Queens, here I come! My Manhattan apartment building is being converted to condos. Because I’m a market-rate tenant, my lease isn’t being renewed and there’s no inside deal to buy my place. This is the tough and ugly part of New York City real estate: landlords hold all the cards. I’ve looked around the Upper West Side, the neighborhood I’ve called home for 7 years, and found that I can get much more for my money someplace else. The Brooklyn brand has caused rental prices to skyrocket there far beyond the rental rates in my current neighborhood so I’m looking at Queens. I’ve lived there twice before and loved it. Prices have gone up there as well but not to the same tune as Manhattan and Brooklyn. It also has the benefit of tremendous transportation convenience, lots of amenities, and authentic community, three things that are important to me. Come April 30th, Phin and I will shove off on a new residential adventure. Here’s hoping the apartment karma gods are with us!
I don’t ever write anything unless I believe it and support it 100%. That kind of standard has a price. I have a client that wanted me to write a post about crime in Central Park. This is a perfect topic for me because I live on the park and go at least once a day with Phin. I’m very passionate about the park and I like to share my passion for the place with readers. In the past couple of months, I’ve been alarmed by the crimes reported in New York City’s parks, Central Park included. In addition to analyzing crime stats of Central Park for the piece for this client, I also wanted to include a list of safety tips, particularly geared toward tourists who visit the park for the first time.
The client wants a rewrite. They want the piece to be softer and to position the park as a very safe place as opposed to being more data and safety-oriented. They also want it filled with links back to other parts of their site that have nothing to do with crime. I won’t do the re-write and here’s why:
1.) Crime and safety are not soft subjects and they are not topics that should be sugar-coated. Balanced certainly, but being soft on crime in content development is irresponsible. Readers need to armed with the facts: Central Park is far safer than it was 20 years ago and visitors still need to keep safety top-of-mind. They shouldn’t take safety in Central Park for granted because crime is down compared to 20 years ago.
2.) I’m protecting the site from a potential PR disaster. Let’s say that a tourist reads this “softer” article on crime and is lulled into a false sense of security during their visit. If something should happen to that visitor and they say, “I read on (name of site) that Central Park is so safe and look what happened to me” the site could be held responsible. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take with someone’s safety.
3.) Link loaded pieces, under the guise of content marketing, are no better than spam. A few links are helpful. 20 links in one article looks ridiculous. Whenever I see a piece loaded with links, I don’t even read it because I assume it is no better than a paid advertisement. I think this type of piece crosses an ethical line for the sake of marketing. I’ll leave that to other people who want to write those kinds of pieces. It’s not for me.
I did publish the piece, as is, on Allvoices.com. As freelancers, we cobble together our living from a number of different sources. Every dollar counts and sometimes it can feel like we’re backed into a corner, subject to extreme editing (many times by people who are not writers, nor editors) for the benefit of paying clients and at a detriment to our own standards. It’s tough to walk away from money. It’s even more difficult to walk away from money for work I’ve already done and won’t be paid for because I refuse to compromise my principles. However, I go to bed every night with a clear conscience knowing I’ve helped a lot of people and not harmed any. And that’s much more important.
I am so lucky to be a New Yorker. I pride myself on my intense love for and loyalty to this wacky and incredible city. Every day that I step outside of my apartment, I get a little twinkle in my eye and a pep in my step. I live in New York City.
As I was making my way home from the first day of the ad:tech conference, I stood on the corner of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue waiting to cross the street to the subway. A lot of New Yorkers hate Times Square. I love it. The energy. The lights. The creativity inside every door of every theater. I grew up in that area of the city when I managed Broadway shows in my 20s and so it holds a special nostalgia for me. As Sondheim said in Merrily We Roll Along, it’s where I began being what I can.
As I was waiting to cross 42nd Street, I felt a little tap on my shoulder. I turned to find two British women, probably in their 60s, visiting New York City for the first time.
“Excuse me,” said one of them in her perfectly lovely and lilting accent. “Is this Times Square?”
I smiled wide. “Ladies, you’re looking at it,” I said.
“Oh my!” the other one said. “And this is the real 42nd Street, from the musical?”
“The one and only,” I said as I pointed east. “Take a stroll that way and you’ll be smack in the middle of all of the craziness. It’s wonderful.”
They thanked me and crossed 8th Avenue, as excited as any kids I’ve ever seen on their way to a playground. And I was reminded again, just as I am every day, that this is one amazing town.
Want to run the 2014 ING New York City Marathon with me? 12 years ago I ran the Chicago Marathon with my dear friend, Mark. It was a profound and healing experience and the fulfillment of a dream I’d had since I was a teenage cross-country runner. After I completed the marathon in 4:23:13 on a high, I checked that accomplishment off my list never to run a marathon again. Or so I thought.
