Five Years In Manhattan

Writing about the city that has shaped me.

This city will eat you up and spit you out if you’re not careful. There’s a saying that warns, “stay too long, you’ll grow too hard. Move west, you’ll grow too soft.” I admit, I paraphrased it, but you get the idea.

As of this writing I have lived in Manhattan for a little over five years. I was a west coast boy that was once overwhelmed here, and now I’m almost a full-blown New Yorker who walks too fast and has too little patience. Despite the often chaotic weekday morning subway ride — where you may be accosted by homeless men, rats, or pissed off commuters — there is undeniable beauty to this city. Through the pungent wafts of roasting garbage in the summer and the piles of black city snow in the winter, the city’s energy never fails to encourage, inspire, and impress.

A book I read recently captured these sentiments perfectly. In Rules of Civility, Amor Towles describes a depression-era New York City in the late 1930s. Much of what he illustrated then still rings true today. The story follows two young women — Katey Kontent and Evelyn Ross — as they race to climb the social ladder. By complete happenstance, the women meet a mysterious, wealthy, and handsome banker at a Greenwich Village bar on New Year’s eve in 1937. Tinker Grey, a Gatsbyesque character if I’ve ever met one…