My journalist friend, who has been living in New York City for decades, put down her whisky and stared at me: “I think I’ve fallen out of love with New York”.
I asked if it was because the city that never sleeps took a good long nap during COVID. ”Nap?” she snorted. “More like coma”.
Illustration: Dionne GainCredit:
One of the most common, clichéd conversations in New York has long been the lament from old-timers about how much the city has changed. Having lived here as a primary schooler, university student, editor and mother, I’ve heard many iterations of this concern, largely centred on cost and gentrification, and how this has driven the fertile imagination of the creative crowds to the outer boroughs, and replaced it with the inanity of the organic foods, and twin-strollers-set, ousting the glamour of Studio 54 for the sweat of spin cycle classes. There will always be nostalgia for the counter cultures – and discos – of the 70s, despite the grime and crime, as well as the punk art of the 80s, the edge and excess of the 90s.
There is truth to this, though change is a constant.
But I’ve never been asked so many times in one month what I think this city is like today: has it changed? Or have they changed? Have we all changed? The metaphor of the frog in boiling water is frequently cited (of course, this is where the frog in the pot doesn’t realise it is boiling to death because the temperature is raised gradually, a story that is repeated constantly despite the fact that it’s not true – a frog will always hop out.)
But New York is in a particularly curious state currently. With parlous rents and inflated prices, the shutting down of many 24-hour services, one fifth of commercial buildings unoccupied, it’s shuddering back to life but still yawning in places. Hanging over it all is the widespread anxiety from a largely Democratic state that Donald Trump will be the next president.
One 90-year-old told a reporter: “If Trump takes over, we should get our National Guard and declare ourselves independent.” Other life-long residents talk about moving to London, or Canada.
In many ways, the city has bounced back from the horrors of COVID with a vigour that has surprised pundits, avoiding what Columbia Business School professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh referred to as the “urban doom loop” in 2022. His thesis was that as more people work remotely, cities will lose revenue and the essential services that encourage people to live there, driving population down further. But last month, Van Nieuwerburgh said New York was avoiding the doom loop, buoyed by the fact that its economy is well diversified and young people still want to live there. First, remote workers were returning at high rates (though not downtown) perhaps proving Jerry Seinfeld correct when he wrote a piece rubbishing those who fled the city during the pandemic: “Energy, attitude and personality cannot be ‘remoted’ through even the best fibre-optic lines. That’s the whole reason many of us moved to New York in the first place.”
Postcard from New York: The city that never sleeps looks tired
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12.01.2024
My journalist friend, who has been living in New York City for decades, put down her whisky and stared at me: “I think I’ve fallen out of love with New York”.
I asked if it was because the city that never sleeps took a good long nap during COVID. ”Nap?” she snorted. “More like coma”.
Illustration: Dionne GainCredit:
One of the most common, clichéd conversations in New York has long been the lament from old-timers about how much the city has changed. Having lived here as a primary schooler, university student, editor and mother, I’ve heard many iterations of this concern, largely centred on cost and gentrification, and how this has driven the fertile imagination of the creative crowds to the outer boroughs, and replaced it with the inanity of........
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