From my childhood through my late 30s, the “big city” was always New York. All but three years of my first 41 years of life was spent east of the Mississippi River, in Georgia, Florida and Connecticut. I came by my affection for the Big Apple honestly. My parents fanned my love affair traveling to the city with my brother and me in tow several times in the 1970s and 80s.
The first time I strolled the avenues of Manhattan I was a pre-teen and Marvel comic book enthusiast craning my neck skyward to glimpse the web-slinging, wise-cracking Spider-Man. (Don’t laugh. I knew Spider-Man wasn’t real, but a young boy can daydream!)
The last time I visited was nearly 30 years later, in 2005, after six years of living an hour and a half drive away from a city still nursing the deep wound of the 9/11 terror attacks.
My point here is that New York City was always the American city I loved the most. I do not exaggerate when I say I felt a pang of heartbreak during my last visit to the city in the summer of 2005 as I prepared to move nearly 2,000 miles west to report on then-Gov. Bill Richardson and the New Mexico Legislature for the Albuquerque Journal.
Since then, I’ve surprised myself as I’ve found my center of gravity shifting. I’m as apt to call myself a Southwesterner these days as a Southerner, reflecting my Georgia birth and upbringing. And Los Angeles, not New York, is the city I love the most to visit with my family. It’s twice as close, has fantastic food, great art museums, terrific bookstores — and, like most large cities, people roaming the streets speaking languages from all over the world, which is a turbocharger for extroverts like me who love talking to genial, talkative strangers.
So, when I learned in March I had the chance to return to New York City for the first time in 20 years, I surprised myself with a sigh and a question: Do I really want to go?
Who was I? And what had happened to the Trip that I once knew?
I should not have worried. That Trip popped out the second I saw my first skyscrapers, a smile plastering my face. The smile only got bigger when I learned my driver grew up in the Punjab, a region of India I know about from reading and listening to podcasts about Indian history and the Sikh religion. The Punjab is the historic center of Sikhs. (Interestingly, New Mexico has a surprisingly large Sikh population.) We talked almost the entire ride about Indian politics.
The conversation was energizing. Then, I got to my destination and switched to work mode.
Over the next two days, during daylight hours, the good folks at the Local Media Association led New Mexican news publishers with several folks from Illinois in conversations about how to market our organizations in an increasingly loud, noisy world that is only growing louder and noisier.
But it was during the mornings and nights that I reacquainted myself with the New York City.
One morning, I walked more than a mile from our hotel to our workplace in the Chelsea Market in the meatpacking district of Manhattan. Strolling New York’s streets is a reminder that the bright lights energy of places like Times Square (not one of my favorite places, although I took photos at night to show my kids) are not that far from quiet streets with bodegas and parents walking their kids to school in neighborhoods that can feel magical.
Of course, I rode the subway to get around. How could I not? The trains remain one of the marvels of American public transportation. And it is not hyperbole to say that some of the mosaics that adorn the walls of subway stations are museum-quality artwork.
The good thing about visiting New York many times over the years is I knew what I wanted to do with my free time. On the day I flew out, I had several hours to go to some of my favorite haunts in downtown Manhattan.
I took the subway to Washington Square in the West Village to see where Harry met Sally (if you know, you know) and to visit one of my favorite places, the Strand Bookstore: 18 miles of books is its catchphrase. Then I took a short walk to Union Square, which was the site of one of the most haunting tableaus I recall seeing after the 9/11 attacks: thousands of flyers of missing people put up by loved ones, fluttering in an early morning breeze. These days, more than 20 years on, it’s merely a park where you can catch the subway to the Brooklyn Bridge, which I did.
As I neared the bridge, I saw three workers with hard hats pulling materials out of a van while they loudly razzed each other. As I listened, I was reminded of something that I had reconciled myself to when I lived in the Northeast: I will never, ever be as funny or as quick-witted or as entertaining as blue-collar workers talking smack about one another.
I cannot articulate the joy I felt listening to their verbal and mental dexterity.
I wrapped up my morning with dim sum in Chinatown and walked a mile-and-a-half back to Washington Square, where I caught an Uber to La Guardia.
I’m happy I returned to New York 20 years after I last visited. I miss its energy and its people. These days, I also know that I prefer the quiet neighborhoods to the bright lights.
When I got back home to New Mexico, I immediately told my wife how much fun I had. And I told her we should plan a family vacation because the kids were too young to remember the city when we left the Northeast.
Yes, humble reader (readers of 1970s Marvel comics will get this reference), I still love NYC. And I want to go back.
Trip Jennings started his career in Georgia at his hometown newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle, before working at newspapers in California, Florida and Connecticut. Since 2005, Trip has covered politics and state government for the Albuquerque Journal, The New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe New Mexican. He holds a Master’s of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. In 2012, he co-founded New Mexico In Depth.