A Tale of Two New York Cities: From Hudson Yards to Hell's Kitchen
Notes on a 4-year sojourn among Manhattan's blue glassed sky castles
Fourth Floor → Fourth Floor
When Sophie announced it was time to pull stumps from our fourth-floor walk-up in Alphabet City, I was resistant. Sure, there had been two beheadings in three weeks in our neighbourhood, but I figured that's what made the joint "authentic." I’m also a giant fucking idiot when it comes to dealing with anything this important, so it was probably way too late in the day to be having this conversation.
Ever the pragmatist, she’d uncovered an absurdly cheap deal on a luxury apartment in Hudson Yards —a neighbourhood that doesn't technically exist, just a collection of glass towers that real estate developers renamed to charge you 4x for living in what is essentially the windiest end of Chelsea. (Don’t get me started on them trying to make ‘Manhattan West’ happen.)
The pandemic had emptied the city's luxury buildings, and rents had plummeted from astronomical to merely silly. A bottomless slew of essays with breathless headlines like ‘New York Is Over.’ flooded our inboxes as we figured we, like survivor cockroaches, would finally get to enjoy the last of the outrageous spoils before the apocalypse.
We landed in The Avalon, a near-empty glass monolith where the elevators had gold and bronze trim walls that made every trip to our new fourth-floor digs feel like ascending to heaven in a fever dream. It was our first elevator building. It was the first time we’d had a doorman. (Unless you count the friendly crackhead who slept in our old doorway nook.)
It felt like we were getting away with murder.
The first year or two were absolutely insane. Every tiny convenience was a divine revelation— I could open the door to my apartment by speaking into my phone. We had an Amazon locker room and a separate package room. We were obviously very grateful. And lucky. Possibly a little smug.
The differences between our old and new neighbourhoods were stark, to say the least. Most notably, the things you could "stoop" on the sidewalk. In Alphabet City, you might find a torn-up vintage leather armchair or a perfectly smelly record player from 1971. In Hudson Yards, people would leave out unused Pelotons and barely-touched SAD therapy lamps, their boxes still containing warranty cards. It felt like a different planet.
One day, while walking Morris, I stooped a chair outside a gallery worth more than my monthly rent. (Yes, I Googled how much the chair cost and still keep it clean and functional as a potential sale on Facebook Marketplace.)
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Our old building, an artists' co-op held together by gaffer tape and positive manifestations, had required a PhD in waste management to take out the trash each week. Get the wrong colour recycling bag, and you'd face the collective scorn of everyone else in the co-op, not to mention the NYC Dept of Sanitation’s overzealous fine guy.
His name is Trent.
The Avalon, by contrast, had a squeaky clean refuse room with a garbage chute – the kind that gives you pure catharsis every time you stroll down the hall in your socks with a bag of week-old salmon—an overwhelming medley of sophistication and pure guilt. Even our junk mail went from Keyfood Coupon Catalogues to the latest matte laminated postcards from Sweetgreen and Hermés.
The Vessel/Beehive/Deathtrap
The centrepiece of the neighbourhood was, of course, The Vessel, that copper-coloured beehive of staircases that became an unintentional monument to the darkness of the pandemic. They tried implementing a "buddy system" after people kept hurling themselves off it, but eventually had to close it for years to install plexiglass barriers and railings – a perfect metaphor for New York's attempt to put safety rails on its inherent psychosis.
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Refilling the Churn Factory
We watched the neighbourhood fill up again as the city reopened—former residents who had fled the city at its worst returned from their Hamptons hideouts as the variants became less severe. Winter spikes passed as the empty glass towers pulsed with life once more, though it was a specific kind of life: people who did CrossFit at 5am and had strong opinions about oat milk and Cybertrucks. They gave their designer dogs names like "Blockchain" and "Douglas." Eye contact was incredibly rare. A spontaneous verbal exchange became a distant fantasy. The eerie lack of homeless people on any corner felt kind of sinister. Where were they?
Hoards of tourists poured into the Hudson Yards plaza to preen, pout and pose in front of the monstrosity for their tens of Instagram followers, presumably captioning it with FOMO bait, “Don’t you wish you could be standing here in front of this ugly piece of shit?”
The morning they reopened The Vessel with its new safety measures, I overheard two tourists as they were docking their Citibikes: 'It's like a giant cheese grater,' the woman said, waiting for a laugh that never came. ‘It’s more like a carnival ride designed by a broken AI.’ Her partner took his phone out of his padded vest and handed it to her. ‘Can you take my photo in front of it? This is hilarious.’ He squatted in front of the structure with a big smile and a thumbs-up.
Hilarious.
Four Pals in Four Years
Despite my best efforts, in four years, I made exactly three friends in the building (which might be a Hudson Yards record.) Two of them had a kid, so technically, now it’s four. The only interactions in the neighbourhood would be between my dog and someone else’s dog. The owners would remain silent and then move along with their little green bag of shame.
The deal was stabilized until we decided to pull the pin. Yet, hedonic adaptation did its little dance, and we began taking those tiny conveniences for granted. Did we want to try for somewhere else? Prices had quadrupled since we moved in… it was risky.
New VS. Old York?
The thing I most enjoyed about living in an old New York neighbourhood like the East Village was getting to know the people I lived with— their odd personalities, their lives, their jobs and hustles, and our shared travails during blizzards and pandemics. In Hudson Yards, people came in and out of the building like it was a subway car. The churn made my head spin. People moved in and out of the building so quickly they may as well have paid the moving trucks to wait on the street. I had five next-door neighbours in four years— none of them said hello in the hallway despite my awkward nods and my dog’s absurd penchant for rubbing himself against strangers for free rubs.
The whole thing just felt so antiseptic. Nobody really talked. They had jobs in finance and tech and didn’t have any great social skills to speak of. The building’s ‘social’ app, for residents to trade or borrow things, to tee up running groups or dog-sitting, was a ghost town. The same three people would pop in and post, then ghost. It was depressing.
For all the glitz and flare of the high life on the High Line, it all just felt a bit empty. I know some people would murder their nearest insurance CEO to live here, but the truth of it is, when you look up into those stylishly lit windows as you’re wandering down the High Line, not everything you see is as fabulous as you’re imagining. I’m just being honest; the frictionlessness of daily life became a dull, numb, monotonous existence. It felt like we’d moved to a simulacrum of New York with all the sharp edges sanded down and the noises muted to a dull hum.
There are a million different ‘New Yorks’ in New York, but this new, shiny, clean one just ain’t for me.
With that said, I did get to work in the fanciest home studio I’ll probably ever have in my life. I will miss that.
From Hudson to Hell’s
Sadly, Sophie and I parted ways last year. She found her own apartment in the city, and yesterday, I followed suit. On New Year’s Day, I moved to Hell's Kitchen – the Alphabet City of Midtown West.
My new apartment is a fifth-floor walk-up in a 126-year-old tenement building with a stoop, a fire escape, and a boiler pipe that clangs like it's trying to communicate in Morse code. The super has already taught me the building's quirks with the kind of pride usually reserved for showing off a vintage Jaguar. When sirens and drunken Broadway audiences wail past my window at 3am, and someone inevitably screams, "SHUDAFUGGUP!" out the window, I feel more at home than I ever did in that pristine tower.
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