New York City is for you.
New York City is not for me.
NYCBAYBEEE
“You ain’t gotta cop, you can hop, it won’t cost you, You can get lost where you want, no one can find you / All five boroughs, yours to ride to, Don’t keep your brows furrowed, but keep your eyes glued” - Wiki, “3 Train to Mecca”
I haven’t been to New York City since 2012 but I really don’t count the visit. I was upstate for a wedding and its photographer — I forget his name, but I remember he was very hairy — wanted to go to Ground Zero for shots, so we got into a rental together, drove five hours, took photos, and drove five hours again. I saw nothing, did nothing.
Last week I had the pleasure of knowing I had access to everything, if only for five days. New York City has it all. People, traffic, restaurants, bars, stores, drugs, trains, rats. It has so much that it’s impossible to see everything, even figuratively, in a single lifetime. Maybe three.
So when I visit(ed) New York City, the experience is (and was) wholly dependent on the filters I experience them through, the friends who show their version of New York. I barely have time for my version, and I doubt I ever will if I don’t move there, and I won’t. (I’m a tourist and a visitor, which my native friends would also say of my transplant friends.) In New York, I’m just borrowing a pair of prescribed lenses and holding the door open for friends as they show me around. I’m visiting their New York, which becomes my New York.
Last week I (drunkenly) trained, Lyfted, and walked through the city slowly figuring out the road map of which version or path of New York I like and seeing what my own would look like if someone ever wanted to go to the city with me. I like bagels (any bagel) and pizza (any pizza). I like New York trains, but I’ve been to Europe and know that I don’t have to steep in someone else’s ass sweat if I don’t want to, so I like the concept more than the execution. I like slow walkers who know which part of the sidewalk to navigate on cruise control. I like seeing Puerto Rican flags all the time and everywhere.
But what grates me is knowing how much culture exists in the city and the people who are reluctant to participate. The idea that I could ask a friend to take me to a Chinese restaurant, only for them to suggest a place that’s 50 minutes away, overly crowded and expensive, and uses 150-watt Super Bright LED lights for their bathrooms so you’re not confused about where you are is supremely wack. That one place is objectively better than a spot around the corner, purely because more people know about it, is boring. I look for safe spaces in any city that I’m in, just in case I get lost or need a break, I can duck into them and know I’ll never see anyone I know.
(Of course, New York is Very Big and I am Very Small, so I’m overthinking, per usual.)
“You ain't silent, don't surround yourself around it, If it ain't real you don't need to be around it / If it's fake love, they don't know you don't need it, If you had to do it, a reason he ain't breathin’” - Young Nudy, “Ready”
Anyway, I don’t care how many degrees away I am from the owner of a Michelin-star restaurant, or what brand is offering me free drinks and a Lyft ride home if I just look at their new waxed canvas jacket in person: You will never catch me paying $3,000 to live in a matchbox. I do not have an addiction to paying rent.
I’m also not enamored with the idea of having a seat at the table, which is the assumption because I work in media. On my trip, I visited that one statuesque big media tower in Manhattan and it felt like I was invited to a castle. It’s intimidating in the way that banks used to use Greek columns to reassure patrons that they hold the power. I’m not too fond of the reminder that I wouldn’t be sitting on the top floor if I lived in the city. I don’t like the idea of reporting to a heavily guarded citadel of culture.
(Side note: Do you know how much money $1 billion is? A friend of mine once told me that if we were to translate a single dollar to a single second, it’d take, roughly, 11 and a half days to count from one to one million seconds. It takes about 127 years to count from one to one billion. That’s a lifetime and some change. You’d die before finishing. So please, don’t talk to me about liveable media wages, let alone in New York.)
Wi-Fi is everywhere. You don’t have to live in a major city to work for a major company. I don’t want to pay high rent for a seat at the table.
“Always on a paper chase, Like I don't go a second in this year to waste / Soon as I stepped out they noticed me, But sometimes I'd rather stay home and go to sleep” Your Old Droog, “Go to Sleep”
I’m deciding to shut up before I make someone mad. I love visiting, I just won’t live there.
🚨☕ Sick brand merch ☕🚨
Mentally I’m Emelio and I’ve been surfing Grailed for dopamine hits of niche things to microdose. My latest fixation is BOSS Coffee merch.
BOSS is a Japanese canned coffee company run by Suntory (Hibiki is great whisky) that you can easily find at a local Asian grocer at a decent price and on Amazon for an outrageous one. It’s really fucking good, and I recently downed a case of Cold Black Coffee in less than a week. I forgot how much I dig its flash-brew. Even seeing its logo in the Yakuza series sparks joy in me.
I don’t know how but I dug myself into a hole of Asian-branded workwear and came across BOSS merch on Grailed at like 1 a.m. a few weeks ago. Similar to visiting your local Goodwill and seeing a Pepsi-branded letterman jacket that was awarded to someone who did a Good Job, Grailed’s a haven for those well-worn workwear pieces exclusive to its workers — the kind of shit that employees are required to wear while pushing buttons and immediately dump at the thrift when they quit or get newly issued garbs. The difference between the Goodwill and Grailed pipeline is that most of that Japanese workwear doesn’t flow to America. You need to dig on Etsy, eBay, and Grailed to even know it exists.
I like the idea of brands from other countries having their own take on American ideas, people, and values, and rumor has it that the BOSS logo is based on William Faulkner. It’s probably not true, but I’d like to think that the ideal “boss” who gets shit done is a dead 20th-century American writer. Regardless, I fuck with the BOSS drinks.
I copped a fleece jacket that’s pilling like crazy and fits a little loose, which is what I like, and it has the name of the worker who owned it written on the inside tag. Or so says three friends of mine who know Japanese. I think someone said part of this person’s name means “lake”.
I grabbed three BOSS pieces in the last month in preparation for the cool months ahead. I’d show you more photos but my phone is bunk at the moment.
Most of these pieces are from Suntory Original Design, Suntory’s internal design studio, which I guess might sell exclusive merch to Japan. The team has a great IG of some of the company’s product and logo designs over the years, which is fun to gawk over.
Anyway, that BOSS shit go hoard. The brand’s anorak jackets and outwear are surprisingly tough and solid in weight and feel. I’m lusting for more, but the idea of being a billboard for a (semi) obscure coffee company isn’t my particular bag of being.
