My First New York

by New York Magazine

  Then I went to Japan and learned about noodles, and it was just one of those things: I thought, I’m going to open a noodle bar! It could have been in the Virginia Beach area or New York; I had more culinary connections in New York, but I had family connections in Virginia. It just so happened that I saw a location that I liked better in New York, and I opened Momofuku Noodle Bar. I’m glad I chose New York. I mean, opening a restaurant is impossible, and opening it in New York is the dumbest thing you can do: it’s crowded, it’s expensive, and all that. But there’s just something about New York that I’ve fallen in love with: it’s diverse, you can get any food you want, it’s condensed, and there’s a certain camaraderie. Every city I go to, I compare to New York.

  MICHEL GONDRY

  filmmaker

  arrived: 2002

  My first impression was that it was impossible to sleep in New York. I had moved here a few months after 9/11, as the city was waking up from its trauma. We were preparing to shoot Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I stayed for two months at the Gramercy Hotel, but I didn’t like that area very much. You don’t have the feeling that the pressure goes down at night. I moved seven times in the next five years, looking for places where it gets absolutely quiet at night.

  The film was paying for me, so they sent me to ridiculously expensive places on the Golden Coast: those blocks between Fifth and Sixth avenues and Ninth and Tenth streets. The super of one of them was a sick, crazy person. If I had a guest coming, she wanted to charge me for using more water. She sacked us because my son was a little too noisy for her taste, and I had sweet thoughts of cold revenge for her. I wanted to pour a pot of red paint on the mat at the entrance—something really sticky that takes days to dry—so people would walk through it and spread the red paint everywhere. I didn’t do it because I knew I would be caught immediately, but it made me feel good when I tried to fall asleep at night.

  I started to appreciate how in New York, as opposed to Paris, you can have an idea in the morning and make it happen in the afternoon. And how if you’re waiting in a line, you can start a conversation with people you don’t know. In France, you look a little deranged if you do that. As I started to make friends, I used to go to this bar called Lit in the East Village, which I liked because it felt like old punk rock—dusty and not trendy at all. But soon my son came to live with me. He was very independent. We’d go bicycling, and he would take me to places where he had done graffiti tags. I’m not allowed to disclose where.

  Eventually I bought a house in Brooklyn. The trucks are pretty loud, but I’ve gotten used to them. And I like the idea that it is still a bit industrial. I don’t like so much all the new condominiums that they are constructing. I sort of laugh inside when I realize that they are all screwed and they can’t find people to live in their buildings.

  One problem with the neighborhood is that all the hipsters are very selective of their coffee. They all clutter in this tiny, trendy coffee shop, and then the other shops go out of business. So I think on one hand, the hipster should be a little bit more tolerant of his coffee, because he’s missing out on great places, and great mixture of culture. On the other hand, maybe some of the diners should buy an espresso machine.

  NICK DENTON

  internet publisher

  arrived: 2002

  I once made a spreadsheet comparing San Francisco, London, Budapest, and New York. I assigned different weighted scores based on different criteria: old friends, business opportunities, Hungarians, Jews, nature (that one had a fairly low weight). I was living in San Francisco, but I’ve always liked the idea of that city more than the reality of it. So I would play with the spreadsheet, and when I didn’t get the result I wanted, I adjusted the rankings. One factor that tipped things in New York’s favor was that New York had hotter guys. (San Francisco is fine if you like blond hair and fleece.)

  I finally decided to come here after 9/11. The foreign press was full of love letters to New York. Writers like Martin Amis were waking up and thinking, Oh my God, we almost lost it! I know it sounds sentimental, but no one would ever write a love letter to San Francisco. I drove across the country with Christian Bailey, who would later become famous for getting all that money from the Pentagon. He had arranged for a two-bedroom apartment in the SoHo Court building, a standard building for junior analysts at Goldman Sachs. It was a wonderful summer. I wasn’t really working. We launched Gizmodo in August, and Gawker in December. Most days I would go to Cafe Gitane and sit outside eating waffles with fruit. I was early for every single lunch, because I was banking on San Francisco time—traffic, looking for parking—or London time—two train changes, a delay, time to wipe the sweat off your brow once you’re out of the tube.

