The greatest city

I’ve spent more years living in California than New York, but because I was in Manhattan for my first independent decade – the years between leaving my childhood home to having children myself – New York City is where I feel most free and alive. I went to college there, built a career there, met my husband there, became a real adult there.

Two of us left New York in 2001, just before the horror of 9/11. Fifteen years later we returned as six, on the first trip there our kids will remember. And it was like coming home again – to a brighter, cheerier, remodeled home.

The year I moved to New York City, 1990, was the year homicides peaked in Gotham. The city was dark and grimy, and streets reeked of stale urine. Salespeople followed me suspiciously around stores, and I realized with chagrin that my normal west coast attire – frayed cutoff denim and a worn khaki canvas backpack – made me look more homeless than middle class to Manhattan eyes.

Then, the word Brooklyn evoked images of Bed-Stuy and deadly racial tensions. Nolita wasn’t a thing yet, and a few fetish clubs were the only life in the Meatpacking district. Chelsea Piers and Chelsea Market didn’t exist. Alphabet City on the Lower East Side housed squatters and junkies. The windowless walls of the abandoned New York Coliseum cast a dark shadow over Columbus Circle. The twin towers of the World Trade Center still dominated the Manhattan skyline.

The city’s rejuvenation began slowly with the disappearance of daily nuisances, like the uninvited squeegee guys and drawn-out honking at intersections, as the police began ticketing minor offenses they used to let slide. Then, quite suddenly, the city seemed to bloom with good developments – cleaner streets, fewer vagrants, brighter storefronts, safer neighborhoods – as if clearing the weeds had made way for flowers to grow. It was astounding to witness.

The New York City of today is even brighter than the city of my rosy memories. It took me a couple years to grow to love the rough and scruffy NYC, but NYC today is worthy of love at first sight.

Times Square used to be sleaze central, with prostitutes, drug dealers, and menacing guys manning dark doorways. Now it’s lit up like an NFL stadium and looks like an outdoor Vegas mall, minus the showgirls.

There are even stadium bleachers for people to sit and watch the action. The area is well-policed, so aside from inevitable pickpocket activity, the main fleecing, relatively benign, is costumed characters posing for pictures with tourists, who will soon find they’re expected to pay for the privilege.

The new Brooklyn Bridge park is gorgeous and thoughtfully functional. The Brooklyn side of the bridge used to be scary.

Now the entrance to the pedestrian walkway is well-marked and welcoming.

And the walk toward Manhattan as breathtaking as ever.

New Yorkers crow about culture like Californians bask in weather. I used to think, “California has museums too. We have orchestras and theater.” But culture in New York City is not just Broadway, Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Museum. Creative human expression is part of daily life – subway musicians, street performers, generations of architecture, the best of global food, even the way people dress. The city buzzes with inspiration.

Where I’m from, you don’t just go for a walk and run into carnival performers on stilts. Here, no one blinks.

There’s always something to see in this town. New Yorkers are too cool to gawk at celebrities. But they might pause to appreciate a good performance, especially if they’re already relaxing in Central Park.

And the food…the FOOD.

You can find the best of everything here, made with passion and consumed with passion. Everyone has an opinion. Eating is not a passive activity.

The pros behind the smoked salmon counter at food emporium Zabar’s, an Upper West Side destination since 1934, know they’ll get a lecture if their slices of nova aren’t thin enough to see through.

And at Katz’s Delicatessen on the Lower East Side, they’ve been serving up the world’s best pastrami sandwich since 1888, when there were only 38 states in the Union.

Before it even gets to the carving table, this hunk of beef has been cured, rubbed, smoked, boiled and steamed. This isn’t food you just whip up at home.

You know by looking that this hot pastrami, not just sliced but skillfully carved, is a game changer.

I was in ecstasy with the warm, tender, deeply-seasoned meatiness of the pastrami, and in agony over the fact that any other pastrami had now been ruined for me.

Another Katz’s specialty: bright green half-sour pickles, crunchy and lightly salty.

Navigating Katz’s is like participating in a live-action NYC game – get your ticket ($50 lost ticket fine), figure out which line for which counter (sandwiches, grill, drinks, fries/latkes/other), where to pay (another counter, or on your way out), where to tip (jars at the various counters), where to sit (elbow in to a free seat). Step up and be decisive, or you’ll lose your turn.

