standing on the sidewalk in New Jersey.
We took the bus into Manhattan the next morning, and the first thing I saw walking out of the bus station was the New York Times building. I could’ve thrown up with excitement.
We walked around Times Square for a while and I was immediately overstimulated.
The largest city I’ve been to is Tokyo, where the population is around 37 million people. New York is around 8 million.
New York felt way more populated, though, due to the chaos in which people were roaming around. There were no unstated rules, no organization, no silence. It was great.
Dee told me if we wanted to get as much out of our day as possible, we should rent bikes.
Now, I have a bit of a fear of bike riding after too many wrecks up in the mountains in my youth.
I wanted to see as much as possible, so I reluctantly agreed to try.
We got to the bike-rental place and I saw the two-wheelers in the flesh. I turned to Dee and said, “Yeah, never mind, I’d rather get run over by a taxi.”
She dragged me into the shop and got us two e-bikes.
We rode two blocks and I was breathing manually at that point, evading pedestrians in the bike lane, about to tell her that I absolutely couldn’t go farther. Then, we hit the path in Central Park.
Everyone was biking, the path was wide, and the park was absolutely ginormous.
I reverted back to automatic breaths, and used the bike like a moped when I was too overwhelmed. When I felt confident that the concrete I was staring at would still be there when I looked up, I did.
There were jazz musicians serenading passersby, yogis getting their stretch on, and bookworms lost in pages, catching up on their tans.
We stopped at the Met and I took a picture of the steps that Anna Wintour gala-goers ascend in May, never quite getting the theme right (in my opinion).
We dropped our bikes off and got on the extremely squeaky subway, stopping at the 9/11 memorial.
We walked toward the Statue of Liberty viewpoint, getting drawn in, literally, by the caricature artists. Best $40 I ever spent.
I went up and down most of Manhattan that day.
Just like any time a dream comes true, it’s never exactly how you picture it.
The streets were a tad dirty, the subway was sweaty, and the Clydesdales in Central Park liked to go to the bathroom, a lot.
But I loved it. It was truly a dream come true. And one day, who knows? I might end up living there.
