sometimes experiences take a while to really blossom into their fullness. i finally visited nyc for the first time in february this year and i still haven’t quite finished processing it. maybe in some sense i never will, but there are always notable thresholds

thank you, new york city. thank you for having me. i’m so glad i visited. i really want to go back.

✱

“I used to be awkward and intense and weird… New York was perfect for me”

Write for future self – What would he want to know about the trip?

yearning

I’ve wanted to visit new york city all my life. It’s always loomed in my mind through all the media I’ve encountered. Home Alone 2 was one of my favorite movies that I’d watch and rewatch as a child, and it was set in New York. Paula Scher is one of my favorite designers, and the interview with her (Abstract: Art of the Design) is in New York. I recently watched Pretend It’s A City, a Netflix series where Martin Scorsese interviews Fran Lebowitz, talking about New York. Into The Spider-Verse, gorgeous movie, set in New York. Frank Sinatra and Alicia Keys, New York. Hamilton. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to describe New York as The global Schelling point, the cultural center of the species, or at least of western culture. And we are all westerners now to varying degrees, and have been for at least decades. Yes, Hollywood is in California, but the Statue of Liberty is in New York.

swagger

Paul Graham wrote in 2008 that every city sends you a message in a hundred subtle ways, tells you something. I’ve visited San Francisco twice, I love it, and the message I get from that city is “I should start a company”. Now, you can start a company anywhere, but it’s definitely easier in SF. People are starting companies around you all the time. The ecosystem is setup for it. You can find cofounders, employees, investors, legal help, whatever you need. When you have conversations about starting a company in SF, nobody there will ask “but are you sure you want to be a founder?” Of course you want to be a founder. That’s why you’re in SF. (This might not actually be true for everybody in SF, and some longtime locals might be frustrated and upset at what the city has become – but that is largely… people seem sensible https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sfnext-poll-tech-17445059.php

The message I get from New York is “I should live with more swagger”. PG said that it was “you should be richer”, which I’m sure must’ve been true of the contexts he was in. There’s the Charging Bull of Wall Street, and there are all these narrow skyscrapers overlooking Central Park, reminding you that some of the wealthiest people on the planet park their assets there. But I suppose since I’m not all that interested in that I’m able to filter it out. What I feel from NYC is that I ought to be more chaotic, more irreverent, more self-assured, more resplendent, more colorful, more evocative, more dynamic. The city rewards this.

improv

New York is a city that rewards good reply game. The whole city is kinda improv pilled. A friend joked about how New Yorkers will just comment on stuff, like “whatcha got over there? ya drinking some water?” I had a moment where I was standing around and a lady walking past said “you know there are benches you can sit on!” and as tall brown man I kinda loved that

the improv thing makes me feel… like I would be more successful because people would reward me more for my personality. compliment from someone saying i’ve weaponized my personality for good

Fashion:

(tweet) there’s something very interesting about hip young Asian-American aesthetics in NYC (clothes, hair, makeup, tattoos, and also like… “presented disposition”?) that’s distinct from how it is Singapore, but I haven’t quite figured out how to describe it. If I wanted to joke about it locally I’d be like “ya lah New Yorkers actually make an effort and Singaporeans mostly don’t lol” and there’s some kind of truth in that, but also obviously way too reductive. (separately was having a conversation with someone about SF techie culture being relatively disembodied and decontextualized and it struck me as another one of the odd similarities between SF and SG (while being so diff in so many other ways – attitudes towards drugs, lgbtq, etc)

If you came to this There are a few things I want to do in this post, one is talk about the things I’ve done.

Katz Deli. Comedy Cellar. Smalls jazz club. The Met. Public Library. Grand Central Station. Central Park. Halal guys. Hamilton on Broadway. Prospect Park. Taking the subway. Visiting the 9/11 memorial.

A thought that I had was… I went to New York hoping for it to do something for me, and it kinda did… I felt inspired, enervated… but I also found myself thinking “The New York I was looking for was inside me all along”. And I know how cheesy that sounds but it feels honest and true to me. And yet also maybe it took me going there to really know/feel/see it. I found myself missing my computer, which I then felt a bit silly about, but I think there’s also an underlying truth…

Quick sidenote on cigarettes.

i miss new york and everyone i met there so much

// abandoned for now