“A whole new level of being a New Yorker-in-exile”

An exchange with a friend on Facebook:

Me:

“I just moved to a whole new level of being a New Yorker-in-exile: Riding virtual laps of Central Park from my garage in SoCal.”

Friend:

“The Gentleman protests too much, methinks”

Me:

“Not protesting, just noting reality: this is the nearest I can get to riding laps in Central Park.”

Friend:

“yes- looks great! but soon, you’ll be a full-fledged Californian despite your resistance”

Me:

“I’m not resisting. So far, though, we haven’t had an opportunity to begin to become Californians. We’re sort of living in a waiting room. Orange County was rated “purple” for COVID when we arrived, and SoCal moved into full lockdown a few weeks later. People aren’t as careful with distancing and mask-wearing the way they are in NYC. We’ve seen some crazy unsafe behaviour. The bottom line is that apart from some trips to some empty(ish) beaches, the desert and two pre-lockdown excursions to LA, we’ve pretty much hunkered down where we are, and we’re waiting for the Pandemic to end to start our lives in SoCal. Apart from that, our days are spent working at home and riding our bikes once a day through a deserted campus to drop Yael off at school, pick her up and do errands at the University Town Center” (which is, in reality, a well-appointed strip mall).

In the meantime, we’re three urban people who are adapting to a highly suburban existence, and we’re dreaming of the days we’ll be able to hit the road regularly to explore LA. (50 minutes away in pandemic traffic).

We’re also mourning. New York City wasn’t somewhere I lived by accident. I first fell in love with NYC when I was seven years old. I spent virtually the whole of my twenties in the single-minded pursuit of my dream to move to NYC and sponsorship for a green card so I could stay and make my life there.

We don’t regret the decision to come here.  Amanda’s work is important. Her work changes lives, and we needed to come where so her research can go where it needs to go. We both, however, deeply love NYC, and we have deep roots there. Amanda is a fourth-generation New Yorker. Her paternal grandparents were born in tenements on the Lower East Side. I lived in NYC for the vast majority of my adult life. New York did to me what it does to most people who start a new life there. It changed me in profound ways that I did not expect. Because of Amanda’s and my shared love for the city, we got married on a beach next to the Brooklyn end of the Manhattan Bridge so we could invite the city itself to witness our wedding. 

A city of the scale of NYC is a living organism. It’s heartbeat sustained me. It gave me the creative inspiration to find my voice as a photographer. Street photography in NYC was not just taking pictures of people or even just telling stories. It was an ongoing practice in which I did my small part of documenting the coursing of the cities lifeblood through its arteries and veins. I will find my photographic inspiration in SoCal one day, and in the meantime, I have a giant archive of unedited images captured in NYC to make sense of.

The vaccine rollout will reach a point where herd immunity will start to be established, and we will be able to start our lives as Californians. There are other former urbanites in our ‘hood who have worked out how to make living here work for them. We will too, eventually. In the meantime, we’re waiting to start our new lives and mourning the loss of a dear friend’s presence in our daily lives.”