What is Suma?

What is Suma?

Well, here’s the thing.  I am not ready to leave Manhattan. I know I need to, I know it’s time, but I can’t stand the thought of leaving good bars and great restaurants and cool people and great things to do and the center of the world and all that.  I can’t bear it.

So I’ve convinced myself that I’m not leaving.  No, not me!  I’m just moving to a new section of Manhattan, a hot new neighborhood like Dumbo and Nolita and all those other acronymic (is that a word?) Manhattan neighborhoods that magazine writers or real estate brokers are always discovering.

I’m just moving to “Suma,” the “SUburbs of MAnhattan.”  Just like “Tribeca” is the “TRIangle BElow CAnal” or “Nolita” is “NOrth of LIttle ITaly.”   Just another neighborhod of Manhattan!  Really!

Suma is not a neighborhood per se, of course, but it’s a state of mind, the state of mind that I might be moving to the suburbs, but I’m going to retain my Manhattan sensibilities, pretentious though they may be.

I’m not going to give in.

I’m not going to get a cookie-cutter house.

I’m not going to become the organization man.

I’m not going to eat every meal at a franchise restaurant.

I’m not going to stay in on weekends.

I’m going to find my Suma.

And, yes, of course, I’m seriously in denial.

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Comments

  1. Subscribing! It’s a good read, Joe. Thanks for sharing your tale.

  2. actually, when i retreated back out to living out in nj again for a couple of years in the early nineties, i made a similar effort to get at least some of what i loved about urban living out there as well… i called it exurbia, but suma is good

Trackbacks

  1. […] colorless suburban drone.  The whole conceit of the “Move to SUMA” was the inside joke that “SUMA” was just another Manhattan neighborhood, that I needed to convince myself that I wasn’t actually […]