With four kids, we ate a lot of New York pizza, by the pie and by the slice. The red neon in the window casts a funky glow on the classic pizza at John’s Pizzeria on Bleecker Street. Serving up coal-fired brick oven pizza in the West Village since 1929, John’s is one of the oldest and still holds its own as a classic.

There was never a line when I lived down the street from Levain Bakery on the Upper West. I always thought of it as a bread bakery because of the name.

But since I’ve been gone, Levain has become famous for its giant, mounded cookies. Now the line is always out the door and down the block.

Billed as “the most decadent cookie on Earth,” the cookies come in four flavors: chocolate chip walnut, dark chocolate chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin and dark chocolate peanut butter chip. The cookies are the size of a large scone, dense and weighty. But the crisp outside gives way to a gooey, ultra-rich interior.

We tried them all, each more incredible than the last. The chocolate lovers were in melty nirvana. Seemingly less sexy, the oatmeal raisin was every bit as soft, creamy and decadent.

Levain cookies made me think every other cookie I’ve ever had was a total waste of time. And I’m not even a cookie girl. The hype is real.

When I was a student in New York City, I had time but no money. When I joined the rat race, I had money but no time. It was funny to be a tourist in the city for once.

You need an arial view to appreciate Manhattan – the sights, the density, the unexpected green spaces on high rooftops. We took the kids up to Top of the Rock, the viewing platform at the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

It’s less crowded than the Empire State Building, and you get the bonus of being able to look out at the Empire State and imagine King Kong hanging off its spire.

Top of the Rock has two viewing levels, a large lower one with glass panels around the perimeter, and a higher one with no obstruction.

We joined the crowds on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, everyone snapping photos of the Manhattan skyline as we pulled away from the island city.

From a distance, people are always surprised at how small Lady Liberty looks. Up close, she is less than colossal, but still big.

Walking around the statue, you appreciate the size of the pedestal and the artistry of Liberty at all angles.

Inside the pedestal is a small museum with the history of the statue. You can sit on a cast of her large copper toes.

Back at South Ferry, I showed the kids the James Watson House, dating back to 1793, in the skyscraper forest, looking like The Little House with the city growing around it.

We did a quick breeze by new-to-us attractions, like the bigger, better Chelsea Market, filled with food and shops.

And the High Line park, an abandoned elevated railway transformed in recent years into miles of tranquil urban green space above the crowded streets.

We even met up with our friend Monica, a teacher’s assistant at our public school in California, who was on a six week train tour, visiting college friends of hers around the country. Monica had only a day in New York, and we spent half a glorious spring day with her, taking turns giving her a break from her 27-pound backpack and carrying the spare leg brace she’s cheerfully hauling around just in case her regular one breaks. Monica is a superstar.

And a shining memory of my life…seeing Hamilton on Broadway. I bought tickets last fall, before Hamilton mania had spread across the country. When the lights went down, I felt bubbly excitement, like I hadn’t felt since before my toughened New York years. A girl next to me sobbed when at last the music began.

The reality of the production soared past even my stratospheric expectations. I felt the power of transformation, renewal, creation – the story of Hamilton the man, the story of Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, the story of New York City. I’m not even a musical fan girl. But the hype is seriously real.

The good news is that almost all of it is in the Hamilton soundtrack, which for $22 is a work of art you can carry around in your soul – the story, the music, the performances. More than a story, more than history, it’s life…made musical in a way you never could have imagined, but when you hear it sounds not just perfect but inevitable. It’s rare, true genius.

My two oldest kids, who also came to Hamilton, may never match that musical theater experience, featuring not just an original Broadway cast but a cast starring the MacArthur genius creator of a Pulitzer-prize winning musical. But we savored the experience together, and we will never forget it.

New York Directory

Zabar’s
2245 Broadway (btw 80th and 81st St)

Katz’s Delicatessen
205 E Houston Street (between Ave A and Norfolk St)

Levain Bakery
167 W 74th Street (btw Columbus and Amsterdam Ave)

John’s Pizzeria
276 Bleecker Street (between Jones and Morton)