Henry Desroches wrote about his decision to leave New York City and move back to Denver. It struck a chord with me. My wife and I lived in Brooklyn for a little over five years. We were married in Brooklyn Bridge Park. A lot of our friends from grad school live in New York (although we were the only ones in Brooklyn). Still, when we left in 2018, I was ready to leave. We wanted to buy a home and New York is outrageously expensive, I missed the mountains and the outdoors, and I wanted to be closer to family.
It was only later that I began to pine for Brooklyn. It’s usually brought on by movies and TV shows set in New York. I always have to remind myself that the New York you see in movies is not necessarily the New York that people live in.
It’s taken me a long time to shake loose the feeling that I’m giving up on a version of myself I fantasized about being for years… It’s the hidden cost of romanticizing and daydreaming about a million possible lives: you can live all of those lives a little bit if you want, but never at the same time.
It’s easy for me to imagine myself living a cool and interesting life like I see in the movies. It can seem like the only thing that’s preventing me from realizing that fantasy is where I live. I find that I have to actively remind myself that New York City is not always the way it is portrayed in movies.1 The apartments are smaller, the streets more crowded, the trains less reliable. On TV you can’t smell the hot wet garbage in the summer, and you never see people having to detour around the mountains of garbage bags that obstruct the sidewalks every week. And of course, when I lived there, I was still me. New York didn’t magically change me.
These are all the things I have to remind myself of when I start feeling pangs of regret for leaving. Not because I think New York is bad, just to remind myself that it wasn’t as perfect for me as it is in my imagination.
But I also don’t think this longing is something to be ignored. Although I prefer the outdoorsy life I can live more easily in Colorado, Colorado leaves a lot to be desired. It’s far too car-centric. Housing is getting increasingly expensive. You know, the usual. The things that I do miss about New York I miss because we don’t have them out here.2
Ultimately, I’ve come to the same conclusion as Henry: that moving to another city isn’t magically going to turn my life into some dream life. Instead, I need to invest time and energy into shaping my neighborhood into something better.3 For me, this means a place that is more pedestrian and cyclist friendly with good public transportation. America’s car-centric lifestyle has all but obliterated third places from our lives, so redesigning our built environment to de-emphasize cars seems like a step towards restoring our capacity to build community.
I’m resolving to spend my first year back getting involved in the Coloradan public transit infrastructure community, and working to get more accessible, comprehensive, and publically-funded transit built.
So I’m starting to look over the resources from groups likes Strong Towns, trying to figure out how to get involved locally and influence decisions that make Lafayette, CO a little nicer without a car. Like Henry, I’m hoping that there may be some value in my software skills that can help these efforts—even if it’s just that I’m good at wrangling a spreadsheet. Or maybe I just need to show up to City Council meetings to ask the tough questions, like: why do the cops need pickup trucks?4
I’d much rather live in a world where people can find community and entertainment just about anywhere, instead of so many people all trying to pile into the same four cities.
Anyway, from one Colorado ➯ New York ➯ Colorado transplant to another: welcome back, Henry!
Footnotes
Where, it’s my understanding, that New York City is often actually portrayed by Toronto. ↩︎
New York is also way too car-centric. I’ve encountered people who think that New York is a great example of a city that has good public transportation, but I disagree. It certainly has more public transportation than most places in the USA, but it’s in bad shape and a ton of work has gone into making space for cars in New York. I never felt safe biking in New York because of all the cars. ↩︎
Speaking of neighborhoods, my son is now old enough that we’ve begun watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and that is making me miss Pittsburgh. Honestly, if I were going to move back to any city at this point, it would probably be Pittsburgh, but I’d still miss the mountains and I don’t love the humidity back East. ↩︎
No joke. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lafayette PD drive a car. They drive SUVs and pickup trucks. ↩︎