Hindsight is 2020

Celebrating twenty years in New York City.

One Way Ticket

On June 24, 2000, I boarded a one-way flight on a new airline called JetBlue to NYC.

Twenty years later, my life is one that I might have imagined or dreamed of, but in some ways could have never expected.

2000

I spend my first month in.a sublet on 65th between Broadway and Central Park West. Fully knowing I will never live anywhere that fancy ever again, I spend a lot of time in Sheep Meadow. I know a few folks in NYC but don’t yet have a solid social network. “Survivor” debuts that summer.

I spend that first year living with a roommate in a doorman building on East 95th Street, in a one-bedroom-converted-to-two. We have a VCR and rent movies from the local Blockbuster on Third Ave.

That November, I vote in my second Presidential election. My polling place is in the lobby of my building and it is my first time not voting by absentee ballot. The following morning, the early edition of the paper being sold on the corner declares Gore the winner.

An unlimited MetroCard costs $63 and you have to pay cash at the booth.

The Q train is orange.

The W train does not exist.

The 9 train DOES exist.

Cabs only accept cash. If you want one and aren’t in Manhattan, you have to call a livery service... on the phone. But your phone doesn’t have the internet, so you need to already have one saved. You might be able to illegally hail one, and then barter over the cost.

We all still have landlines and use payphones.

Occasionally, I go to Williamsburg, which feels deserted; I remember only Planet Thai as a restaurant option and no one I know lives past Lorimer on the L train.

My favorite restaurants are Coffee Shop, Zen Palate, Blue Water Grill, Republic. We frequent DTUT for the s’mores plate. (My god, this place is still open.)

I buy my first MP3 player; it holds 20 songs. We all have Palm Pilots, and “beam” each other contacts and games.

I work as an A&R Coordinator at Warner Bros. Records and my salary is $27,700.

Local subway stop: 6 at 96th Street.

(I seemingly have no photos from the year 2000, so using this Creative Commons image.)

2001

In 2001, I move with friends to what is now known as Greenwood Heights. At the time, the area (21st St between 5th and 6th Avenues in Brooklyn), doesn’t have a name, so we call it Sunset Slope. We live in the ground floor apartment of a small brick two-family house and we have access to a small back yard. On one of my first days there, I find a small cat in the yard. When she jumps inside through the kitchen window, I decided to keep her. I name her Cleo, after the band Letters to Cleo.

I yearn to feel at home in the neighborhood but feed isolated. Occasionally, we visit a Polish bar called Smolen for cheap pierogis, and frequent Eagle Provisions, a local Polish grocery store with an insanely good beer selection.

Then, on September 11, I go in to work at 75 Rockefeller Plaza wearing a Banana Republic skirt and shirt, and Nine West loafers (I am not sure why I remember this detail, but I do). I notice a TV station van parked outside. Once I get to my desk I learned what has happened. I must have just missed passing under World Trade Center on the train. Not being able to get back to Brooklyn, I walk with colleagues to someone’s apartment in the East Village. At some point, we start passing people going the other way - cars covered in debris and wires, people in suits covered in white dust shuffling along like zombies. Suddenly the military is on every corner, in camo and holding what looked like machine guns. I am able to take the subway home later that day. It is absolutely packed, but everyone is silent and polite.

For months, the city is covered in “missing” fliers, made by friends and family desperate for information on their loved ones who had not made it home. We think life will never be the same again. And it isn’t.

That Christmas, I get my first DVD player and digital camera.

Local subway stop: R at Prospect Avenue.

2002

I hate living in Sunset Slope and having roommates and I miss Manhattan. I find my very own studio apartment on West 44th Street and 9th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. Realtors are trying to rebrand the neighborhood as “Clinton.” My apartment is a 10x13 room with a window that gets very little light (so it always looks like it is rainy outside), a hallway with a kitchenette built in (including a mini fridge, so I can never get any frozen groceries), and a bathroom. The floor is sloped and I have to wrap my legs around my desk to keep my chair from rolling backwards. None of my neighbors in the building ever say hello to me. But I love it.

I explore every corner of Hell’s Kitchen, and my favorite spots are Marseille, Tenth and X, Revolution.

I reunite with a few high school theater friends and we take tap classes and eat regularly at the Westway Diner. I stop buying a monthly MetroCard and walk everywhere. I have to walk through Times Square every day but I don’t mind.

