1
“What’s your favorite ice cream shop in New York?”
“Milk Bar!”
“Ooooh, their soft serve is really good.”
“The crunch in their soft serve is the real deal! That layer floating on top rewards you on the first bite, and then you keep digging, scoop after scoop, and five minutes later you suddenly realize you’re almost finished… That devastationa…like glancing at the Youtube progress bar and seeing you’re near the end. But guess what? One more scoop, and there it is: a hidden layer of crunch at the very bottom! Oh my god, that’s the best moment in life!”
This was a dialogue at a friend’s brunch. The guy who was thrilled by the last layer of crunch in his soft serve had moved from California over a year ago. After delivering this textbook-worthy ode, he shyly made a face, “Seriously, guys, was I really just talking about a soft serve?”
2
“Look at you—those gorgeous curls! Who are you trying to seduce? Oh my god, I’ve never seen such elegant sandals!”
“Stop teasing me, they’re just ordinary.”
“I’m serious, you look amazing. By the way, how’s your brother doing? Haven’t seen him in ages.”
“He’s good. Oh, and he got engaged.”
“What? Why would he do such a foolish thing?”
The anti-marriage advocate who could compliment someone from head to toe was my apartment agent. A lifelong Manhattanite, he knew by heart which hole-in-the-wall had the city’s best Margherita. As we left the leasing office, he gave me a sly smile: “She must be in love again—she’s so much gentler and more refined than before.” “But love makes people stupid, so she’s letting her brother do such stupid things”, he shrugged.
3
“Every time I pass by that corner cafe, I’m like, what the hell is going on there? Why are the people dining outside always so attractive?!”
“That’s because all the unattractive people are hiding inside. Haha, just kidding. But you’re too sensitive!”
“I just feel like I don’t fit in here at all, inside and out. It’s crushing all my confidence. I’m so lost.”
“Listen, dear, you look great, and you are great. You don’t need to bend yourself to anything. Just be yourself, do what you like, and the world will respond. It may take some time.”
At the coffee shop, a well-dressed elderly lady was comforting a dejected young woman. I had no idea what their relationship was, what she had been through, or what she had just experienced. I was just a bit stunned that this kind of pep talk was happening at the next table, not in a movie or a novel.
4
“New York is all about expressiveness.”
Not only do the subway shampoo ads proclaim, “New York is a place where even your hair can have goals,” but even the magazines stacked in coffee shops seem eager to teach you how to live. This city constantly performs its identity at every turn—I am New York, not San Francisco, not Los Angeles, not Chicago, not New Orleans. I AM NEW YORK.
To a transplant like me, this compulsive self-branding borders on narcissism :roll my eyes:.
Yes, I moved to New York in my late twenties. But just as Liu Yu once wrote, “When I was young, I thought loneliness was cool. When I grew up, I thought loneliness was bleak. Now, I don’t think loneliness is a thing.” I also try to adopt a similar stance—detached, almost passive-aggressive—so that “I moved to New York” doesn’t become a thing.
I intentionally avoid describing a location in “NYC style” using the cross-section of XXX St and XXX Ave. What I see at Washington Square Park isn’t the romantic scene of the fountain, the pianist, or the sunset casting shadows through the arch onto the flowerbeds, but rather the homeless, no different from those on Market St in San Francisco. When a story was told through a flurry of dramatic “You know what? Oh my god!”s, I’d respond with a cool, almost cruel “Oh, is it?”—the nonchalant demeanor of a victor.
Yet why do I remember those seemingly trivial conversations above and feel compelled to write them down? Perhaps similar ones—maybe even more profound, more revealing of humanity—also played out years ago at parties in that Illinois college town, at the leasing office of my Atlanta apartment, or in San Francisco cafes. Perhaps it’s just back then I wasn’t being pressed by this heavy-handed “NEW YORK” label, my hair hadn’t yet been goal-ified, so I let them go. In that sense, whatever its original intention, the city’s self-branding seems to have worked. Damn.
I’ve always believed a city cannot save a person—nor can it define one. Not Beijing, not Shanghai or Guangdong, not Silicon Valley, not even New York. It is we who define ourselves, and thus the places we live. In the end, living out of conflict is far more comforting than living out of fantasy.