Yesterday I woke up early and attributed it to the extra hour from the end of daylight savings time. I quickly realized it was something else. I know what goes into taking all those steps, and I am so proud of these people for making the journey. Watching all the preparations in Central Park this week made me want to join their ranks. I was surprised to feel that tug in my heart, edging me toward the goal of completing my hometown’s biggest race and one of its hallmark celebrations of life. And with that, I decided to run it in 2014. I’ll be 38 by then and it will be 5 years since the apartment building fire that changed everything for me. It’s a bit of a process; I can enter the lottery, raise money for a participating nonprofit, or look at a variety of other options to make it happen.
Have you ever wanted to run a marathon? Does NYC’s race call to you, too? It would be fun to train with people. Whether you’re here in NYC or live far away, we can share our training experiences right here on this blog and encourage each other on the figurative and literal path. And then of course celebrate together at the finish line next year. If you’re interested, let me know. Let’s make it happen.
A picture I snapped in Central Park over the weekend.
I just started a new project for CentralPark.com. I am curating 20 essays about Central Park written by college students. Essays will be roughly 500 words and can be about any aspect of Central Park. The essays can be from a wide variety of angles – a treasured memory of the park, the meaning of Central Park to the student, a recent event or experience the student had in Central Park, the history of the park, etc. Do you know a college student who is a good writer and interested in submitting a piece for consideration? Please send them my way – christa.avampato@gmail.com. Thank you!
A pic I snapped before heading into B.B. King Blues Club in NYC
Yesterday was the first time I set foot inside 3 top tourist destinations in Times Square – Hard Rock Cafe, BB King Blues Club, and Dave & Busters. Why? On day 2 of my journalism gig for Allvoices.com covering Advertising Week, I trekked through these spaces to gather the inspiring bits and pieces from a variety of panels that ranged from women media makers to white-hot advertising idea generation to the 21st century talent wars. These spaces were much more intimate, with a creative vibe, than The New York Times building where I spent my entire day yesterday. That intimate look and feel fed my creativity to the point that my mind is now whirring with ideas and possibilities in the media space to grow my work as a writer.
There’s a lot to be said for the spaces where we spend our lives, whether at work or at play. Many people say to me, “it’s so great that you are a writer because you can write from anywhere.” While technically that’s true, in reality it’s not. I need to be in an inspiring space. I need to be surrounded by other creatives who jive on the same types of ideas that get me up out of bed in the morning and make me want to toil away into the wee hours of the morning. My work makes me feel alive. I need to be with other people who feel the same way about their work. Without that energy, I feel dull, almost lifeless.
New York City is full of hidden spaces in plain sight. I would have never guessed that Hard Rock Cafe, B.B. King, and D&B had such wonderful conference spaces. I used to manage Broadway shows and now I am an enormous fan of the theatre so I’ve spent a good portion of my life tunneling through Times Square. Most people hate it. I love it because I did so much growing up in those streets. They still have much more to teach me. Spaces, and the lessons they provide, the experiences they foster, become characters in the acts of our lives. Today I am grateful for these stages that provided so much food for thought.
There’s a saying that goes, “Leave California before you get too soft and leave New York before you get too hard.” Being back in NYC a couple of days, I realize that we can get a lot further in New York if we soften. The truth is that New York is tougher than any of us. It’s tougher than all of us put together. Fight it all you want; in the end it’s going to win. It always has.
To get along here, to delight in all the magic that this place has to offer, we have to flex and adjust. To stay centered, we have to find and maintain our own center. It’s challenging, but possible. As we lift our heads up from the pavement, as we let go, we can really see all of the gifts around us. Then instead of being worn out by New York, we can take its nonstop energy and make it ours. The beat of the city becomes the beat of our own hearts if only we will let it in.
Today I woke up in my own bed, finally back home in my town. I plan to spend the next few days walking around, saying hello to all my favorite haunts, seeing my friends, and being grateful – grateful that I finally realized that the home I’ve sought for so long is the home I’ve had all along. It’s not the right place for everyone and there are plenty of things about it that need improvement. While there are many other places that I love to visit, New York is home. And that feels wonderful.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from others who loved New York as much as I do:
“As for New York City, it is a place apart. There is not its match in any other country in the world.”
