N'Yawk

Can living in New York City change you?

Sure. But so can living in any other city that isn't your home. But they say the effect is magnified when the new city you're living in is New York City.

So have I changed? Well, that depends on whether you believe people can change or whether fundamentally they'll always stay the same. I wouldn't say I'm a different person since moving out here 37 days ago, but I have noticed some new nuances about myself:


If I don't see at least 500 different people per day, it feels strange.
...and the first 100 or so people I would see on my morning commute alone. I first noticed this when I visited DC last week. DC compared to NYC is small town America (once you take out that whole thing about being the capital city and the home of the government of the most powerful country in the world). I wasn't used to the subway that only had two tracks and the fact that I didn't have fight my way around multiple bodies just to stay on the sidewalk and the fact that I can look far for stretches and not see a mass of people. I felt out of place.

Similarly...

If I look up and I can see the sky unobstructed, it also seems odd.
This was also something I noticed when visiting DC. In New York, if you look up at night, you don't see the moon and the stars. You see the sides of tall buildings, lit windows, neon signs, and some sort of black backdrop that stretches further out than the top of these buildings. Last week I learned that the tallest building in Washington DC was the Washington Monument, which relative to the skyscrapers in NYC, is relatively tiny.

Compared to other cities around the country (but not the world, that's a whole other subject), NYC is really dirty. But I've stopped caring.
The sidewalk is just black with old gum? Meh. Greasy and sticky door handles? Whatever. Stained subway seats? Oooh, a place to sit! I wouldn't say I've become desensitized to these things, but I do say I now have the credibility to criticize anyone who complains about San Francisco being "dirty."

I don't mind doing stuff alone anymore.
When you're in a brand new city and you want to do all that touristy and exploring the city crap, and the only people you know are people who have been here for years and therefore don't want to join you in Times Square, you're kinda forced to do some things on your own. I've found that if I see something I want to check out that is "so New York," many of my existing friends here in the city are really meh about it. Well not I! I just got here! I still see the city in slight-pinkish tinted glasses! So if it comes to it, I will go a Mets game by lonesome, I will explore a museum without any companions, I will show up to an Improv Everywhere routine all by myself.

Which sometimes lead to...

I've bought into the concept of "rent-a-friends"

Yes. This site actually exists.

So while I've enjoyed doing things on my own and not giving a fuck about it, I do yearn to still meet people and make a circle of friends here beyond my already existing friends and coworkers. As a result, I've found myself at various meet and greet events through various channels. Meetup.com has been a constant source of my human interaction, the UCLA Alumni Association was another. What I've found is that almost every other weekend, I would find a group of people to hang out with for the day. We'll talk and share stories at a bbq together, or we'd drive around the city together, storm a water fight, and later go out to drinks. But the funny thing is that most of the time, numbers aren't even exchanged. Contact information is not shared. Hanging out beyond the allotted time slot is out of the question.

Perhaps it's the nature of Meetup.com. People figure they'll just see each other at whatever the next event is. Perhaps this whole concept of "rent-a-friend" for a day is common practice when it comes to using the internet to meet people. Or maybe it's just me (no, no, of course not. My mom says I'm awesome).

"it's probably just best to assume that every surface here is radioactive"
-DL