I apply for a copywriting job on MediaBistro and end up working for a small ad agency for six years.

OnDemand- where one can rent a movie from the cable box - launches.

Local subway stop: A/C/E at 42nd Street.

2003

In February, we begin having to dial the full 10-digit number in NYC when making a call, even within the same area code.

In August, I learn my mother’s cancer has come back, and I take the following day off. Later that afternoon, I am on my laptop using dialup internet and the lights flicker and then go out. I assume it is a brown-out, since we’d been having them in the neighborhood. Since my laptop is charged, I dial back into AOL using my landline but realize that no one else is on AIM. It is clear that something serious is going on.

I am able to call my parents using my corded landline, and they turn on the news and tell me what has happened.

Since I had been home all day and live alone, I can’t connect with anyone that evening. Every now and then, I walk outside to see if I run into anyone I know, but I don’t. At night, I hear friends talking and laughing together outside, but I am in my tiny apartment by candlelight. In the morning, I walk to a friend’s apartment nearby- her electricity is back on and she gives me breakfast and we watch Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. In the afternoon, friends from the east side walk over to use my shower, and we go to bars using laundry quarters (since ATMs aren’t working).

Soon after, I stop using dial-up internet and get high-speed. For a few weeks, I have a camera flip phone, but the camera drains the battery and I exchange it.

I launch my first website. Later that year, I am complaining to a friend that I had gone to the doctor and she asked if I had a fever. As a 24-year-old I did not own a thermometer, so I bought one. I was puzzled to see instructions for under-the-tongue, armpit, and rectal. When I asked that friend who didn’t have a tongue OR an armpit to use a thermometer, he suggests I start a blog. So I do, and meet many wonderful virtual friends who later become in-person friends.

We start communicating via text message.

2004

In the spring of 2004, I buy a co-op apartment in Clinton Hill. It is a neighborhood that none of my friends have heard of before, but that I learned of browsing the Village Voice apartment listings. On the very first day I visit the neighborhood (in late 2003), it happens to be Marathon day- I emerge from the G train at Clinton-Washington on a gorgeous fall day and realize I have found home.

The apartment is on the top floor of a tall building originally constructed for Naval officers and has views looking east. From the dining room, I first spot Broken Angel. The building is full of all sorts of wonderful characters and I make many friends. It is this place, and neighborhood, that still feel like my true NYC home.

I move in in late April and have distinct memories of walking down Clinton Avenue when it is covered in small, bright green tree buds, and it is here that I see my first magnolia trees. My parents and closest friends help me paint the apartment. It ends up looking like an Easter egg since this is the first place I have ever lived where I can paint my own walls.

Just before I move from Manhattan back to Brooklyn, the mobile phone rules change and customers are allowed to transfer their landline number to their mobile phone. It takes a few weeks but I make it just in time - I transfer my very rare 212 landline number to my cell phone.

That fall, LOST debuts and I catch it as it airs; I am transfixed. (I am still not over the crappy ending.) I also get DVR and set up a Friendster account.

Favorite hangouts include Bodegas and Liquors.

Local subway stop: G at Clinton-Washington

2005

My mother’s cancer comes back a third time, at the same time that all of my close friends are getting engaged. So I adopt a dog. I have never owned a dog before, and at first I am sure I don’t want a small one. But then I find her on Petfinder- a white Chihuahua mix named Marshmallow who had been abandoned in an apartment after her owners moved out. I pick her up one night after dinner at Schiller’s and take her home on the subway in my gym bag. She becomes my little white shadow. While she isn’t that interested in playing with other dogs, I take her to off-leash hours at Fort Greene Park daily and meet even more neighbors.

I also buy my first bike of adulthood and begin casually riding around Brooklyn. I also set up a Facebook account. It is still restricted to .edu email accounts, but I have an alum account from undergrad that works.

Governor’s Island opens to the public.

2006

We see a record snowfall in NYC in February of over two feet. And on a beautiful spring morning in April, my mother passes away. I inherit her car, a green 2001 VW Beetle.

I wait for someone to start a blog about Clinton Hill as hyperlocal blogs begin to explode, but no one does. So I start one, and Clinton Hill Blog is born. It is a labor of love and one of the projects I am most proud of. I don’t cover politics or kid-related stuff, but I meet local business owners and solve neighborhood mysteries. Occasionally I am recognized in the street, and later I am a finalist for the Best of NY issue of New York Magazine (though I don’t make it in in the end).

