The Day I Became A Real New Yorker
And I have the scars to prove it.
When I was twenty years old, I quit my job as a tv news reporter in Anchorage, Alaska, and bought a one-way ticket to New York City. I was obsessed with Manhattan and fantasized about the day I’d finally be rich enough or old enough to move there, whatever came first. I grew up on a gold mine outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, where winters were long, cold, and dark, and summers were worse than winters because the sun never went down. I hate the sun, and I’ll throw a party when it implodes one day. I’ll shake my fist in the air while saying, “That’s what you get for giving me such bad insomnia as a child.” I’m more of a moon person anyways.
I didn’t know anyone or anything when I moved to Manhattan. Everything I knew about the City I learned from Reading Rainbow, Weekend Update, or the movie Splash. But by the end of my first year, I was basically the Mayor. I knew the best deli for a sausage egg and cheese breakfast roll, I could recite all the subway stops and transfers with my eyes closed, and I could steal a cab in the rain from a Wall Street bro. I had friends and enemies scattered throughout the five boroughs.
There’s always a debate on what makes you a real New Yorker. Some people say you must live there for ten years; others say it’s when you get run over by a Super Shuttle. I agree with both to an extent, but really, you become a New Yorker when something very New York happens to you, like what happened to me when I was twenty-eight.
It was a Saturday night, and I was out with my improv team singing Karaoke at a hole-in-the-wall bar on forty-third street. My friend Sally joined too. We went to high school together in Alaska, and she moved to Manhattan to become an opera singer. We were catching up and throwing back vodka red bulls in between songs.
I celebrated my birthday a few weeks earlier. Virgo, thanks for asking. My parents never knew what to get me for my birthday, even though I’m super easy, all I want is money. I spent the check my Mom mailed on these amazing black lace-up stilettos that gave me life. I found them on BlueFly.com, along with a Burberry dress and a Tahari jacket. I was the Senior Fashion Editor and Host of a show on Hulu called Chic TV at the time. I covered every season of New York Fashion Week. I usually had a front-row seat on the runway next to whichever Real House Wife showed up. Occasionally I sat across from Kim Kardashian and Anna Wintour at some of the bigger shows. I had all-access backstage passes to every show, where I interviewed all of the top designers and models in the industry. My passion was comedy writing, but fashion paid the bills.
After spending two hours at Karaoke, Sally and I decided to head back down to my apartment in the West Village, where we would switch over to wine and order queso from Tortilla Flats. It went horribly wrong. And I never got my queso.
Midtown was packed, and we thought it would be quicker and easier to hop on the subway to fourteenth street than to take a cab. The Times Square subway station is always busy, and if you’re smart, which I’m not, you would actively avoid going there. Holding onto railings in the subway is risky; everyone knows that’s how you catch an STD. So with my hands by my side, I gracefully swaggered down the stairs. After the first two steps, my new shoes betrayed me. One of the heels got caught in the other shoe’s laces, sending me flying down two flights of stairs. I have no idea how my tumble didn’t end up on Kook Slams; people would’ve loved to see a five-ten blonde, impeccably dressed woman eating shit down the subway stairs.
I rolled to a stop at the bottom. I looked down at my body to make sure I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t. Blood gushed from both knees, and I had cuts and bruises all up and down my legs and arms. Luckily I was pretty intoxicated, so I didn’t feel much pain until the next day. People stepped over me, annoyed that I was in their way. I apologized for being “that girl” and started gathering my belongings, which were spread across the subway floor. Sally picked up a few of my lipsticks and a compact from MAC. I grabbed my purse and saw my wallet was still inside. I looked up from the floor and saw a young man run over to me. Besides my friend, he was the only one who seemed to notice or care about my fall. As he approached me, I put my arm up so he could help me back to my feet. He bent over and grabbed my iPhone, which landed just out of my reach. And then he ran away with it, and I never saw my phone again.
If this isn’t the most New York you can New York, I don’t know what is. My theory is that you become a New Yorker when the city knocks you down and then insults you on top of injury. The good news is I finally became a real New Yorker that night on the floor of the Times Square subway station.