#95 - A Literal List of Places I am Happy
or: when your title promises something and then you just simply forget to deliver
On Friday I sent out an essay titled “Where I’m Happiest” and then realized I never actually provided any actual locations where my happiness is most present. You know, the places where I’m shredding the seams of my existence with the exuberance for my life that I get to live.
So, here’s that list! At least a partial one. Most are even literal can-visit locations and not metaphorical spaces I wish existed!
#1 - My apartment
Look, I’ve said it quite a bit, but I love my apartment. It’s not near “finished” in terms of renovations I would like to make (while constantly tempering that desire with the reality that I am renting this space) but fuck, it’s great.
It’s mine, it’s the first place I’ve ever lived that provides me with instant relief when I walk through the doors. Oh, I’m home. I’m safe. There are two cats on the bed exactly where I left them. There’s a spot to throw my bag, a free hook for my jacket, and the lighting is soft and ambient.
Does my bathroom still consist of the world’s smallest sink? You bet it does! But that’s the joy of living in NYC babeeey your apartment has to have at least one weird thing to complain about or I will assume you’re a full-on trust fund baby who is slightly removed from the banal realities of human existence and therefore wholly unrelatable to me!
#2 - Rooftops that I can get to without the use of a ladder
Love a view! Love a breeze! Love being up among the trees!
With spring comes the return of my unwaning want to be running around on rooftops, smoking, maybe even getting a fun bev if there’s a bar involved. The best outdoor spaces are the ones that are cordoned off in a way tbh. I will always be an observer and there’s no better place to people-watch than from above (you know, like a god).
Extra triple word score point bonuses for the fact that it’s one of the only places in the entire city where I can be outside without being followed by the looming sounds of scooters rushing up behind me!
The required use of climbing a ladder to or from the experience totally negates it though. No, I won’t reconsider or negotiate about this, I have plenty of spaces that do not require the instruction of “get on your belly and shuffle towards it” in order to access them thank you very much!
#3 - Streets to “tuck in” & smoke
A great smoking spot has the following requirements:
- a ledge for my bag/bev so I can fully park wherever I am
- low-to-no traffic because I feel guilty polluting the air of other people
- a view and/or bountiful botanicals
- shade
The moments I live for while out and about mostly include being asked if I would like to go get coffee (literally always, the answer is a forever yes, if I’m too hopped up I will simply grab some tea), an elaboration on whatever political discourse we started digging into while thrifting, and if I’d like to “tuck in up here and smoke that spliff.”
The thing is, I would love to tuck in. The discovery of little alcoves is one of my greatest life joys.
A loading dock that’s closed on Saturdays, a tiny garden surrounding the city-planted trees that’s been clearly cultivated by the apartment dwellers. Honestly, it’s not that hard to impress me with a simple patch of pavement that is simply not covered in dog shit these days!
#4 - New York City
I’m a city girl. Always have been! If there’s one ~unique opportunity~ my childhood rearing did grant me it was this definitive knowledge at an early age.
I love to blend in with a crowd, and I like when that crowd is dressed for the event of being outdoors with each other. I love the anonymity of a city, the confidence of fact that regardless of how hard I just ate shit on the soaked stairs at Canal Street I am not the most embarrassing person anyone has seen that day. I don’t matter at all, and in that, there is a freedom to matter as much as I want to.
I moved to Bushwick for the first time when I was nineteen and had the most concentrated three months of a honeymoon period anyone has ever had. I got a tattoo at the end of it for commemoration purposes, an act I have never had a single desire to repeat. (I love you J train, I love you late night Kennedy’s runs, I love you flashing deli, I love you late night adventures to Kellog’s, I love you Hanksy ‘Pie Hard’ graffiti, I love you shared beds and pantries and pantless hallways and shower that had no curtain, I love you random job at Lush I managed to snag, I love you brownstones and SoHo streets and getting lost. I love you Oyama’s 50% off all-the-time sushi deal.)
I went back to college and graduated early in order to return, despite the drastic shift in circumstance due to the infiltration of my friend group by a con man. And so eventually I moved to Portland and that was certainly a choice. It did give me a much firmer acceptance that NYC is the place for me though! Not all cities are the same!
I moved back August 2018 and haven’t regretted that choice for a single day since. Including during the lockdown I spent in my 250sqft Harlem studio 3 years ago.
I ❤️ NY and no one can stop me!!!
#5 - Bar patios
It doesn’t matter if I’m with one or nineteen other people, I love to sit, smoke, and chat.
The bar element here is really just because those tend to be the only locations in America where this regularly happens. (We are in desperate need of more town squares and sober spaces and coffee shops that don’t make you feel like you’re “loitering” when you simply sit for more than 15 minutes.) (Backyards work great too but since I don’t have one at the moment, the use of one relies on the planning skills of others and to be brutally honest, a lot of people are Not Planners and that’s fine except we’ve forced everyone to think they should be good at everything and so people have a sense of shame and then half-plan lackluster experiences because they’re just not detail oriented folks and it’s again fine if true but we should live in actual reality and not imagined ones! Let me plan things I promise I have fun doing it I love facilitating social experiences oh my god no we cannot simply “see what happens when we get there” because not every choice is best made democratically and vibes often don’t make great guidelines!!)
Anyway. I love to park, and sit, and get into it. Deep topics, lighthearted observations, conversations that made your abs hurt the next day from laughing so hard. Smoking is a wonderful addition (cigs, spliffs, & if you like them joints—tbh I’ve never enjoyed smoking a single joint my entire life but hey, different highs for different guys!) because it gives me something to do with my hands and a tiny flaming stick always adds to the emphatic gestures I’m making! Fran Lebowitz talks about great art being made while smoking and chatting with others and I hold that so dear. It truly makes for some of my favorite moments in life!
Bars that I have around me that are good for this include: The Narrows, Heavy Woods, and Left Hand Pass. Heavy Woods wins out most of the time because they have a walk-up window and their picnic tables are pink and they even have heaters in the winter.
Honorable Mentions
- quiet beaches that aren’t windy and mostly empty
- any restaurant that has comfortable chairs and not the stupid metal monstrosities that define every “gastro pub”
- the empty streets of Ridgewood during my morning walks
- Dublin. The whole city, not just the downtown area.
- in a car (Subraru, probs) heading north on I-89 in Vermont
- this one little spot in Prospect Park that’s always cordoned off by a mud puddle but actually has some of the best views and is entirely serene and slightly removed from the path so I can watch people fish on the other side of the pond and pretend I’m thoroughly surrounded by deep forests
- coffee shops with a clear sense of line flow and navigable tiny tables
- anywhere the trees are so large they make me reconsider what it means to be human and what I’m doing with my time and existence on earth