Year-End Assessment

Play "(Everybody's Waitin' For)
The Man With the Bag"
by Kay Starr

I've officially celebrated my one-year anniversary in New York. It's hard to believe 'cause the time has gone by so fast.

Like every year, I've been doing the year-end assessment, figuring out where I've been and thinking about how I'd like next year to go.

New York has been a lot of things so far: the land of possibilities, if you can suss them out and keep up the energy to explore them all; the striver imagining and inventing new and cool in a place where old is the order of the day; the rich relation who dares you not to follow along and go broke in the process, not that that's her problem; the hot guy at the bar who gives you the come-on only to brush you off and leave with someone prettier, readier, richer or better connected.

It has not been easy to make a home here, but living is all about trying to make the most of what you've got right now. I still miss the people and places I left behind.

Luckily, the people still talk to me regularly, despite their earlier admonishments that only the insane and the investment bankers go to New York, and the places have not slid into the ocean or succumbed to a wrecking ball.

I've been fortunate enough to return and be reminded that friendship and all that goes with it transcends place so long as the gardeners constantly tend it.

But I've also noticed that what New Yorkers have told me is right: It takes at least a year before a newcomer can feel like they can stake a claim to the city.

So far, my experiences have been mostly about realizing New York's buildings are different but its shops are all the same: even the so-called center of the universe isn't immune to the homogenization of commercial culture.

What has been unique are the restaurants, though there's even a sameness to the cuisine, dominated by Italian and French, or falafel and takeout.

Still, as I was sitting outside on a 30-degree, gray afternoon by the locally hailed Shake Shack, it occurred to me that the city's beginning to feel less alien, even if I still sound like a little like I'm from SoCal (or a Canada, as a colleague guessed).

So this is it, I thought, munching my juicy Shack burger, trying to find my way past a thick melted marshmallow to rich hot chocolate, and watching a crane hoist I-beams up yet another skyscraper while office workers dodged last-minute shoppers and tourists on holiday.

This is my Manhattan.

(The timing was serendipitous: New York magazine's cover feature this week is Reasons to Love New York.)