I am a native New Yorker. To be clear, I was born, raised, and spent most of my adult life in New York City. To a New Yorker, this term refers specifically to the City – Manhattan. I wasn’t born in Manhattan. That honor goes to Brooklyn. My family never lived in Manhattan. I did. From my late teens until well into my forties I lived in Greenwich Village.
The Village is a very special place. Originally it was a small farming community on the island of Manhattan. The City in those days (colonial times) went from the Battery to about Canal Street. Over the next hundred years or so, the population moved steadily northward, eventually surrounding, but never subsuming Greenwich Village. If you’ve been to New York, you may have noticed that avenues run north and south and streets run east and west. The avenues begin with First Avenue and parade west till they get to Twelfth Avenue on the west side. It’s true that the progression isn’t even, but for the purposes of our discussion, close enough. The streets start with First Street and move north to 167th Street. Not so in the Village. One of my apartments there was on Sheridan Square. I lived at the intersection of West 4th Street and West 10th Street. Impossible? Not in the Village.
Everything about the Village is different. It is more like a European city than it is like the rest of Manhattan. Small stores, owned for generations by the same family line the narrow, sometimes-cobble stone streets. People know each other’s names. It’s a sophisticated village in the middle of the world’s greatest city. I would go years without getting north of 23rd Street.
After many happy years without a car, I decided it was time to enjoy the “country”. So I moved north of Manhattan to Westchester County. I ended up in a very rural spot with mailboxes on posts and a five mile drive to the supermarket. It was a difficult transition, but not painful. I could be in Grand Central Terminal after a 60 minute train ride. I got out, but not so far that I couldn’t be back in an hour. I could sleep peacefully to the sound of frogs and crickets and also maintain my subscription to the Metropolitan Opera. It was a very satisfactory arrangement.
All of that ended when a large company in Seattle decided I would be a useful addition. After a lot of “no’s” the company made me an offer I really couldn’t afford to turn down. My wife and I agreed to move from civilization to the frontier. To me, Seattle was the other side of the earth. New Yorkers consider anything west of the Hudson River to be the Wild West. Ok, I would go to New Jersey occasionally to buy paper products from a warehouse store. So in the fall of 2006 we had our belongings in a moving van, our cars on a car carrier, and our pets and us flew to the other end of the continent. This is where our story starts.
In the fall of 2008 I decided to start sharing some of the observations and experiences moving and living in such a new and different place have brought. Some have been frightening; others, surprisingly wonderful. I hope you enjoy what you read. Comment if you like.