  It was the year of the Hungarians. I was mainly hanging out with friends I already knew, and feeling socially awkward after living in San Francisco. I remember going to a party with a bunch of Broadway and film gays, and the one-liner one-upmanship felt like a scene from Will & Grace, which at the time was my lame yardstick for what passed for New York salon conversation. My HTML skills had improved in San Francisco, but I’d lost my edge. I thought I was being really witty, but at one point on a ski trip to Tahoe, it became clear that everyone thought I was just an asshole.

  KARA WALKER

  artist

  arrived: 2002

  My daughter, Octavia, and I took the bus from Maine, where we had been living while my husband, Klaus, was teaching at the Maine College of Art. It was slow and arduous. There had been a blizzard. Getting off the Greyhound with a small child at the Port Authority, I felt like a woman of another era. We looked for a cabstand. A gypsy cab driver offered to get us a car. I wasn’t sure if we wanted to do this, but when he showed us where the yellow taxis were waiting, it became clear that he was not a driver: he was a guy with no money who wanted a ride. Octavia was suspicious and scared. I didn’t know how to say no. We all got in the cab, the man talking at me and thanking me. I spent the drive hoping Octavia wouldn’t ask me, “Who is this man?”

  I arrived in New York a sad wife and a successful artist and a weird mom all mixed up into one. I was thirty-two. I had an air mattress and, thanks to Columbia faculty housing, a two-bedroom apartment on Riverside and 116th Street with a partial water view. I wish I could say I loved New York when I got here, but I was afraid of it. I was exiting a protected phase in my life, and this was compounded by the insecurity of post-9/11 New York. I woke up on that first crisp January morning, gorgeous but freezing, and heard a horn going off across the Hudson that sounded like an air raid siren. I remember holding myself and saying, “Okay, is this it?” I waited a half hour and nothing happened. Then I thought, I’ll get up and get through things.

  That winter, Octavia spent two weeks in New York with me, and then two weeks back in Maine with her father. There was a heat wave in March, and I remember taking Octavia back to Maine, where they still had icicles. The contrast was extreme.

  In the spring, Octavia and I were at the playground, sitting on the low iron railing and waiting to use the swing. There was still tension in the air, the fear of any kind of terrorist attack. Suddenly, something happened. I couldn’t tell what it was, but two police cars pulled up right outside the playground. I saw the police heading toward us. A man got panicky, grabbed his child, and ran. The screams of the children around me seemed to increase, so I threw Octavia to the ground and jumped on top of her. Then I looked around and saw…nothing had happened. The guy was getting a parking ticket.

  All that year I was trying to force myself out of some kind of shell, and doing it in extremely awkward ways. I taught a couple of days a week. It was my first time teaching, and there were moments when I felt unqualified and angry with myself for making a move that was so hard. At Columbia, it felt like I was a little lamb who was befriended by all these really nice tigers and wolves. My colleagues were nice to me and gave me special favors, but I was always a little on edge, wondering what I was going to give back.

 
One day, I invited some colleagues and students over for drinks at my unfinished apartment. As drink parties go, it made me aware of the people I was not going to like, and also that I had a power I was not completely able to own up to. It was that feeling of being “on.” I recognized that there were people in the room regarding me with envy and suspicion. One woman who used to be on the adjunct faculty would look at the way I broke open a bar of chocolate and say, “Do you always do it like that?”

  In August, Klaus moved in. The sofa didn’t fit in the elevator, so we had to throw it out. It was the first article of furniture I had ever bought, a cushy sofa that was great for falling asleep on. We could only salvage the pillows. That’s a true New York moment: the eruption of frustration and capitulation when you have to saw the sofa in half.

