Props for keeping in real! I spend the past 5 years in the city and now have resigned to keep myself there only part time..live somewhere else (PA) and go to the city with a direct purpose and then peace out for a bit.

The city didnt beat you…we all are looking for “N.Y.C.”..reality is different..enjoy your creativity and peace.

Good for you.

Honestly, I don’t really want to live in a hub city anymore. I don’t want to live in the Bay Area, I don’t want to live in Berlin, I don’t want to live in Beijing, Hong Kong, or Tokyo. Right now I live in Baltimore, and I love it. I can get coconut oil and goat meat across the street, I can get top notch lengua tacos in Fells Point, I can get Trinidadian food a couple blocks away, and the farmers market is also right across the street. I hang out with artists and musicians, and there’s something fun to do almost every single day. The financial pressure that has been lifted from my life since leaving NY has made all the difference in the world, allowing me to live the life that I’ve always wanted to live.

I’m just saying that I don’t miss New York, not even slightly. It’s a great city for a lot of people, just not me.

Sometimes it seems that urbanites just enjoy the romanticism of “nature, “environmentalism” and the idea of bucolic farms they want their fresh, local, organic produce to come from rather than taking action to be directly involved in these things.

I bought a house 1.5 hours north of the Bronx with my husband last year. It’s scary to leave but we stay connected. My husband commutes for work and stays down to record his albums. Plus ay home we get breathing room, wildlife, and my work on a farm (yes I am using my degree) is thoroughly fulfilling. Our mortgage is cheaper than our rent in Brooklyn was!

It takes a leap but once you do it, it is worth it. You can always visit the city. Get out while you can! You’re friends want to too! Everyone’s afraid of the unknown but you need to grow up sometime.

PS You forgot to mention other cities like Philly and Pittsburgh that many friends have found great inspiration in.

Alison, I agree with you too. It’s just that, sometimes in NY, you have to go with the flow of your friends, and unfortunately, very often, the group decision will be to go to the Pencil Factory in Greenpoint, where beer is $7, rather than the Palace Tavern a few blocks away, where beers are $1.50. Honestly, my preference would be to hang out at someone’s house, but my friends rarely suggest that unless there’s a party going on. Also, I always made the effort to see friends, but on average, I would see even my closest friends at most once a week, which I guess isn’t enough for me.

My rent steadily rose each year I lived in NY, and the last place I lived in Greenpoint, where rent is considered relatively cheap, was $875 for a tiny tiny room. Unless I moved back to Astoria, I wasn’t going to find anything cheaper. You’re right, I could have chosen Bed-Stuy or one of those places along the JMZ, but even those places hovered in the high $600s, and I chose Greenpoint because I knew I was going to leave soon, and I wanted to spend my last year near my friends. Also, when I signed that last lease, I had a job (a soulless, awful job) that paid me enough to afford it. But I absolutely had no time to devote whole-heartedly to art. My downtime was spent cooking, doing laundry, paying bills, and making more of an effort than I should have had to make to see my friends. This is not to say I have bad friends — it’s just that people were generally too busy and exhausted to leave their neighborhoods on most nights.

A few things…

There are many artists living in Bushwick, Crown Heights, Bed Stuy, Harlem, etc. and they are not paying anywhere near $1000/month. Whether they are realizing their dreams as an artist who knows. If they are, it’s doubtful that they are happy! Not sure that it’s possible to have both.

Roaches are easy. If you have rats, get a cat. Or read the amazing book, ‘Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants’ and learn to appreciate them like the children in the subway do.

The food here is amazing. Too amazing, really. It has pretty much ruined dining for me outside of the city because I know I can get it better, cheaper, and faster back home. Buying groceries is expensive, but even so, with a little bit of effort you can join a co-op in your neighborhood or participate in a farm share and get fresh, organic produce for cheap.

If you want to see your friends (and they want to see you), then it’s pretty simple: you make the effort to see them. If you kind of want to see a friend/acquaintance, then you make plans to see them in a month. If you don’t want to see someone, then too bad because you’re going to see them anyway at that bar you’re paying $7 to drink beer in. By the way, unless you’re drinking uptown or at Balthazar, there are not many places downtown that charge $7 a beer. If you’re in one of those places (looking for models and what have you), then it’s your own fault and you deserve to pay.

To sum it up, I’ve come to realize that New York picks up on your energy. If you’re pissed off at New York, then the bus to the G train is not going to come, it is going to rain/sleet/snow for weeks straight, a taxi is going to come by and spray sludge on you, the construction workers are going to yell, you’re going to get bedbugs, etc. Something I always try to do is to look for beauty in the everyday. It’s sometimes hard to do that here, but that’s what makes living here interesting.

And just so you know, I live off the G train, right around the corner from where Biggie used to live. Good luck, Gerry. And if you want to come back, NYC will be here stale urine and all.

My sense of New York as a visitor was that it’s a city geared around work and – as a bye-product – money. If you don’t love both, then it would be a brutal city I’m imagine to live for an extended period of time.

Spiro – my guess is that you’ve never lived in the city. There’s no question that there’s a huge difference between visiting a place and living for an extended period of time.

Once again – nice post Gerry.

I agree with you’re general characterization. New York has lost something to me more recently — maybe it has to do with everyone talking about money more, but as an artist, I feel like I’ve always been talking about that with other artists…

I’m writing this from the Caribbean right now and can safely say that New York is not always the best place for an artist. I’ve made two paintings in the last two weeks… more that I’ve made in the last year in the city.