This date crept up on me like the G Train, but it's true: I've officially lived in New York City for one full year. I've officially been a college grad for one full year. Crazy crazy crazy. To celebrate this exciting milestone, I'm paying a visit later tonight to the place where it all began: Junior's Cheesecake. But I first wanted to look back at this last year and remember all the amazing adventures I've had so far.
For example...In one year living in NYC, I've:
- Done just about all the touristy things. Top of the Rock, Statue of Liberty, High Line, Brooklyn Bridge, Coney Island...I got all of these out of the way early.
- Eaten my weight in pizza and cheesecake and pastrami and halal
- Biked around Central Park
- Gotten lost in the Met, the American Museum of Natural History, the MOMA, and the Brooklyn Museum
- Traveled on the subway at three in the morning with two homeless men as my companions
- Fallen asleep on the subway and woken up at Brighton Beach
- Heard every rendition imaginable of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"
- Been networked with on the subway
- Been proposed to by my taxi driver
- Been propositioned in the South Bronx
- Been to a jazz concert in Harlem
- Participated in film festivals, television festivals, and music festivals
- Seen 14 Broadway shows
- Had my name in a Playbill (off-off Broadway, but still)
- Attended the cherry blossom festival at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
- Gallery-shopped in Chelsea
- Been to a Yankees game and a Mets game
- Attended a live taping of SNL
- Gobbled up the special concrete at each Shake Shack location
- Ridden the Cyclone at Coney Island
- Experienced the weirdness that is the Village Halloween Parade
- Attended various free concerts and plays in Central Park
- Warbled my way through Korean karaoke
- Learned all the Jewish holidays in September
- Read a book in the Rose Reading Room at the Schwarzman Library
- Become best friends with the security guards at Grand Central Terminal
- Devoured all the things at Smorgasburg
- Taken a selfie with Zachary Quinto
- Taken stalker photos of countless other celebrities
- Marathoned movies at the Tribeca Film Festival
- Sat on the Iron Throne
- Learned what 100 degrees without air conditioning really feels like
- Learned what taking public transit through a polar vortex really feels like
- Lived in three different boroughs
- Changed my personal definitions of "expensive" and "far away" and "smelly"
- Learned how to place an order with Seamless in less than 30 seconds.
- Hardened my heart towards tourists in Times Square
- Felt inner pride when a lady asked me for directions and I knew what to tell her
- Made some incredible friendships and memories to last a lifetime
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| Greatest friendship of them all |
That's only a small list of things I've done this past year. You can click on the "New York" tag at the bottom to see some of my other posts I wrote about my time here so far.
However, there are still so many things I want to see and do. I plan to live here for a while, and I still don't feel I can fully call myself a New Yorker, at least not until I:
- Discover more obscure, delicious restaurants to impress my visiting friends with. This includes completing the 196 Challenge (visiting one restaurant for every country in the world)
- Knock another girl to the ground at a sample sale
- Attend an art fair at Roosevelt Island
- Get a bicycle and bike around Prospect Park
- Visit Greenwood Cemetery
- Go to a Knicks and a Nets game
- Attend a taping of The Colbert Report before it's too late
- Play chess in Washington Square Park
- Visit the real Little Italy in the Bronx
- Kayak on the Hudson River
- Sing along at a drag show
- Bowl and jam at Brooklyn Bowl
- Find Brandon Stanton and get on Humans of New York
- Get yelled at by Billy on the Street
- Meet Amy Poehler at the UCB
- Find myself saying "Fuhgeddaboutit" unironically
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| Please let this happen to me. |