  It was still summer, and we were trying to understand the new family dynamic. New York was beautiful: the parks were in full swing, the little fountains were on in all the playgrounds. One of the unspoken tensions in the household was that this living in New York thing was my project, so I had to make it work. We did everything the city had to offer: museums, street fairs, SummerStage. Or I was going to my studio and trying to fashion art, or at least seem like I was being the responsible breadwinner, which I resented.

  The color of my life changed as I tried to undo my isolation, but it wasn’t until the following fall that I would start to own my independence, feel more solid as an artist and a mother, and recognize that the most unstable portion of my life was my marriage. New York—the whole ambience of the city, its potential—was, in Klaus’s eyes, a competition for affection. And he wouldn’t join the party. But by then, I would be able to move in the circles that I wanted to move in, with or without him.

  ASHLEY DUPRÉ

  former escort

  arrived: 2004

  New York was always my end goal, eyes on the prize. I was living in New Jersey with my grandfather, and commuting into the city to work doubles: eleven to five waiting tables at the Hotel Gansevoort during the day, then bottle-hosting at a club called Pangaea from ten until five in the morning. I got to be friends with a doorman there who would let me crash at his place on Forty-sixth Street—right there in Times Square, near Little Brazil Street. But it was rough. I was sleeping whenever I could, barely. I hit a low point when I wrecked my Jetta going over the bridge back to Jersey. I was sober, but I had passed out at the wheel, exhausted. That was when I knew something needed to change.

  One day I was at that guy’s place on Forty-sixth, and the landlord told me there’s an opening in 3A. My eyes just lit up, like in cartoons. I remember going to see the $2,100 one-bedroom, with its white walls and big windows, and my brain started working immediately on how to get this. A few days later, I shared a cab with an aspiring model—a total stranger—and within fifteen minutes we had decided to live together in this apartment. It was one of those things that happen like the city is working for you.

  It always feels like that when you’re young. I was eighteen, and it was the party scene: Marquee, Suede, Butter, and we’d always end up at Bungalow 8—that was our spot to regroup. Everything felt amazing. I remember thinking, Seriously, I’m getting paid for bottle hosting? I was this naive little girl, really. Because, honestly? You can all hang out and be buddy-buddy and whatever, but at the end of the day you’ve got to make it work for yourself. When that model left the apartment, reality sank in, and I was always worrying about paying rent. My girlfriends and I could go out on a date any night of the week and get a free meal—there was always that option. But most of the time I was sitting at home eating peanut butter and apples. What else was I going to do, eat the roaches? Grab a mouse and fry it up?

  I’d go to the stores on that stretch of Fifth—Chanel, YSL, Cartier, Gucci, Louis Vuitton—and I’d look and touch, but I wouldn’t try anything on. Can you imagine how depressing? To try them on in the mirror and then have to put them back? I never did that unless I could afford it. I protected myself like that.

  It’s not like I was bedazzled by New York, but I do remember one time when I was eating at DB, I looked up to see Steven Spielberg, his wife, and Michelle Pfeiffer. I had grown up on Grease 2. Michelle Pfeiffer’s life was something I had admired and always wanted for myself. She was so gorgeous. I just stared.

  ZOE KAZAN

  actress

  arrived: 2005

  I fell in love with New York that year because I wasn’t planning on staying. I had moved here because I wanted to be close to my boyfriend. I took a few classes at The Actors Center, and was planning to enroll in the Yale School of Drama the following year.

  I had arranged my financial aid and shipped all my stuff back to my parents’ house in Los Angeles. But then I went back to visit them and had a panic attack. I had an agent at that point, and I couldn’t figure out why I was going to grad school. I felt like I was going to die if I moved to New Haven, and I was so homesick for New York that I watched the American Express advertisement with De Niro talking about TriBeCa and I started to cry. I thought, I have to go home! I called the head of the drama school and told him I wouldn’t be attending. And then I e-mailed all my friends: “I need an apartment.”

