Dear Readers,
I have so many newsletters “in progress” right now. This personal essay was the most straightforward to write, and there is more content in the near-term queue. Today’s newsletter is in “photo essay” format as I’m feeling creative and wanted to experiment with showing > telling.
As always, comment or reply with feedback!
As a citizen of the world, I began to wonder what it was that made me lust after New York City. I first fell in love with the city six years ago, and just wrapped up a month in NYC. Now, I am more clear-eyed about it’s faults, but love it nonetheless.
Yes, trash on the streets, the invisible-until-they’re-not rats and cockroaches, and the tiny spaces are all difficult. But, the city - for all its faults - is so unique. Don’t believe me? I’m eager to show you! The incredible spectrum of offerings in New York City is striking. I began to think of the city as a layer cake.
At any given moment, people and machines efficiently snake from point A to point B beneath the road in a rumbling underground layer. Simultaneously, people traverse the neighborhoods above - engaging in commerce and creativity. This is my favorite layer. The life layer. There is also the sky layer - in which people tower over the city in beautifully engineered buildings - shiny metal, rich brick, and concrete create a special skyline.
Now, on to what New York tells us about life.
I’ll break the essay down into 3 New York City virtues:
Virtue 1. Culture
Out and about on a recent Saturday, a brand new, deep grey sprinter van pulled up in front of Flight Club, and several men tumbled out to join a long stretch of sneaker fans that lined a city block. Many people in line gingerly cradled oversized blue IKEA bags crammed Tetris-style with rectangular shoe boxes. They were all there to consign shoes and cash in on their interest in sneakers.
There was one line for people who wanted to browse the selection in Flight Club, and another for sneaker connoisseurs seeking to consign their shoes, like the sprinter van guys. Most of these people were deeply involved in this underground sneaker world I didn’t understand.
I got to talking with my Brooklyn-based cousin - an amazing renaissance woman - who got to telling me about her brother’s deep understanding of sneakers as cultural currency. It was a new world for me - “sneaker culture.”
Sneaker culture made me think about culture more broadly - whether it’s religion, food, a sport, a trend, a discipline, or something as abstract as a belief, culture runs deep in New York, and something about “sneaker culture” was tangible to me in an inspiring way, especially because it had gone from underground to mainstream life.
I’m definitely not cool enough to fully embrace sneaker culture, though I did make my first purchase on GOAT (which owns Flight Club) a few weeks back:
Virtue 2. Renaissance People
Cities are condensers of experience and creators of encounter.
Ally Love is hard not to love.
I find her multifaceted life fascinating. Per Forbes:
As host of the Brooklyn Nets, a global Peloton instructor, founder and CEO of the female empowerment collective Love Squad, adidas Global Ambassador, and model, Ally Love is the epitome of the multi-hyphenate.
Love embraces what I call “the flywheel of good rapport.” She does good for others not expecting anything in return, but knowing that richness in one part of life will spill over and inspire connection and creativity in other parts of life. Like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - once you’ve fulfilled your baseline needs, you have the capacity, (and in NYC, the inspiration) to flourish all the way up the pyramid. Because New York is so condensed, literally operating 24/7 across three layers of city, it allows residents to glean inspiration from those around them.
The eye-opening side of this condensed city is the vast inequality it exposes. Shocking wealth and the depths of poverty are layered on top of one another on this 23 square mile island.
Virtue 3. Creativity
It’s only in and through place — the places we love and leave and pass through and want to go to —- that we figure out who we are
Part of what is great about New York City, is the ability to leave New York City.
New York is great because it makes you think. When you leave you slow down and synthesize. New York’s energetic embrace is fed by the people in the city. Many of the thoughts in this essay were inspired by talking to, seeing, and being constantly surrounded by people. People’s observations and inspirations fueled my creative engine.
Residents of New York are imbued with a sense of purpose. Purpose comes from daily work at an office in the sky layer, or an inspiring conversation at a cool cafe in the life layer. And if you don’t have a purpose - you come to NYC find it, to be creative. In parallel, you are humbled by the disparities among people operating at all layers of the city. New York is a city of layers and a city of spectrums. Some people are driven to minimize the disparities they see, others are driven to make money. The range of passions is striking.
This painting, by Georges Seurat, uses a technical technique called pointillism (painting by dots). It uses the juxtaposition of colors to enhance intensity of the hues. This reminds me of New York City. All the dots, while so different, create something beautiful - layers of culture, and a blend of creativity. Together, they create something that makes you think.