I get my first Blackberry, which gets emails and allows me to sort-of use the internet. It’s the age of Paris Hilton, so I bedazzle it. We leave Friendster for MySpace, and make our pages crazy with bad graphics and music that plays automatically.

That fall, I begin my Masters program in Sociology at the New School for Social Research. I select the program because classes meet once a week, I don’t need to also apply to the PhD program and the GRE is optional (I was applying while my mother was very sick). I assume I will focus on popular culture but instead I focus on urban sociology and social class. I suddenly feel like my whole life is explained and it completely shifts my entire understanding of the world.

2007

In May, I attend a Memorial Day rooftop barbecue hosted by one of my friends from the dog park. Her brother is there. He has salt and pepper hair and is wearing a corduroy blazer and is an English professor and is just my type. (Spoiler alert- his name is Will and I marry him in 2009). He and I have a brief flirtation but he blows me off (my take; he may think it down differently!)

I spend a month in Poland for grad school, and it is the first time I hear the word “welfare” being used in a positive way. I study public memory and visit Auschwitz.

When I return, Will and I reconnect on Facebook and make a date to visit the Rockaways to play Scrabble. Neither of us have ever been. We meet at Choice Market and get lunch to go, and then take the A train all the way to the ocean. We talk for eight hours and I win the Scrabble game.

A few weeks after, I get my first iPhone (and I still have my grandfathered unlimited data plan). NYC cabs start accepting credit cards.

2008

I graduate from my Masters program with high enough scores on my final exam to apply to the PhD program, but I do not. I leave the ad agency and take a job as a Communications Manager at a small non profit that consults on public space planning. I see nine out of 21 employees cry at work (because of work) in the 18 months I work there, but it teaches me to calculate the value of my time, and sets me up for my next job the following year.

In early November, I wake up early to go wait on line (probably around this time I switch from using “in line” to “on line”) to vote in the Presidential election at PS 11. Spirits are high. That night, we go to an election night party in midtown. On our way to the subway, after we learn Obama has won, every Times Square screen is displaying his photo and people are singing the national anthem in the street.

2009

We celebrate New Years in Dubai. Two days later, on a private dhow in the Persian Gulf off of Oman, Will proposed with a hilarious fake ring and I say yes.

He moves in and suddenly the apartment that was a palace for one is tiny for two. We decide to make people come to us for our wedding, and get married at the Montauk Club in Park Slope - a beautiful old mansion and social club.

The week after, I start a job at the NYC Department of Transportation. I assume that I will be most interested in bike lanes and public plazas, but my favorite subjects are actually bridge maintenance and asphalt recycling. It is the literal last place I ever thought I would work when I first moved to NYC, and it is there that I recognized my calling as a public servant. It is incredibly satisfying to work for the people of the city that I love. It is in no way a traditional civil service position, and that makes it incredible.

2010

I realize that we actually can afford to buy a house in Brooklyn if it is a two-family- the rental income offsets the mortgage. And so I activate my real estate laser and quickly hone in on Bedford-Stuyvesant. We find a house relatively quickly, but the deal takes months to finalize - it is an estate sale. My apartment sells immediately and we are forced to put our things in storage and move around between furnished rentals (before the era of Airbnb). Those options run out and so we have to move into the house the day after we close. It is huge but filthy. We put everything into the basement, not realizing it is packed dirt, so when September comes and we retrieve the fall and winter clothing, we realize everything is covered in mold. We live in the house through a renovation, including two months where we have to live solely in the living room. We can’t afford to do everything we had hoped, but it is OK. We own a beautiful home (built between 1897 and 1904) in which to start a family.

That summer, Cleo becomes ill quickly and crosses the rainbow bridge. We get her ashes back and they arrive in what looks like a tea tin. For years, the tin sits in the kitchen and I worry every so often that there will be an unfortunate tea/remains mix up.

In November, we adopt two kittens - half because we miss having cats and half because the renovation has jostled up all of the mice living in the walls.

The year concludes with a Christmas snow storm, and I learn that New Yorkers assume that DOT is in charge of plowing the streets even though they are not (it’s Sanitation, FYI).

2011

I am promoted at work and it is exhilarating and stressful. I learn a lot about potholes (did you know DOT can fill more than 400 potholes a day during the winter?) and join a committee to help develop NYC government’s first social media policy.

