As I’m packing up to leave New York City for four months, I can’t help but not want to leave. This is an unfamiliar feeling to me, as I’m a loud anti-New York New Yorker. When I was little, I always dreamed about waking up in a house with a garden and a yard, rather than the cries of babies as their caretaker takes them outside for their hourly smoke break. I claimed to hate the dirt of New York, how congested it was, and its overall lack of beauty.
I was so dumb. And I’m referring to my past self as Lila from May. New York might not be the greatest city to ever exist, but no place makes you feel as small and insignificant – in a freeing way – as the city does. I recently was walking from Port Authority to my Times Square train stop in flax linen pants from Kalimera (*go here, trust me), my black ballet flats, and a yellow worn-in graphic vintage tee, all in 93 degree weather. As everyone was shoving into me, trying to sell me tour tickets, and generally peeing on the street, I looked around and remembered how many people there were within my four block vicinity, let alone the world. My brain has equated moving abroad to something as large as packing up to go to a very stylish war, the Nordstrom Rack on a Black Friday kind of fight, stirring up overall anxiety. Times Square is the only place where you can feel insignificant and anonymous enough to realize that things just don’t matter. Especially for a 20 year old moving to Europe for a few months.
Yesterday, I was in NoLita desperately in need of brunch. I went to Ruby’s where I knew I’d really get a fun mix by sitting down at one of the most basic, yet delicious (sue me!), spots close by. I had another pang of “how can I leave New York?” immediately upon stepping in. I looked to my left and witnessed a classic uptown high school girls go downtown brunch. They were all on their phones with their Illestivas and Ray-Bans perched upon their head, sporting Golden Gooses and Urban Outfitters floral dresses. Directly in front of me was the exact opposite: a pair of best friends, wearing worn in sweatpants and oversized tees, a truly thrown on outfit, with messy buns. To my right, the overdressed visitors with full faces of foundation, skinny jeans, and an Aritzia top. The Lower East side dress code filled the rest of the restaurant, including my waiters. Men with Carhartt pants that were too ripped at the seams to be considered anywhere close to new but definitely were priced up by 200%. Their baseball caps put their pornstar mustaches into shadows as their L-train thrifted red short-sleeve button up lied open to reveal nothing less than a … wifebeater. Then you had the classic girl wearing some form of slide or flat mixed with a micro-basketball short and a unique, quarter-length long sleeve, cross body bag slung over the shoulder while the tote bag held their square tainted vintage Gucci sunglasses. Oh, and there were the squirrels in their post-Soul Cycle hunger.
Nowhere else in the span of a few tables could you find such a vast array of archetypes as you could in New York City. My heart cracks thinking about adjusting to a new form of LES “dress code” when I’ve become so familiar with it. I always think about what would captivate me about the city if I were a tourist. The lights in Little Italy, or Cobble Hill park, or the Dumbo waterfront, or the jazz clubs in the West Village, or the subway performers. But it would most definitely be the diverse crowds that inhabit these spaces. Outside of little Ruby’s, nowhere in the world do you get the extent of ultimate authenticity as you do in New York. New York’s energy is emitted from not just the physical pace of the people, but the way they wear their clothes. New Yorkers know the value of dressing like themselves, and have mastered the perfect fusion of functionality and style to ensure maximum steps without compromising aesthetics. When we dress, New Yorkers appreciate style as something beyond vanity. Because you are a small fish in a giant, sweaty pond, there will always be someone with better shoes, a cooler bag, or an overall more interesting ensemble. We don’t compete to look better, we dress to look like individuals. And that is why we look so damn good.
I’ve never had this yearning for New York as I do right now, leaving it. So my dear, sweet, smelly, dirty, awful, wonderful New York, I’m going to miss you so much. But I’ll be back, hopefully with a new Euro edge. And if I don’t, no one will care, because I’m not that important anyways.
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