A warning to readers: This is an ode to NYC—and cities in general—after having just revisited for the first time following the pandemic (even though it’s technically not over yet). I was last there back in the summer of 2019 for a big (and probably, very expensive) wedding at a beautiful hotel near Gramercy Park. So, if you don’t want to read about somebody gushing on and on about city-life, then you should definitely move on to something else.
With that disclaimer to the side, if you’re one of those lucky people who has scraped together a year or two in NYC (or any large city, to be honest), you’re either glad to be out of there because it was it was so damn expensive or bitter that you had to move out of there for exactly the same reason. I am in the latter camp. That’s one reason I tend to make a standard comment to my wife from time to time: “If we ever come up on a loot—say, around $5-10 million range*—we’re going straight back to the city!”
It is here I will give some personal background in order to add context to my NYC experience. I lived in two NYC-sized apartments (if you aren’t a billionaire, you know what I mean)—one was a brownstone in the Upper East Side (basement, plus small portion of the first floor unit on 83rd & 1st) and also a 5th floor walk-up in the East Village (1st & St. Marks, across the street from Cafe Mogador). I thoroughly enjoyed both locations, but especially the East Village place even though it was 10x more uncomfortable than the one up north and gave slight meth-lab vibes. I’ll even go as far as to say that the East Village apartment was so uncomfortable that my wife and I would go out of our way to stay out of it, which essentially worked to our benefit when it came to enjoying city-life.
Back to the present day. Our city day was a very sunny one—if you’re visiting from coastal SoCal, it was definitely a scorching mid-80s, but the gentle coastal breezes helped us along. The trip was a casual day trip with some family who lives within driving distance of the city but never goes there because of the same reason my family rarely visit beautiful beaches even though we live 20 minutes away—we humans take things for granted, unfortunately.
The plan was simple, but ambitiously greedy (as all things should be in NYC): Start off with some ice-cream in Brooklyn’s Dumbo area and then venture across to Manhattan to visit The Met, followed by Pier 57 for views of the new Little Island before actually walking through Little Island. We wanted to end the day at Pier 26 to do some free kayaking, even though half of our group couldn’t swim.
The plan was put to the NYC test very quickly as we attempted to maneuver through absurd bumper-to-bumper 1PM Thursday afternoon traffic on the 495. We had trouble switching lanes in time to go enjoy some ice-cream in Dumbo so our hand was forced and we crossed the bridge instead and headed up the FDR to The Met. We decided that we would enjoy the ice-cream on the way back. We parked our car at some garage between 5th & Madison on 83rd, paying, as expected, an arm & a leg in the process. One thing I had the luxury to learn quickly while living in the city was to cough up money without thinking too much or else the experience would be painfully miserable (but there is a way to game the system, like grabbing cheap theater tickets at The Public at 6PM or visiting museums exclusively on free days, for example). The Met was an absolute delight. Everyone thoroughly soaked in the Islamic artwork on the second floor, mainly because they had just consumed the 800-episode Ertuğrul series on Netflix. We didn’t linger too much as we had to stick to our West Side plans!
We grabbed our car at the garage and made it down to the Pier 57 rooftop park as planned. Let me just say that this park is a goldmine of solace for anyone looking to ditch the city’s hustle and bustle. The roundabout way of getting there seems somewhat intentional because I think it keeps the hardcore, selfie-stick tourists with pointy elbows at a comfortable distance (i.e. they don’t go there). We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves up on the rooftop, taking photos, chatting with each other while sitting on one of the large benches. An absolute delight, I tell you.
Little Island is where the city monster makes its return. It’s the latest and greatest thing to take in, which is a good thing because the High Line was getting awfully crowded! Props to media mogul Barry Diller and his fashion mogul wife Diane von Furstenberg for coming through big (I think they put up a not-so-little $260 million to give birth to the Island). Apparently they will maintain it for the next 20 years, so hands off until then graffiti artists!
Don’t worry about the graffiti artists, though. They seem to be super busy in Lower East Side and East Village these days. I saw some amazing artwork as we drove through those areas to catch the bridge to Dumbo (we skipped the kayaking due to time constraints). We eventually did make it to Dumbo for that elusive ice-cream, which everyone loved, of course.
As we did this trek through the city, naturally, memories came flooding back and this fanned the flames of wonderful small conversations about this restaurant & that comedy or theater experience or many little stories that began with “there was this one time…”. I know longtime New Yorkers hate the statement because they have had to put up with a lot of bullshit in order to earn the golden ticket, but I’ll end with it regardless: Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker!
*The fact that I’m still making this comment and the fact that I’m penning this piece means that I have yet to come up on this elusive loot!
Faisaling.com 
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