  I stayed in a lot of places that first year, including a loft in TriBeCa I shared with Brazilians who would play music until five in the morning. But I eventually settled into my first real apartment in the East Village. It was heaven, and it felt like the beginning of my adult life. So I bought a bed, and the day I moved in I got my first real acting job: the role of Sandy in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I was painting the wall of my room when I got the call.

  It was such a hard year! I was trying to figure out how to be an adult. I made so many mistakes, and though I think I needed help I didn’t know how to ask for it. There was never a part of me that thought I wouldn’t get work as an actor. And I don’t think that comes from talent; I’m just one of the most hardworking people I know. I’d always been an “A” student and done six plays a year. But then I got to New York and I didn’t know how to do it right. I didn’t know how to feed or dress myself. I’d see girls my age on the street with impeccable boots with fur at the top, and the fur wasn’t matted! How did they get there? I had to work hard to keep clean underwear in the house. I didn’t know that when things go wrong you are supposed to tell the super.

  I broke up with my boyfriend and spent the following months getting to know the men of New York. I slept with a lot of people. I’d never done something like that before, and I’ve never done it again, but it was definitely fun and it expanded my horizons. I wore a lot of eye makeup that year. I looked tough; it was like armor. It was definitely the most un-girly I’ve ever dressed. I didn’t wear a bra.

  I met a lot of friends too. We’d go ice-skating in Bryant Park in the middle of the day, or to clubs that only this person knows about or this person can get you in. The funny part was that at the same time I was living this incredibly ascetic life—not spending much, taking money from my parents and feeling bad about that. I ate bagels three times a day, and a lot of yogurt. I started drinking coffee, because it’s cheap at the bodega and it made me feel like a New Yorker to be walking around with a cup of coffee.

  I felt so connected to my father that year, thinking about how he grew up in New York. And my grandfather and his parents came to America through Ellis Island, and even now when I see the Statue of Liberty while taking the Q train over the river, it’s really moving. New York is like being in a good relationship, where you remember the first days—but it can also feel sometimes like the first days again.

  In retrospect, I cringe at everything I did and wore that year. I wish I hadn’t been so friendly with so many people, because I’m not good at making casual friends and ended up letting people down. But at the time, I thought I was having the best year of my life. Just walking around New York with my iPod was an adventure. I remember my first audition, for a two-page scene on a Law & Order episode. I was walking to Chelsea Piers because I didn�
�t yet know how to take the bus, and suddenly I realized, Oh, it’s never going to be this good again. If I get the job, I’m always going to want to get the job again. But for right now, I’m just happy to have the audition. And I have to remember this feeling.

  AGYNESS DEYN

  model

  arrived: 2006

  The only people I knew when I arrived were the band the Five O’Clock Heroes. They took me under their wing and got me a room with one of their mates. It was an office on West Tenth Street. I don’t know what they did there; I would come in and they were all at computers, on the phone. I just would run in and sleep.

  When I first got here, I would wake up, grab my iPod, and just walk around. Then I got a bike, and I would ride everywhere—uptown, downtown, exploring. I loved how fresh New York was. I felt like I was the star of my own Woody Allen film. At nights I’d go out on my own to bars like Black and White, and parties like Misshapes. It was nerve-racking. But usually I’d get a drink, have a walk around, talk to someone at the bar, and then meet some of that person’s friends and maybe go on to a loft party in Williamsburg.

  One day, I came across Trash and Vaudeville and tried on some jeans. I was gutted that I had just missed CBGB down the street, where I had read that the Ramones and Blondie had played. The guy at the checkout counter, Jimmy, looked like Iggy Pop, all rock and roll in his leather pants and long scraggly blond hair. He looked at me and went, “No, no, no,” and got me the smallest-size jeans in the store. “The tighter the better, darling.” After that, I would go into Trash and Vaudeville whenever I was at a loose end or feeling lonely. I’d sit there and chat with Jimmy, and he’d tell me old stories of New York.