Not long ago, it would have been correct to say that my life could be easily divided into two parts: the part before I left for graduate school in Manhattan and the part after.  Or described a different way: the West Coast half of my life and the East Coast half.  This clean line cuts through my life not only geographically, but also across the vast majority of my relationships and across the way I feel and think about my place in the world.  No other transition in my life -- not meeting the first love of my life, not leaving for college, not getting married -- marks such a clear-cut change.

The 20 months that I spent in Manhattan were pivotal.  For that reason, among others, the way I felt during this time tended towards extremes.  It was an exhilarating and painful transition.  I started the time nearly alone -- the only person I knew was Chris, a friend from college.  I was scrambling to make it into a PhD program in Philosophy, but while I was getting the Master's done at NYU, my computer hobby became one of my full-time jobs.  I worked so many hours a week between that job and the bookstore, and then also going to 2 or 3 seminars a week, that I was losing coherence.  Hours and days would drift by and when I'd snap to, it would be as if I was stirring from a dream.  One of my best friends tried to kill himself.  I fell in love with my wife.

Recently I had the chance to take my family down to NYC for a vacation.  I was shocked by how deeply the experiences I had there affected me.  Walking around the city, I would turn a corner and be confronted with an unexpectedly familiar sight, sound or smell, and I would suddenly feel out of breath, as though I had been hit in the solar plexus.  Although I am a naturally nostalgic person and I enjoy dwelling on sharp and emotional times in my life, I had never until now appreciated just how important my time living in New York was. 

But perhaps more important is that the revelations I had about my past led to revelations about my present.  It hadn't really occurred to me that perhaps I was right now going through another period of vast change in my life.  Although the boundaries of the change I am going through now are more blurry (Did it begin when we had our first kid?  Did it begin when I started working at Trellix?  Did it begin when I returned my attention to music?), and although this more recent change spans 5 or 6 years instead of 20 months, I have no doubt that I am now standing at the beginning of the Third Half of my life.

And as I long ago wrote in the context of a letter to my good friend Anna Brown, thank you New York.  It was you who were the passage between the first and second halves, and it was you who put the period at the end of the second half and the first capital letter at the start of the third.

This, then, is the story of my vacation in Manhattan.

We left on Friday night as early as we could.  Where do you go when you have hungry kids and you're in a hurry?  McDonalds.  If you are lucky, they do not give you a seriously hard time about wanting to go to the indoor playground.

We were not lucky. 

Since we did not want her to go to the playground (which this McDonalds did not in fact have), we were all forced to surrender our drinks.  Annabella can be a cruel mistress.

We were however well-fed, or at least full of something resembling food, and were ready to hit the road.

Where we stayed

On 50th Street between Lexington and 3rd Avenue you will find the remarkable San Carlos hotel.  Here you can stay in an unusually large suite for about the same price that many other hotels charge for a ridiculously small room.  And if you're traveling with children, you will appreciate the breathing room.  The location is perfect for me, and good for just about anyone: a few blocks from 5th Avenue, Central Park, the Apple Store, good places for breakfast and the always-delightful 4-6 subway line (which takes you to Astor Place as well as Spanish Harlem).  The staff is atypically friendly, young, helpful and just genuinely nice.  The in-room service is from an attached Indian restaurant which we did not try -- perhaps next time.  If you don't like Indian, the desk keeps menus of recommended restaurants that deliver.  We liked Angelo's Pizza (I could have the name wrong -- ask for their recommended pizza place).  The pizza was good and the delivery prompt.  It was odd they didn't offer garlic bread.

In any case, my family loved this hotel.  There is no doubt in my mind we will return here before too long.

We toasted the New Year a few days early and with water.  Give us a break, we're new to this!

Where we met

Cristen and I both went to NYU.  These are some pretty typical scenes from that area.  Webster Hall is a particularly important place to us because that is where we really first took an interest in each other.  Back then, there was a pretty good goth/industrial night that took place on I think Thursdays, though I could have the day mixed up.  In any case, it was a weeknight after seminar that provided the social occasion for the merry men and women of the NYU Master's program in Philosophy to drink and be rowdy.  Or geeky.  Or both.  Apparently, there are women out there who like that sort of thing (thank goodness).  I was lucky enough to find one.

Cristen lived in the East Village on 1st Avenue at 5th Street.  That was a fairly awesome location at the time if, like me, you enjoyed Indian food.  6th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue was, and to some extent still is, dominated by more choices for Indian dining than you'd think economically feasible in one area.  The smell of curry and lentils is so powerful that it permeates the wood in the buildings of that area.  Cristen's apartment was actually right above a restaurant, and the smell was so overpowering that it took weeks to fully get used to it.

My long lost friend LoJen

In college I briefly knew a young girl named LoJen who was at that time still in search of herself.  We met through a mutual friend named Kristin.  Many years later, I happened across Kathy on Facebook which led to my finding Kristin and then LoJen.

I do not know what it is that makes some friendships cement rapidly and survive in some fashion over such a long time so that they can, years later, continue where they left off.  Certainly not all my friendships have been that way.

I had the opportunity to spend parts of two evenings with LoJen and meet her husband John while I was in New York.  I am surprised and delighted to have had this opportunity.

Astor Place

Astor Place holds so many late night memories for me -- really, so many memories at all times of the day and night.  I started my stay in NYU at the University housing on 3rd Ave and 9th Street.  So then, Astor Place was simply a part of almost all of my travel plans.  But even later after moving up to Spanish Harlem, I'd often take the 4 or 6 trains down this way to get to class or just to hang out in the Village, or to meet up with Cristen.  The occasions for my late night trips were not always happy ones.  Somehow I associate being on the subway with the very hardest emotions I had to deal with while in New York.  So I tried to capture some of the darkness in these photos.

American Museum of Natural History

Though the kids were close to melting down as we got near the end of our trip, they still really loved going to one of Cristen's and my favorite museums in New York.  They particularly liked the space exhibits and dinosaurs.  The planetarium show is really quite good I thought.  It's quite a different experience from watching a laser show performed to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon."