Midtown's Revenge

At long last, I started my new job this week (today was Day 2). As you can imagine, after sixteen long months out of work, it is a virtually indescribable relief to be plugging back in and earning again, let alone at a place I’m genuinely excited about (more about that at some later point, maybe).

One curious aspect about the new job is that the office is way downtown. With the exception of a few, fleeting freelance gigs and my internship at SPIN (which was on West 18th Street, at the time), virtually every place I’ve ever worked in my professional career has been in Midtown — most specifically around Rockefeller Center/Times Square. My new outlet, conversely, is but a stone’s throw from the World Trade Center (which some still insist on calling "the Freedom Tower") and that new transportation hub, which fans out with a wing/spine motif that looks vaguely H.R. Giger-esque (well, to me, anyway). It's not a `hood I've spent as much time in, to say the least.

It’s weird to walk out my front door and head south for a change. Instead of walking up Broadway or Fifth Avenue to work, I now take a scenic route through the Village, SoHo and TriBeca. As ways to start one’s mornings go, it decidedly does not suck. It’s just odd to be traversing through neighborhoods I’ve normally associated with leisure and exploration to get to work. My treks to Midtown were never that interesting. Only this morning I was stopped dead in my tracks by the image above (on Thompson Street just south of Broome … the work of Space Invader, I’m told).

I’m not alone in moving downtown, though. Several major companies and media outlets (like, most recently, my alma mater of TIME & LIFE) have relocated to points south, invariably prompting sighs and eye-rolls from longtime “FiDi” denizens, although the entirety of the bottom of the island seems to have been in transition for the last 14 years (for relatively obvious reasons).

In any event, I was initially imagining a post about how it’s quite possible that I won’t have another reason to venture north of my kids’ school in the Gramercy/Kip’s Bay area for the conceivable future. I was envisioning a histrionic Goodbye to Midtown, and all that. Then, as if on cue, I was stricken with a hot tooth and had to make an emergency trip the day after Thanksgiving to my dentist’s office on 57th Street for a goddamn root canal. Oddly, right around the time of the start of my last job, I had to have a root canal. Maybe that’s a thing, I guess. In any case, I have a couple more appointments to sew all that up — literally and figuratively — so, as it turns out, I’m not quite done with that neck of the woods just yet. I consider it Midtown’s Revenge.

Anyway, it should be noted that while I have absolutely every intention of continuing to serve up the very finest offerings that my silly mind can muster here, being that I’ve now been re-inserted into the work force, the teeming torrent of content that’s been spewing like a firehose here since I was first given to keys to the street by my last place of employment might scale back quite dramatically for a little while. I’m concentrating on bringing myself up to speed at my new office with all my attention. As such, you should probably expect a bit of a slowdown in posting here.

But, y’know, we’ll see.

Stay tuned …. and thanks for reading.

Comments

[EV Grieve]

Congrats on the new job.

I've ben Day Jobbing down here in FiDi land for the past 11 years. Took a little getting used to, tbh. But I do like it.

Maybe see you for a drink at Diamond Jim Brady's!

[David George]

Good luck in your new venture. Regarding this: "It’s just odd to be traversing through neighborhoods I’ve normally associated with leisure and exploration to get to work." This reminds of when I lived in Bklyn Hts and worked @ E40th & 3rd. I've always gotten off the subway quite a ways from my destination specifically to walk (a different route every day), especially when I was still headed for a cube farm. It was always decidedly weird walking through Chinatown and Little Italy @ 7:30 am (after having only been there hours earlier).

Hope the slowdown here doesn't last too long, but do what you've gotta do.

[Grahame]

Great news! Break a leg.

[James Taylor]

I've been working in Tribeca since April, the best part of which has been getting to walk the length of a relatively deserted Crosby Street twice daily. Makes a change after working in the Flatiron area for the previous seven years (although I miss Eisenberg's dreadfully).

[DrBOP]

In the immortal words of Maynard G Krebs, sad to hear you're back to WOOORRRRRKKKKKK!!!

And sad to hear about Brian Fine's passing. I know a couple of used groove store owners who are afraid to quit because they don't think they can handle a straight life (SERIOUSLY!), and rock'n'roll retirement plans are spotty at best. At least he got to do something he loved for a very long time.

[Anne]

Congratulations! Hope you're enjoying the new gig!

[Gaylord Perry]

We could use another pitcher on the staff. Tell 'em Gaylord sentcha.