Living around the world made me appreciate New York for what it was. I’d grown up with things I’d taken for granted before; to make amends with the City that Never Slept, I thought I’d struggle with the rest of the nation to live the American dream, to live there. Not to Brooklyn, where it was cool to live because you weren’t living in Manhattan but you were still paying Manhattan prices for an apartment, and not in Queens, where it took you an hour to get back into New York and you HAD to go there because there was nothing to do in Queens otherwise. It was either the Island or bust. You couldn’t have it any other way.
