Has it always been like this?
This city's having a moment and I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining it.
I remember being able to pop into a cafe or a restaurant. Or, later in the day, drop by a bar. You could just walk right up and find a spot. You could bring a few friends along, having just decided on the venue while stumbling past the entrance on your way to somewhere else. Hey, wait. This looks fun.
You didn’t have to book at midnight 30 days in advance when a handful of reservations were released to the public like golden Wonka tickets and snatched up before the app even had time to load on your phone.
We didn’t used to have apps. Or phones. But you know that already. You were there.
I don’t think it used to be this way, but I worry I am misremembering. Maybe this was always happening but I wasn’t so close to the scene. Was I too young to notice? Was I sheltered by my parents and their cool life and the total lack of practical stress in mine? Was I just in a different neighborhood?
I don’t think it’s any one of those things, or even all of them. It feels like something else. Information moved more slowly, and in that sense, it really is about the phones. It’s about what Foursquare and Yelp did to the internet and what the internet did to the world.
I feel only slightly embarrassed that I’m on a tirade about the internet murdering culture, which is certainly one of the least original ideas flooding a million Substacks right now. That it is in this case combined with lamentation of the death of the modern restaurant makes it, I admit, a little bit worse. Here we are.
My point is that the intel used to come directly from the mouth of another human being. You had to actually talk to people to get the recommendation, and when you got there, you actually had to talk to people. Trying that great new place didn’t require timing your visit in the impossibly small gap between the latest viral TikTok video and another Best Of The City list.
Plus, the city’s best was different.
I always considered New York home, but to me it felt like a terrible place to be a young person figuring out my life. I was glad to leave when I did. It took the pressure off. I didn’t feel the call to return until 2021, more than a decade later. Coming back to New York when it was actively where I wanted to be was magical. She let me in. We courted and flirted and fell in love with each other all over again.
It was the pandemic; in so many ways, the city was struggling. Part of what inspired my return was the mass exodus. Transplants who had only moved to New York to extract her resources fled to their second and third homes, fled to the beach and the country, to smaller cities that offered them less measurable value but more room to grow their net worth without needing to consider or contribute to the local community.
It was the way they piled their fonts of wealth into the shadowy recesses of their well-appointed caves and hired dragons to curl atop their hoards, just in case, while they went out on the town to see and be seen. To be photographed.
There, like here, they filed into the restaurants and the cafes and the bars that look the way they’re supposed to look and serve what they’re supposed to serve. Where we all dress how we’re supposed to dress and talk how we’re supposed to talk. Where communication is limited to what you can do for me and what I can get from you.
They purse their lips to indicate displeasure. I have tried to blame them for refusing to remove their designer bags from the last open bar stool, but I know it’s much more likely that they are simply unaware. It just does not occur to them that if they scooted over four inches a whole new party could sidle up to the bar. Who are you? I don’t know you. They seek out familiarity, not intrigue.
Now, they come back to New York to prove that they can. They move to Brooklyn and ignore their neighbors. Or they go to Los Angeles, which is better for them if you ask me. Sorry, Los Angeles.
Excuse me, they say with irritation, not with warmth. Excuse me, you’re in my content.
There’s family in town visiting. Let’s take them out. Not here, because it will be a zoo and we’ll never get a table on a Friday. Not there, because there isn’t a person in the room over the age of 25 after 7pm and that whole crowd doesn’t like to share.
Maybe feeling good is in us, not in the room where we do it, but maybe the room has a lot to do with it too.
Just moving through the city, I regularly pass long lines of people waiting on the sidewalk to get into some hotspot or another. It’s a new restaurant, it’s a sample sale. It’s a celebrity sighting. They’ve been camped out for hours. If I’m feeling clever, for everyone’s safety, I cross to the other side of the street. But more often, I blow right by, unwilling to change course on principle.
I shake my head and make big face, which is not nice and also does not effectively communicate the indignation I feel. When I bark a big excuse me, it is with irritation, not with warmth. If they read anything in my elbows out it’s that the crazy lady rides again. There she goes, muttering to herself. I imagine becoming line lore.
I’m mad at them for taking up the entire sidewalk. I’m mad at their total lack of proprioception or care. I’m mad at them for jamming their fingers in their ears.
Hello, this is a city.
Also, it doesn’t make any sense. This place isn’t even any good, it’s just popular. It looks how it’s supposed to look, which is to say, like everywhere else. They serve The Menu, and neither those who dine here nor those who work here can pronounce anything on it. The lighting is dim and the playlist cycles through only the “underground” hits that everyone already knows.
Why are they doing this to themselves? Why are we doing this to ourselves? I’m not really asking. The truth is that most of the time there is no compassion or curiosity in it for me. If I sound judgmental it is because I am judging.
