Woke Up This Morning and Got Behind the Wheel
Emotional cheating on New York, West Village girls, and unprecedented driving experiences
A deer almost dove in front of my silver Nissan Altima one night down at the Jersey Shore.
I’d been out of the city for two weeks and had just survived three splits.1 I was full of caffeine thanks to a 9 pm latte and ready to do my first 40 minute midnight drive back home. Up until that Friday night I’d been staying in a courtesy hotel just ten minutes away from set. I was anxious about the drive all week because of how late I’d be on the road after a twelve-hour day. But my music was blaring. My seat was in the upright position. I was as locked in as I possibly could be. Then, not even half a mile from basecamp,2 that deer decided to scare me to death.
I realize anyone who grew up outside of New York, will be unmoved by this story. Everyone has had deer sightings and near-deer-misses. I imagine for suburban dwellers they’re about as common as rat sightings on the street. Still, this deer was my first. One of many, many firsts I’ve accumulated in my two months as a regular driver.
There was my first time driving through fog. First time driving without maps. First time driving to pop music. First time taking a call in the car. First time initiating a call. First road trip with a friend. First commute after a long workday. First time missing a highway exit. First time listening to an audio book. First time commuting before 5 am. First time commuting after 11 pm. First time going through the Holland Tunnel, over the Brooklyn and Verrazzano Bridge. First time listening to The Sopranos theme song as I exited the Lincoln Tunnel, which when timed exactly right, created a more perfect high than I ever thought possible without drugs or alcohol.
This week, an older coworker joked that I’m “just off the turnip truck.” I took immediate offense and tried to defend myself by saying I’m a New Yorker. She insisted there are still turnip trucks in New York. While I still disagree with her statement, I must admit I am green when it comes to driving. Only a week ago did I realize how to use the wiper fluid in my car after assuming my model must not have any.3
Each new discovery and milestone have been exciting. I wrote in my last newsletter that learning to drive felt like acquiring a new kind of freedom. Everyone, including my current boss, has repeated the same thing. The more I drive, the more possibilities that occur to me. The good beaches that require two trains and a bus are no longer a slog to get to. Antiquing upstate is just a rental car away. Road trips across country or getting around in a driving city feels possible (even without a partner).
Sometimes after a week of only stepping on the subway twice it can feel like I’ve cheated on New York. What happened to the staunch opponent of car culture I used to be? Driving through Manhattan rush hour traffic is no picnic, but during my two weeks living at the Jersey Shore, I got a taste of what it would be like to commute without swarms of pedestrians. I found out what it felt like going 70 on the highway and going 20 miles in under 30 minutes. Turns out, I really liked it.
While tracking this change in myself, I began to wonder how much of my leaving LA had to do with my being unable to imagine a life where I got behind the wheel of a car every day? Now that I know I can live anywhere (walkable or not), would I want to? Could I ever be one of those fair-weather New York residents that ends up somewhere else? Somewhere with larger roads and more space?
Back in May, at dinner at an Upper East Side Italian spot, a friend told me I should write something in response to the piece titled “Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl” in The Cut. Brock Colyar’s piece is just so ripe for discourse, it’s almost too easy to take aim at. By the time I’d read and digested the article, it was already old news online. People had critiqued it, and the author had reposted jokes from those critiques. Still, I had so much fun pulling mythos of the “west village girl” apart.
Colyar and her interviewees suggest that New York’s West Village has been invaded by basic, financially flush straight, white 20-something girls who have caused the neighborhood to lose its queer, artistic soul. In my mind, this argument ignores the real estate development and gentrification that proceeds these girls by about twenty years. Not since Giuliani “cleaned up the streets” has a low brow, artistic, queer, activist scene existed in either the East or West Village as it once did. The party moved on long ago. Gen-Z’s recent presence in the neighborhood is not what made the value of the average West Village brownstone upwards of $10 million.
My second immediate qualm with the article is the frequent references to Carrie Bradshaw and Sex and the City, which is the inspiration for many of these West Village girls coming to live out their New York City dreams. Carrie Bradshaw lived on the UPPER EAST SIDE. 73rd street, my dears.4 She did NOT live in the West Village because that was not aspirational for a girl in their 20s or 30s in the 1990s. Downtown was for going out. The Upper East or Upper West Side was the place to live. Do we remember the problematic transgender prostitute storyline that accompanies Samantha moving to the Meat Packing District? How about the fact that Charlotte’s perfect apartment that she fought tooth and nail for was on Park Avenue? Not to mention the horror of the girls when Miranda decided to move from her Upper West Side one bedroom to Brooklyn! The West Village is where Carrie Bradshaw lives now that she’s inherited all of Big’s money in And Just Like That…5
But I digress…
The ideals of New York neighborhoods are in constant flux, and no one is better at tracking this than a New Yorker. New York is built on people who moved into apartments in the worst neighborhoods that became the best neighborhoods fifty years later. It’s why rent stabilization is uniquely sacred to New Yorkers. To see how crucial the issue is, just look to our most recent mayoral election.
