Cocktails and The City

New York or Nowhere

It isn’t hard to fall in love with New York City, but surviving it is an entirely different thing.

I moved to NYC over five months ago, as a girl set on living out her Gossip Girl, Sex and the City fantasy at Columbia University.

Although, I realise now, I’ve evolved into so much more than a silver screen character. I’m working my way to becoming a full-blown New Yorker.

Now, the path to becoming a true New Yorker isn’t one that requires staying only on the stick path of the yellow brick road. In New York, you have to find your own path. A path that makes you happy, even if that may mean straying a little here and there from your original plan. And you too will find that it’s in this straying that you find true New York. When I look back, I realise I’ve evolved too. Instead of this idealist Times Square fantasy that we associate with the Big Apple, I see that there is love in the little things. Like that constant state of busy everyone here feels, the desire to take in every detail about your surroundings yet still appear casual, the impulse to grin at every retired Upper East Side couple holding hands. But living here hasn’t come without its lessons, and boy have I had a few. From running across the streets in my 6-inch heels, trying to source the hottest clubs and bars that are a must hit, to navigating romance in the city, it has already been quite the journey already.

What I’ve concluded is that New York is a complicated place full of every type of person. It can be overwhelming at times, but it’s how you learn to interact and are willing to go with the flow that matters.

But as I continue to live here, I’ve began to wonder about what it truly means to be a New Yorker. So who are the real New Yorkers?….Are they the newbies in Midtown, eager for an internship? Or are they the ladies with the intrinsic sense of style in SoHo? Or perhaps they are the men you see ploughing their way through FiDi on a Friday evening from work? But no. I’ve come to realise being a New Yorker is about love. To be a New Yorker, you must be prepared to love. To put yourself out there…even If you end up being screamed at on the subway…to allow yourself the freedom to feel fully and wholeheartedly. This love is what unites us all. It’s almost indescribable, the pride and sheer emotion that all New Yorkers share. That’s what makes us so outspoken, the confidence and need to be heard amongst the crowd is something you will never find anywhere else. I must say though, I wasn’t initally in the market for love, but suddenly all I wanted, craved, needed, was that New York love. Whatever I just felt walking through the East Village on a Saturday, crossing Central Park on the way to the Met, taking the subway from 86rd to 34th, I want to feel it again. In fact, I never want to lose this New York love. Now that I’ve found it, I will never let it go, and you shouldn’t either.

As a college student from the middle of absolutely nowhere in Britain, to living in the centre of NYC, it has been a real change. I once assumed it would take me forever to fit in here, but New York has that way of swooping you up and taking you for a ride that you’ll never come down from. It accommodates us all, and as a New Yorker, you become like family, tied to every borough and every village.