Also, I am sad.
For the visiting family’s sake, for someone’s birthday, I line up at the neighborhood hot spot a full hour before it opens. I do this willingly. It is a weekday morning, but I know that won’t matter. When I arrive, the line is already wrapping around the corner of the block many buildings away from the restaurant entrance.
I’m mad at them for traipsing downtown in their jelly ballet flats. I’m mad at them for claiming someone else’s stoop as their selfie spot. I’m mad at them for sprawling out on the steps even after they’re finished with their photo shoot, lounging, completely disinterested in the world they have occupied.
I watch the people who actually live here, mostly old Chinese grannies, come and go from their front door. They wait stoically while these transplants on morning dates deign to lean one shoulder half an inch to the left instead of actually moving their bodies out of the way of the human beings and their carts and their families. Instead of helping.
Eventually, the restaurant opens and the line moves forward. When it’s my turn to pass the building that has been so thoroughly blocked, I stop at the near edge of the stoop instead of parking myself in front of the steps. The mom behind me has been doing laps with her baby in her arms for the past 30 minutes; I imagine she is exhausted and frustrated and ready to eat. She is also now angling to make sure I clock her mean mugging me.
She wants me to move. That’s what one does, in a queue: make progress. She is annoyed. She turns to her husband to complain. They are Brazilian. They think I won’t understand the things they say about this idiot girl holding up the line.
So I, in response, hold up the line longer than I need to. I’m only one person; I could easily fit in the space on the far side of the stoop closer to the restaurant. But I don’t. I wait, and for as long as I wait the stoop remains clear. A few grannies come and go from the apartment building. Their path is unencumbered, there is no one in their way, I imagine for the first time in weeks. I feel good about this.
Brazilian Mom dances around me in a performance of exasperation that could be narrated by David Attenborough. Watch the mother threaten the stranger without direct confrontation. The ritual dance of displeasure is a wonder to behold. These are no longer creatures of community, these modern animals. They have forgotten.
While holding the line, I make sure that I am looking up. I stare straight at the growing gap ahead of me, so that the grumbling crowd behind me might realize that I am not distracted or unaware, I am making a choice. I want them to know this is intentional. I glance over my shoulder a couple of times in an attempt to catch a few eyes. I manage to stop myself from raising an eyebrow and nodding toward the stoop space before us. Hey, look. Check this out.
I wonder if anyone will understand.
They do not. When there’s room for about five people on the restaurant side of the stoop, I finally cross the Rubicon. The Brazilians stay glued to me, and everyone behind them stays glued to them. There are six barely legal creators posing perfectly on the steps by the time I turn around to see what happened. The Brazilians are whining about what took me so long.
For lack of another viable emotional option, I begin to giggle. I am barely keeping it together as I approach the hostess’ podium. I know her from the neighborhood. She tucks my party of five snugly at the bottom of the list. I leave. I wait. The family arrives. Happy birthday. Balloons. Hugs. Smiles all around. Eggs, bacon, hairs of the dog. A candle in a stack of pancakes. They enjoy the brunch. The brunch is good. I wonder if it’s good enough.
Why is it like this? Is the line the problem? I am not convinced. The restaurants are not the problem, I don’t think. Maybe they are. Did it used to be like this? The line. Was winter always this warm? Was summer always this hot? OK, it was hot. Was it always this humid? Am I too different or is the world?
When the weekend nightlife crowds descend with such ferocity that entire neighborhoods go off-limits, I start to think this is a broken place. I cling to the hope that some of them might also long for what I long for. Don’t you miss what this city was? Before you, before me. Don’t you ever wonder what we could be?
I don’t have the guts to ask.
After ruminating for a while, I call my mom. Clearly I am comparing this moment to my childhood and we all know memory is not reliable. Right? Surely it’s me. I must be romanticizing the New York of the past, like everyone who has ever lived here or loved this town or seen a movie about it. Do I remember any of this, really? Do you?
But my mom agrees it didn’t used to be like this. She talks about how New York felt when she got here, how it felt to her, and I wonder how much truth is hidden in the folds of her personal history. She talks about the ‘70s, like everyone who has ever lived here or loved this town or seen a movie about it. It got better after that, she says.
Somehow, reflecting on what the West Village girls have wreaked leads me down memory lane. I am slathering myself in sunscreen while waiting on the sidewalk for the school bus to summer camp. I am wearing my mandatory blue and white tie-dye t-shirt and I believe the counselors are really my friends.
Was it hot that summer, hot like it is now? Was winter always this warm?
Beautifully written, Chloe. I hear you about NYC, which is why i'm in Buenos Aires at the moment, lol.