That summer, we get pet chickens. In a truly “only in New York” story, a friend buys two chickens to use in her modern dance routine. When she realizes chickens are unpredictable and poop everywhere, she gifts them to us. It takes us a few weeks to procure a coop. In the meantime, the chickens (named General Tso and Potpie) break out of their makeshift cage and begin laying eggs in the yard, hidden like Easter eggs.

That fall, we announce that bike share is coming to NYC. The day before the press event, I take a pregnancy test. It is negative. It is the first time taking one and getting a negative result that I feel genuinely disappointed, but at the press event I feel relieved seeing how much hard work the project is going to be. Three days later, feeling weirdly exhausted, I take another pregnancy test and it is positive.

By the end of the year, having the chicken coop near the bedroom window is untenable - the smell is too much for my pregnancy-sensitive nose. We move the coop to the back of the yard over dirt but soon realize that rodents are burrowing under the edge to steal the chickens’ food. Thankfully, we have neighborhood friends with a large coop and so the chickens move a few blocks away. It is a brief but enjoyable experience with urban farming.

Area code 929 and Uber debut.

2012

We prepare to welcome a baby into our family. In April, one month before my due date, I have a fetal non-stress test. The nurse comes in to check and asks me if I realized I was having contractions every two minutes. I had not, and so I am sent to the hospital for observation. I walk there. My blood pressure is sky high and I am told I will stay for 24 hours. My work baby shower is the next day, and the hospital is nearby, so I ridiculously assume that when discharged, I will just walk to work for the party. It quickly becomes clear that I have pre-eclampsia and that the baby is in distress. My worries of going into labor on the subway are resolved as I realize I am not walking out without a baby.

Every form of induction is done, with some frightening moments where the baby’s heart rate drops. Two days after walking to the hospital, Simon is born via c-section.

At a conference in October, a colleague shows me a news article on his phone predicting a potential “snowicane” storm. A few days later, Hurricane Sandy hits NYC.

We are lucky at our house. The only casualty is that our grill tips over in the yard, breaking off the handles. (Later we try to replace them with plastic handles which melt off though we continue using the grill for eight years, opening and closing the lid with potholders.)

NYC at large is devastated. We see insane photos of subway stations completely flooded, and much of the Rockaways, where we had our first date, is severely damaged. My office building is off limits, being located along the East River, and so I work 16-hour days at home with a baby dealing with crisis communications.

2013

After many delays related to Sandy and software, Citibike launches in NYC. We spend the first few days trouble shooting and testing when it seems that the stations won’t lock the bikes in. I commute to work on one on the second day of service and feel like a queen- people point and cheer.

I travel to Germany to keynote a conference on sustainable transportation. My slides don’t work and I end up having to wing it in front of more than 900 Germans and I feel like if I can get through that, I can get through any public speaking.

We travel to New Orleans and Kentucky, and I visit a friend separately in Richmond. On the trip, I have a feeling I have messed up my fertility tracking and enjoy copious amount of sushi and beer just in case. I am correct - I learn I am pregnant again in October.

Mid-year, I accept a job offer at Brooklyn Public Library from a former DOT colleague. It seems like a dream opportunity, but it takes me awhile to start working (which is a long story for another time). In the end, I start my new job on December 30, just as the Bloomberg administration is ending.

Green cabs debut in the boroughs.

2014

I do my best to get a lay of the land in my new position, but it is a stressful time. I have a scheduled c-section this time, and plan to have just a few days off to see a movie and get a pedicure. One week before, I leave work for a doctor appointment with a half-composed email open on my computer. My blood pressure is up again, and I am sent directly to the hospital for surgery. For the second time, I walk to the hospital to give birth. Teddy is born that day.

Maternity leave is easier this time since I know what I am doing. But it is financially harder. Since I have not been at my job for a year, I am not protected by FMLA. This means that I do not get a paycheck and also do not have health insurance. So we have to pay our mortgage and COBRA for the time I am out with greatly reduced income. It is also the summer of the coffee shop in Bed Stuy, so every day I take Teddy out in the stroller to get an iced coffee and while he takes an afternoon nap, I browse real estate in other cities, fantasizing about selling our Brooklyn house and buying a mansion in cash someplace else and wondering why everything is so goddamn hard in NYC.

2015

We take a two week road trip to a variety of cities to see if anything strikes our fancy, after the stress of 2014 (it doesn’t). On day one of the trip, I get shingles (and I never regain all of the feeling back in my skin).

