I Love Manhattan, but I’m leaving….

I love living in Manhattan.

I love watching the evening news, and seeing that someone was run over by a car or stabbed or something, and being able to say, “hey, that’s like three blocks from my apartment!”

I love getting room service any time I want from my big book of delivery menus that my wife has actually collated, three-hole-punched, and put in a binder organized by ethnicity.

I love going to Central Park on Saturday mornings for some of the pickup softball games in the Great Lawn or the uptown ball fields.

I love the fact that my little neighborhood sandwich shop, Lenny’s, is now all over the city, and that other people get to share in the joy of a Thanksgiving turkey sandwich all year round.

I love pretending that I go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art because I have a membership card that says I’m a supporter, even though I never go.

I love my local restaurants Calle Ocho and Barbao, run by people I like and respect, although I liked going to brunch at Calle Ocho more before everyone else found out about the free sangria.

I love going to the meatpacking district and remembering where the transvestite hookers used to hang out, and seeing people buying $1500 handbags there.

I love walking around my neighborhood on the upper west side, playing the game of “what used to be here.”  Like, the northeast corner at 82d and Columbus is a “corner of retail death,” one of many in the city.  It’s now a Mexican restaurant called Comida.  Before that, a semi-Southern-creole-could-never-quite-figure-it-out place called Madaeline Mae’s.  Before that, a faux Irish pub called TJ O’Briens.  Before that, the estimable and lamented Kitchen 82.  And before that, Corner (run by the Lenny’s folk until they realized they could do better just making more Lennys).  And, finally, before that, a local grocery called Casanas, which I still miss because they had these cheap homemade burritos that I’ve never been able to find anywhere else.

I love the fact that you can buy a nudie mag on pretty much every street corner, not that you would when so much more effective material is available now on the internet.  But they’re still there, and basic economics says that someone must still be buying them.

I love being able to decide spontaneously to drink one night, knowing I don’t have to drive home, and that I can get back to my apartment so long as I can remember my address and be able to speak it out loud.

I love it all, and yet, and yet…..I am leaving.

I’m moving out.  Selling the apartment that I bought in 1994, renovated and combined with another unit in 2004, and getting out.  No more Upper West Side.  No more delivery food. No more Central Park.

Why would I do this? It was time.  I’ve lived here for almost 20 years, soaking up as much Manhattan as I could.  But I work outside the city, and have for about six years.  A 45 minute commute, each way, every day.  That wears on you.  And, frankly, as much as I love Manattan, I wasn’t getting a lot out of it when I’m getting home at 8PM exhausted from my drive and long day.  And as much as I love my brownstone apartment, I’m tired of climbing stairs every day.  People joke about how it keeps me in shape to climb two flights to my living room.  It doesn’t.

But here’s my problem.  I grew up in the suburbs, I work in the suburbs, and I know the suburbs.  And I’m terrified about living in the suburbs.  I don’t see why my life should change, I don’t know why I shouldn’t be able to create some semblance of my city life in the suburbs, with interesting bars and good restaurants and fun things to do.  So I’m writing this blog to document my search for that life, that search for an urbanized existence in a suburban environment.

But some of the signs are not so good. My wife and I were exiled to the suburbs in 2004 when we were renovating our apartment, six months of Cheescake Factory Fridays and bars filled with guys wearing flannel and wierd sections of the New York Times that I never saw before.  We kept saying we’d come into the city, and we did.  Three or four times.  Not a good sign.

Can I really live there? Can I live without mixology and Malaysian delivery and a short subway ride to Yankee Stadium?  Can I find new friends and new places to hang out without becoming the suburban guy that I was as a kid.

I’m going to find out.