Moving to NYC Ain't for Sissies

Twice in my life I've moved to NYC -- first, when I exited my mother's womb, and, second, when I moved back from college (which I even blogged about).

So, really, I've never moved to NYC -- I sprouted out of here, then left at one point, then came back, and have stayed ever since. I've moved around NYC a couple times, but never to it. I'm a native, a product of it, a weed in the great field of the city (more on weed later).

But millions and millions of people over the centuries have moved here, sometimes from nearby places, sometimes from across the country, sometimes from the farthest reaches of the world. And yet wherever they come from, and whatever the reason they move here, it's a big change, an overwhelming experience.

As it's been said about getting old, moving to NYC ain't for sissies.

And the reasons, as mentioned, are various, and fascinating. The New York Times Magazine recently ran several stories about people moving to NYC for a variety of reasons, under a variety of circumstances. The stories are about:

- The dreamers, the people who move here to find great success but inevitably find living and achieving here harder than they could ever have imagined. If you can make here ... Heck, it's hard for us natives to succeed here but being an emigre to NYC makes it even tougher. It's a sobering experience, as this story tells us.  

- There are the people (including dreamers) who move here and find themselves living with people they could never possibly imagined even knowing, let alone co-habiting with. The desire to live here is so strong, and the availability of housing is so stressed, that people end up living in all sorts of strange circumstances, in ways they could never have thought before moving to NYC. 

- There are the people who moved here in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, for myriad wild reasons. Moving to NYC is tough at the best of times but moving to the epicenter of the deadliest pandemic in more than a century? That takes guts. That takes determination. And each story behind it is fascinating. 

 - Then there are the people moving here not because they want to but because they have been displaced from their homelands -- refugees, people feeling war and persecution. Ukraine and Afghanistan are the most recent, horrifying examples but over the centuries people have fled danger at home to find peace and prosperity in NYC. My daughter has a new girl in her class who just started school in April, whose family just got out of Ukraine. They may be safe and happy to be in NYC but no doubt miss leaving home under these extreme, tragic circumstances.

- And now, finally, to the weed: marijuana will be legal to sell soon in NYC and New York State, and people who have experience in the legal pot business elsewhere are moving here to get into the game. An influx of legal weed dealers -- not scuzzy guys in wife-beater T's selling dime bags in their gross basement apartments -- but smart businesspeople plying a legit and profitable trade in classy, hygienic stores are coming to town, soon to sell us a variety of Indica and Sativa in various forms. No doubt the competition will be fierce but those who succeed will really have "made it here", seeing their NYC dreams come true through ever inhalation we take.

Moving to NYC ain't for sissies -- but it's always interesting.