Ryan Tate

In September I came to New York for a week, for work. I slept three hours each night and for some reason always listened to this as I drifted off.

After I woke around 4 am, quietly collecting myself from the floor of a three-bedroom apartment, I would walk to Columbus Circle subway station, down to the sweltering platform. Night shift janitors were heading home. The first day, I was relieved to discover the cars were in fact air conditioned.

From the Broadway-Lafayette station I would walk  toward Spring Street, buying every day a large hot coffee from the same cart operator, one of the few operating at 5 in the morning. I would pass Equinox gym as I continued toward Elizabeth St., usually walking by one or two anxious young women coming, I imagined, to or from their workouts. Every morning I assumed, in my delirium and vestigial Gotham naivete, I would somehow pass  Anderson Cooper, and nod. This of course never happened.

What did happen is that I had to turn on the office air conditioner each morning because I was sweating profusely by the time I reached the top of the stairs; that I spilled wine on myself at Public and failed to make conversation in topics central to my college major;  and that I drank two glasses of Pinot Noir at Peter’s on the Upper West Side, sitting alone at a table by the window and hoping for  a breeze that never came.

I’m not sure why tallying receipts for my taxes brings back these memories of the trip and not, say, meeting Malcolm Gladwell, or having a blast at Media Meshing. Maybe seeing that I formed a (heretofore) pointless S-Corp also made me realize I am both less independent and more alone than I would have guessed one year ago. Looked at the right way, each evening in Berkeley is a variation on that long tired walk to Nolita.