Thank you for taking the time to read my essays. Your support means so much to me. If you enjoy these newsletters, please consider sharing Moxie with friends via email or on social media. You can also upgrade to a paid subscription which entitles you to an additional essay every Tuesday. Your support of my work allows me to keep writing on this platform and to keep making free content- with minimal ads- on other platforms. Regardless of subscription level, thank you for being here, I love you and am grateful for your support.
New York is fun again.
For a moment after things began reopening post covid and for several moments before the pandemic, New York was full and dull and lifeless. It felt like everyone was new in town and no one had a point of view or a sense of style. (While I think to be a Real New Yorker you have to have been born in New York, you become a New Yorker when you have style; which is (of course) different from being fashionable.)
It is possible that New York is the same and I am fun again but I do not think so. I think the city, once again, grew up. I have a theory! TikTok and other social media has made trend cycles so quick and so monotonous that everybody finally got fatigued of trying to do the cool thing and had to start acting like themselves. And when anyone is wholly and unapologetically themselves, they’re likable. Authenticity is, perhaps, the only universally positive quality.
But now, right at this moment at least, New York is all heat and scene-y restaurants and nightclubs where people drink martinis and champagne rather than vodka sodas. Everyone getting dressed and staying out past might night on weeknights and having fun with their clothing and with their friends. Everybody is single and no one is in a rush to settle down and all of the settled down people are out anyway because someone to go out with is as good of a partner as someone to stay in with. Everyone goes out in Brooklyn, too. And people kiss in public and actually talk to each other and dance and there are adults out again. Four years ago, everyone was twenty-five.
People are very on the nose. But on the nose is comforting, I like what’s expected. The man in Loro Piana bucks (we can all agree those shoes are essentially laceless bucks, no?) and a dark tee shirt works in finance and the one still wearing flannel is a photographer and his friend in a sheer tee used to work for Virgil, RIP. The thin woman in a black corset top is a model but not the kind people photograph and the one in the sheer blouse is the only cool venture capitalist and the girl in a linen shift dress is from Greenwich and the bathroom line is very long. Did I used to see you at Le Bain a million years ago or do we both just look like people who went to Le Bain a million years ago?
Everywhere is by reservation only but they happened to have room tonight and martinis are $30 and no one drinks on weeknights but tonight they are making an exception. No one is in the city on weekends except this weekend. And everyone stands outside and smokes and says “I am so over New York, maybe LA is better or London?” Not Miami, never Miami. “New York is no fun, anymore.” But tonight is fun and last night was fun and there is a party tomorrow and when you hear hooves do you think horses or zebras?
New York has become joyful and zesty and there are four good bars downtown and I do not know much of what’s happening uptown but maybe Seven Sisters grads are still at Dorian’s? There is always wait to listen to jazz at the Carlyle and Caviar Kaspia is as bad as everybody says, though the cigarettes are a nice touch.
When I moved back to the city, I thought to myself “this will be for a year or it will be forever” and I think maybe it will be forever, I think maybe I can only really exist in this place.
I love you!!!
Hannah
What a fun read! It makes me like New York again
i’m moving to new york in a few days and this made my entire life ❤️