The Difference Between San Francisco and New York

This piece is the intro Broke-Ass Stuart’s Guide to Living Cheaply in New York City

I’m sitting now in my Bushwick apartment coming to terms with the realization that my time here in this strange and brutal city is quickly coming to an end.  I maintain that, no matter how much you love New York, this city fucking hates you.  Don’t take it personally;  this broad is just badder than you are.  Her game is tighter, her mind is quicker, her swagger is more believable.  She’s not the one who got away, she’s the one you never had a chance of getting, and this is what makes just being near her so exhilarating.  There’s a quote from Thomas Wolfe that goes something like, “One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”   And I think old Mr. Wolfe was on to something; New York will never be yours, you will always be hers.  She’s got you pussy-whipped and you fucking know it.

But me, I’m leaving.  Two and half weeks and I’ll be gone.  I’m filling my days (and notebooks) wandering through these streets, getting to know them as well as a one gets to know a lover met on vacation.  I’m getting to know and admire the creases, cracks, and character of these thoroughfares, but I’ll never know what it’s like to be with them forever.  This has just been an affair and I’m heading home to my wife in California, San Francisco; the one who takes the love I give to her and repays it in spades.

I’m gonna miss this city.  I’m gonna miss the electric fervor of summertime rooftops and the girls who wear next to nothing on the humid and fetid subway.  I’m gonna miss the snow that sneaks in while I’m dreaming and piles itself up on the cars while they sleep in the street.  I’ll miss the little badge of pride that goes along of with saying that I live in Brooklyn, not in Manhattan.  I’ll miss all the beautiful people who have nothing to say, and all the ugly ones who say too much.

Thank you New York, you’ve been a sweet and charming mistress who deals out pleasure and pain equally the way a blackjack dealer can just as easily give you 21, or make you bust.  I’ll be back, probably sooner than you’d like, but this is it for us kid.  This affair is over.  I want to ask you to never change, to stay just the way you are, so that when I do come back you’ll be just as you are now.  But you and I both know that can’t happen.  At least I’ll have my book, which will let me pin you down to exactly who you were, to me, for the past 10 months.  Just do me one favor after I leave: tell all the developers they can suck my dick.