My biggest issue with The Cut article aside from its suggestion about who’s responsible for the Village’s gentrification and lazy approach to Sex and the City lore, is that it perpetuates a larger false narrative about what New York City is. People love to dramatically assert that New York is over. That the artistry is gone and the scene is dead. That something beautiful has been replaced and lost to history. What these think pieces ignore is that beautiful parts of New York are constantly being replaced. Nothing lasts and the best spot of your youth probably has gone by the wayside. You have to pity the fool who thinks New York belongs to them.
And “a scene” may die, (take St. Marks, the West Village, CBGB, Times Square in the 70s, the Upper East Side of Truman Capote or Leonard Bernstein, I could go all day), but “the scene” never does. There will always be “a scene” in New York moving through neighborhoods, because there will always be new artists, new broke 20 somethings packing themselves into apartments like sardines, new theater, new movements, and new queer outsiders taking refuge in New York.6
Dozens of iconic restaurants from my childhood don’t exist anymore. The mainstays of my parents’ New York and the scenes of my favorite literary icons are long gone. You have to accept that and move on or you become one of those bitter people wandering a ghost town, wondering when everyone stopped smoking and lamenting that there’s no sherry in restaurants.7 Meanwhile, just a train ride away, there’s a thriving lesbian scene in Bushwick (and Astoria) that you can be initiated in by running into an ex on Wednesday night at The Woods.
If New York were truly drained of its culture and personality, the city wouldn’t have made history this Tuesday by electing a Muslim socialist8 as the democratic primary candidate for mayor. Zohran Mamdani’s defeat over Andrew Cuomo is an example of the people triumphing over political establishment. Mamdani’s campaign represents the success of optimism and grassroots political organizing. The same kind of organizing that New Yorkers used to draw attention to the AIDs Crisis in the 80s and 90s or to fight for civil rights and education policies in the 1960s. Mamdani was victorious this week because of New Yorkers who are passionate, vocal, and committed to a vision of a better future for their city. Not stuck in the city’s past.9
But back to the West Village girls, who are accused of treating New York like their personal college campus. These girls are not particularly political. They’re not interested in putting down roots. To this I say, there will always be people who treat New York like study abroad. There will always be people who feel exhausted by it and move a la Lena Dunham.10 They’ve been doing that since couples got starter apartments here in the 1950s before taking to the suburbs. This city is built for both transplants and lifers. Both are necessary to making it last. If people weren’t allowed to flirt with living in New York, it’d lose it allure. Anyone’s welcome to rent a U-Haul and exit anytime they like.11
Including me.
I thought about this after my drive as I laid in bed at 4:13 am, wide awake from the 9 pm latte. Could I ever leave? Did any part of me want to?
Of course not.
Last night I drove home from Newark at midnight and saw the city illuminated across the dark river in all its glory as I took the ramp into the Lincoln Tunnel. Nothing - and I mean nothing - is better to me than seeing that sight and knowing I have a home among those many tiny lights. That I’m part of an ever-changing neighborhood and a few evolving scenes. Driving was never a part of my past New York, but lucky for me this city is adaptable. Flying up the FDR or through the Central Park transverse. Narrowly avoiding double parked cars or honking at cabs trying to cut me off. It is all part of my New York now.
And there’s no deer. Just NYC’s finest wildlife - pigeons, rats and cockroaches - all of which know to get the fuck out of the way.
Recommendations for This Era
Driving
The Sopranos - I’m FINALLY watching the series, which has been perfectly on theme for my current job in Jersey.
Getting out of the city for the weekend
“One Thing” by Lola Young
Being direct
Turning up that window A/C unit
“Slave to Love” by Boys and Girls
Sirius XM
Writing when you can :)
A film set term from a 11 am to 11 pm or noon to midnight work day.
Where they park the trailers and trucks on a film set.
I now know they all have it. Lol.
The location of the building the show used as the front of her apartment is located in the West Village, but it does not match her fictional address.
EDIT: I forgot Carrie technically lives on the East Side next to Gramercy Park, but I feel like I should be forgiven since the logic of this show is mostly nonexistent. The point is that she would live in the West Village.
I believe I was part of niche New York history attending the Oh Mary! opening night party at The Eagle, and you cannot convince me otherwise.
A significant representational win for many reasons, not the least of which is the city’s horrible recent history of post-9/11 Islamophobia.
Just a reminder the work is not done! Let’s get out the vote in November!!!
Love it!
Driving through the Lincoln Tunnel after starting the Sopranos is a transformative experience.