New York Reunionising

Between all the eating and walking, we also carved out some time to visit old haunts and old friends who made my time in New York so special. On day two, we started with our usual Coffee Cart coffee and made friends with the ubiquitous city emigree owner:

We eventually pottered up to East 86th Street and to my Yorkville Neighbourhood. Rumour had it that H&H Bagel had shut down years ago. But a cursory google search rendered it re-opened under new management. And despite the lack of yelling Jewish men behind the counter, the bagel tasted like sunny Saturday mornings. 

We then made our way to my old apartment, built in railroad style, an engineering feat that made a lot of sense at some point in distant history but not to random strangers living together. If you imagine the inside of a railroad car, then you get the gist of what the inside of my apartment looked like. A hallway ran through each room and to get to the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, you had to walk through someone else's room. It was close quarters but my roommate back then was a successful engineer who took a lot of business trips. Seeing as I was a new teacher barely scraping by, it just about worked. 

Fast forward to 2017 and the City of New York decided to build a new subway line, the Q, to access the Far East side of the UES. Obviously, this has pushed up property prices and people are keen to renovate these mavens of old New York. My building has been bought by a property development agency and the defunct railroads have been 'luxury' flats. Long gone are my ten flights of steep stairs, my tiny bathroom. For no logical reason, a little sadness filled my soul. 

From one 333 to the other, we then made our way to the New York City Museum School, home of my first teaching job. My goodness, the stories I have. It's probably relevant to note that I quit teaching for two years after I finished here but in walking past the building it all came flooding back. And somehow, even the bad memories became hilarious stories of survival.

From place reunions to people reunions, Paul and I began the evenings of seeing people who knew me before he did. First stop, Tobye and Aimee, summer camp friends who were my first lifelines in the city. I hatched the plan of moving to New York from Aimee's parents' Brooklyn Heights brownstone late in the summer of 2005. And I lived in Tobye's halls of residence, very much overstaying my welcome when the apartment search became fruitless. They were still in college when I started teaching and loved to laugh at my horror stories. Zoom forward to 2017 and Aimee is now a teacher herself. Tobye works with school technology and all of a sudden the years between have shrunk. We met in Brooklyn and did that reunion thing, laughing at our old selves, catching up on gossip and updating each other on our present lives. It was wonderful (but also without photographic evidence).

On the penultimate night of the trip, Paul and I made our way to NYU stomping grounds to visit my cousin, Steven. He was still in high school when I lived here but time is a great leveller and he's all grown up now. We met at a little Thai hole in the wall near Washington Square Park before wandering to the Stonewall Monument, a project he helped see through when he worked for the Obama Administration. He rarely gets visitors and since I can understand that feeling, we found kindred spirits in one another.

 

And for one final reunion, on our last night in New York, Paul and I ventured to the Upper West Side and took a 45-minute walk through the American Museum of Natural History. I taught here twice a week so it became a place I associated with madness and chaos but we had some time to burn before meeting Leila, my charming Cuban former colleague. She was a lifeline to my first year of teaching and her candid, non-conformist, wonderful humour carried my world-weary 23-year-old self through.

We met at La Unica Caridad Restaurant, a Cuban Chinese favourite of her parents. This concept in of itself is one to meditate upon. Lots of Chinese people left their home country in the 19th and 20th century in search of better opportunities, a better life. And the politics of post-revolutionary China aligned well with Cuba. But as Castro took a stronghold over the country, many Chinese immigrants made their way to the USA, New York in particular. And in this, a unique fusion was born. This video explains the concept well.

We were greeted first in Spanish, then in Chinese and finally in English as we walked through the door. The menu featured both Cuban AND Chinese food as well as some mashed up classics incorporating both.

So whilst we chowed down on plantains and lo mein, Leila and I caught up on the years. It turns out we're kind of the same people, just older. She's left teaching to enjoy the shhhhh! of librarianship. She's got an apartment in Harlem. She's loving the city all the same. Our dinner was a long, warm hug. We laughed and swapped stories of ski trips, late night drinks, crazy classroom antics.

I love friends you don't see but pick right up where you left off. I love New York.