Mes Dépêches

What is the limit, exactly?

Some days I walk through dog excrement, I’m sure some days human.

Most days I hear dogs barking through the thin drywall, between the emotions of bourbon-blooded Kentuckian male across the hall, slamming the door, expletive-filled rage at his now-wife as he storms out, as though we were still somewhere in the coal-stripped hills where such things are considered normal.

Cab drivers lay on the horns at anytime between 7:30am and, well, 7:30am, because, again, I suppose such things are acceptable where they come from.

This city is foul, its smells and the subways of vagrants – “mentally ill,” we are to say, that phrasing seemingly harsh but downright euphemistic in relation to the actual experience of being spat upon as a result of it.

The humidity radiates off the streets with viscosity sufficient to float gnats at face level.

No wonder so many left during the pandemic.

Why did people ever move here?

We used to sing a song in children’s church about the wisdom of building one’s house upon a rock. The English did that, I presume, at Plymouth, while the Dutch eschewed not only rocks but even sand, opting for the flimsiest mix of brackish marshland to build their capitalist panacea.

Those same Dutch lost their minds over tulips, which perhaps goes a ways toward explaining questionable decisions.

The city is less pretty than London, less modern than Hong Kong. Baron Haussmann was refined, Robert Moses practical. The infrastructure projects of Jay Gatsby’s day, once basking in that vivid Art Deco black and white that glows more boldly than color, now bursting in green, that of mildew and weeds.

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I am here for finance. Without question the world’s most driven bankers, the smartest managers of risk live here. London may be pretty but she’s timid, and her markets show it.

And anytime someone asks how long I’ll stay, that’s my answer – until the titans go elsewhere.

Aren’t they, though? The Northeast has lost some portion of $100 billion in salaries since the pandemic, well over half of it going to the South.

The same South where good folks intentionally mispronounce “chipotle,” lest someone think they’re the liberal elite. Also the same South where people have bedrooms the size of my entire apartment, and lush, endless yards and neighbors that wave and hug you instead of begging for money.

Why isn’t Jamie Dimon there? Doesn’t he want a hug? Bank of America is there, but lacks cache as a result, simply because its zip code starts with a 2 and not a 1. For all the ballyhooing, thus far we’ve seen a migration of snowbirds, the same Philly Phanatics that packed Allegiant planes to Florida already, this time just on a one-way ticket.

We see it in Florida’s politics, in the rise of Ron DeSantis. Mix some clickbait from the Post with the life experience of the jean-shorted foil-hats already inclined to be there, and voila! School textbooks extolling the virtue of slavery!

Is it hurting the Northeast? Absolutely. Is this viable for New York longer-term? Hell no. But are the world’s great money managers flocking to Florida? Not on your life.  

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Somehow, they say, there is still a housing shortage.

The population is down, no one is in the office, and yet my apartment rent climbs 5 percent a year with remarkable consistency. Higher interest rates are intended to dull this impact, to push prices down, but as landlords have racked up debt from every bank, private credit fund and Kmart layaway salesman in town, even the 5 percent increases aren’t likely to prevent widespread bankruptcy.

The situation for landlords has become so acute that they’ve even started leasing commercial space to unlicensed, ostensibly illegal weed shops, which will soon outnumber the out-of-work actors on Broadway. The city reeks of pot, even in my Upper East sanctuary, where folks with nothing better to do step off the 4 train midway between the Bronx and Midtown just to spread their acrid green joy.

A sea of empty office buildings on Third Avenue is no help for the housing shortage, as the dimly-lit, drop-ceiling torture chambers of the aughts are, unsurprisingly, not even suitable for the homeless, nor do they approach New York’s relatively sad standard for what qualifies as a bedroom. Got some glass over a brick wall? That’s a window, baby!

And so I continue to rent a one-bedroom apartment at a rate that could alternatively buy me a Gulfstream.

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My friend Courtney was held up in her first few weeks in New York. (For those exhausted with the relentless negativity, give me just a second here.)

She was in the parking lot of a Boston Market. As she tells this story I can’t help but wonder where a Boston Market still exists, much less who would voluntarily eat at one, but that’s beside the point, as she was held up and that’s the actual point. She gives the full report to the responding officer in breathless detail as he stands nonplussed, likely having already seen a body or two today and not especially concerned, unless he is likewise wondering who would voluntarily subject their digestive tract to a Boston Market.

Finally, he stops her, calmly asking, “Are you good at your job?”

“Yes, I think so,” she manages to weep.

“I think so too,” he replies. “Most people who come to New York are. That’s why they come here. New York attracts the best in every field, and unfortunately that even includes the crooks.”

It’s a valid point. There are many starving artists in New York, but only because they subject themselves to the stiffest competition. And not just in art – folks in finance, in advertising or medicine, in hair cutting, maybe even petty thievery — career-minded folk largely see New York as the pinnacle of their respective field, the ultimate mountain to climb, even if they would easily enjoy a superior quality of life most anywhere else outside of Haiti.

And that’s why I’m here. Because I don’t want to spend my life with a chip on my shoulder, trying to convince the world of my town or my career, and why it’s just as good as some aspirational peer.

I don’t want to settle for America’s second-best pizza, its second-best museums or certainly its second-best bankers. I want to know I’m standing alongside the best, with every opportunity to be the best. No matter how many libertarian hedge fund managers bolt to the Breakers, New York’s Carbone will always be the original; Miami’s shopping center knock-off will always be just that.

Life here sucks, a point I’ve beaten through the ground. It drives equal parts anxiety and loneliness, is simultaneously the most miserably hot and cold place I’ve lived in my life, and God it’s expensive. As I fly out of the old LaGuardia, fifty layers deep in delayed construction, I feel nothing but relief.

But when I fly back, after some time elsewhere in the country, my heart skips in anticipation. I’m energized and alive, ready to get off the rec fields and back onto center court. I’m ready for the fight.