– Pearl S. Buck
“Each man reads his own meaning into New York.” – Meyer Berger
“I think you know that when an American stays away from New York too long something happens to him. Perhaps he becomes a little provincial, a little dead and afraid.” – Sherwood Anderson
“Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.” – Irving Berlin
“New York is the only real city-city.” – Truman Capote
“New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world.” – Alistair Cooke
“New York remains what it has always been : a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty, and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring – it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence.” – Paul Goldberger
“New York city, the incomparable, the brilliant star city of cities, the forty-ninth state, a law unto itself, the Cyclopean Paradox, the inferno with no-out-of bounds, the supreme expression of both the miseries and the splendors of contemporary civilization, the Macedonia of the United States. It meets the most severe test that may be applied to definition of a metropolis – it stays up all night. But also it becomes a small town when it rains.” – John Gunther
“There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy.” – Walt Whitman
“At night… the streets become rhythmical perspectives of glowing dotted lines, reflections hung upon them in the streets as the wistaria hangs its violet racemes on its trellis. The buildings are shimmering verticality, a gossamer veil, a festive scene-prop hanging there against the black sky to dazzle, entertain, amaze.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
“Forgive the exile this sweet frenzy: I return to my beloved world, in love with the land where I was born.” -from To Puerto Rico (I Return) by Jose Gautier Benitez
Today, I’m heading back home to New York. While I’m glad and grateful for all that I learned here in California, I am giddy about being back home. I feel like it’s Christmas and that my home will be there, just as before, waiting for me with a happy welcome. I wasn’t born there, but it is the home I’ve chosen, and I think that makes it even more special. New York, I can’t wait to see you, and all my friends who call it home, too.
In just a few short weeks, I realized I’ve been telling myself a story that’s not true. I always imagined that if my ancestors had gotten off the boat in New York Harbor and kept going west, I would have never left the state of California. It’s a catchy little line and totally untrue. LA has given me some downtime, a chance to get away from it all. Getting around here and finding my bearings is proving to be more difficult for me here than it is in New York. When I first moved to New York, from the moment I set foot in that city as a 22-year-old who knew absolutely no one, I felt right at home. It clicked for me. I found the beat immediately and just joined the flow. Not so in LA.
This doesn’t mean that I’m sorry I came here. It also doesn’t mean that I regret this experiment in any way. After all, experiments are just that. We have a theory. We test it. We examine the result. A number of my dear friends have left New York for good this summer. I will miss them terribly and it prompted those old thoughts of giving up New York, again. My theory was that perhaps I had stayed too long at the dance, as Joan Didion so perfectly and beautifully stated about her move from New York to LA. Maybe it was time to grow up and move on. To test that theory, I did a house swap to try out California, a place I’ve thought of making my home for many years. The result has surprised me as much as anyone: California has wonderful aspects and I love to visit, but it’s not meant to be my home.
When these thoughts first started to rise up last week, I thought I was being too judgmental. Perhaps I needed more time, more patience, more experience with this new life. And as I sat in my meditation every morning, I realized that my gut was right, as it always is. Sometimes I ignore it, and regret it.
There are many things to commend my temporary home. The weather here is mostly cool and dry. Because I’m at the beach, it’s often cloudy and that prompts my pensive writer brain. Because it’s not as easy to get around here as it is in New York, I’m spending a lot of time on my creative work at home, exactly what I wanted to do with this time. I am staying in a beautiful condo that’s in a walkable neighborhood while a pair of lovely people are taking exceptional care of my (very small) pad in New York City. I’m getting the chance to see friends here whom I don’t see often enough. Almost all of the people I’ve met here are lovely and kind.
I’d always been of the mind that a place is just a place, that I loved New York only for the people who are there and a part of my life. But that’s not true either. New York and I have had a love affair for 15 years now. It’s been an off and on relationship. We have had our rough patches and separations. Sometimes I want to punch it right in the face because it makes me so frustrated. Eventually I can’t take it anymore, throw a fit, and run out the door saying I’m heading for greener pastures. New York stoically stands its ground, confidently and calmly, and says, “Okay. Do whatever you want. You know where to find me.”
I leave New York, and then I come back. Over and over and over again. I miss its energy and the buckets of opportunity that are flowing through the streets. I’ve had 8 different homes there over the course of 15 years. I’m sure I’ll have many more. I’m in Manhattan now and know that eventually I’ll find a home in Brooklyn either when this lease is up or perhaps a year later. I’m also certain that the love of my life is roaming the streets there and he’s wondering what the hell is taking me so long to find him. (Believe me, man, I’m wondering the same exact thing!) I know my long-term multilayered career will find its groove there.
New York, give me your noise, your dirt, and all the crazies you can muster. Let me rise to the challenge and make me a better person in the process. You’ve taught me strength, courage, and perseverance. A diamond is made shiny by pressure and scrubbing. A pearl is created through a salve to ease irritation. A butterfly is born from a cocoon through the struggle and squirming of an imperfect being with great potential that is hidden from the eye. Those lessons are not lost on me. I’m glad you stood your ground and chose to evolve on your own terms, not mine. You taught me so much about me just by being who you are. You’re not meant to be a home to everyone, but you are certainly meant to be my home. I’ll see you soon, but in the meantime I am making the most of my 5 remaining weeks in the City of Angeles.
Christa Avampato 