2015 is exhausting with two small children and that is most of what I remember about it.

2016

We become public school parents and enroll Simon in a neighborhood school. We get a quick education in the inequity in public school education, as well as the sheer insanity of the NYC public school system. Simon’s teachers are wonderful and he is happy in his class.

I take up running after several wake-up calls that I need to take better care of myself. I choose running because it is free, and I don’t have to spend travel time to get to the exercise. Previously, I have never been able to run a mile. I get up before sunrise to run, and the challenge plus the initiative to take the time for myself helps me stick with it.

Two months in, I get a stress fracture. I go to vote for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election wearing a pantsuit and a giant boot. I wake up at 3am and check my phone. It feels like 9/11 all over again.

2017

The Second Avenue subway opens, with a station steps from my first NYC apartment. I travel to Washington, DC to participate in the Women’s March.

Teddy starts preschool at a wonderful local early education center started by a local dad. We meet amazing friends and enjoy a new aspect to our community. Simon starts kindergarten. I complete the Coro Leadership New York program, after working with a group of 50 peers on challenges facing NYC.

I am back to running, and run my very first race- a 5k in Prospect Park. That summer, I run my first 10k on Governor’s Island.

We take a family trip to South Carolina to view the solar eclipse in totality.

2018

I’m on a roll with running and register for the Brooklyn Half Marathon. I run it in the pouring rain and finish in under two hours.

I turn 40 and enjoy a fantastic party with a live 90s cover band. I get a new tattoo with the boys’ initials on my inner wrist.

Simon starts first grade at a different public school with a focus on environmental science. Teddy starts PreK at a small public school across the street. Both are wonderful, diverse schools with excellent leadership and teachers.

2019

I decide to enter the NYC marathon lottery for kicks. I figure if I don’t get in, I will run it in 2020 with a fundraising team to celebrate my 20th year in NYC. Luck is on my side, and I get a spot on my first try. I am instantly filled with fear - this is the thing I always said would be the hardest for me to do in my life.

I officially begin marathon training in the summer, on a hot and humid trip to Kentucky. I join a local running club and start to feel like a real runner for the first time. I have a “come to Jesus” moment with myself where I accept that training for the marathon is the one thing I can do aside from working because it will take up so much time and energy. In October, I get both the flu and a calf injury. I worry every day that I may have to defer my registration or that I won’t be able to finish the race, but I continue my training, limp-running for the first mile to warm up my injured muscle tissue.

In November, I finish the NYC marathon in 4:38:35, well under my pre-injury goal of finishing in under five hours. I cry at the start of the race, hearing “New York, New York” played on a loudspeaker, and I cry when I pass my family on the route near our house holding a giant sign. The race itself is wonderful, but the training and stress are the hardest things I have ever worked through. It is something I never, ever imagined I would be able to do.

It takes me an entire month to recover from my injury, and while recovering, we take a wonderful vacation to Mexico. The boys are old enough to enjoy and remember the trip and my heart is full.

2020

LOL

A new decade begins (debatably). Soon after, we begin seeing photos from a locked down Wuhan and think, “Oh that would never happen here!” Until it does. In early March, things go down hill quickly. Before we know it, we begin remote working and remote schooling, and everything feels terrible and uncertain. Still, there are bright spots - both boys learn to ride their bikes without training wheels in an empty basketball court, we play video games together, we can appreciate each other’s company without being constantly on the move for a class or other obligation, and we finally make time to make our back yard look nicer. (Why did we keep the uncomfortable furniture left back there when we bought the house for ten years?) We remain healthy (so far) despite NYC leading the country with COVID cases.

Protests erupt after Minneapolis police murder George Floyd. And they keep happening. And we begin to see hope for change, in our city and across the country. The weather gets warmer, we see friends at a distance in masks, and do the best we can. Maybe we’ll be able to have brunch again soon. Will we be able to dine out without having a panic attack after what we’ve lived through?

June 24, 2020

Home in quarantine and home schooling my children is not how I ever imagined I would be celebrating 20 years in New York. At the same time, I also could have never imagined many of the wonderful things I have experienced here, as well as the people I have met.

To all of my current and former colleagues, grad school friends, neighbors, running friends, mom friends, internet friends and friend-friends- thank you for making these 20 years incredible. Here’s to the next 20.