i love new york--especially at
this time of the year

it's been more than 20 years since i lived in new york city. i came here from grad school with a simple plan and reconnected with a gracious friend. my plan was to find a job in two weeks or i'd go back to boston and give it another go. the friend was felecia kurtz, one of my best friends from the hampton institute days, who was sharing a studio flak in lefrak city, a lower middle class housing development in queens near laguardia airport, with one of her church friends.

looking back it's a good thing i had lived in boston beforehand. after being reared in an upscale suburb and attending an elistist black college on a very picturesque campus, the gritty streets of beantown helped prepare me for life in the projects. lefrak wasn't a bad place to live, but it did contain some "elements."

as luck would have it i got a low-paying job with the american council for the arts on day 1 of my search. giddy as a piglet in mud, i raced back to queens from midtown on the n train and cut a deal with my new roomates. fk said i could live rent free for as long as i needed. all i had to do was pay part of the ultilities and attend church regularly.

last thursday my shuttle driver took me past my old hood. it looks much bigger now than it did when i lived there. and it looked better all illuminated with bright and colorful christmas lights. there's something about this season that makes you all giddy inside, particularly when you can't help but fall victim to all of the external, electronic, energy-sapping yuletride trappings.

it also makes you rather reflective. i couldn't help but look back on those days when we were all twentysomethings making less than twentysomething annually. we were three women living in a cramped one-room, one-bath studio. we were from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds and had varying degrees of spiritually. the only things we had in common were our affinity for african men--shoutout to james and matthew--and the fact that we were young, seemingly gifted, black and broke.

fk very graciously allowed me to live there rent free for about six months. all of us got along wonderfully until we went our separate ways. i have no idea where edith is now and i saw fk for the first time since 1985 last year when i was on a shoot in her hometown of raleigh, n.c. we exchanged digits and email addresses, but its not like we're blowing up each other's smart phones.

breaking free from the pride back in the day, however, actually allowed me to discover my new york. i love the night life and i would often leave my spacious studio around 11 p.m. on a friday night and cruise over the 59th street bridge in my honda civic hatchback to see what i could get into. more often than not i ended up in the west village or times square, where i actually worked.


i loved racing up and down the avenues with minimal traffic late at night. i still do. once i got to the village i'd stroll into the west 4th st. bar & grill and have a drink. sometimes i'd meet randall kenen there. at the time he was an editorial assistant at knopf, a subsidiary of random house. we both started at the house on the same day. he was smart, gay, gulliable and reasonably good company. he's now an award-winning author of four books and a professor at the university of memphis. sometimes eric simmons would join us, too. eric was tall, gay and a little more streetwise than rand. he had the energy of a herd of wild horses. sadly, eric died years later after jumping into the hudson river to save someone was trying to commit suicide.

that somebody survived.

when it was just me and rand we'd usually eat at burrito loco on w 4th. that was our idea of fine dining at the time. these days neither one of us would be caught dead there. whenever i was alone, i'd usually go to washington square park, which at that time was bustling with activity well into the wee hours of the morning and watch the old men play checkers and the young men sell drugs. and, i'd always spend some time listening to this jazz guitarist on the corner of w 4th and 6th avenue. i'd put some change in his case and request my favorite song--"the new york city woman blues."

every time i come back to the city i go to that same spot at night. he's never there but i can still hear him croon.

if i stopped at times square i'd usually just people watch for a while and then go to curtain up, a cozy little bistro in manhattan plaza. i loved that joint. i once sat next to james baldwin there. bobby short was a regular and a lot of the actors from the negro ensemble company hung out there. lee chamberlain, who played debbi morgan's mother on "all my children" and ellen holly, who played al freeman jr.'s wife on "one life to live" introduced me to it. i followed them there one night after watching them perform in p.j. harvey's compelling play, "a long time since yesterday." it was staged at the henry street settlement house, another favorite spot. it was there that i had the priviledge of seeing beah richards' one-woman show and meeting ossie davis and ruby dee for the first time.

i loved being a part of that crowd and they didn't seem to mind having a green kid from the midwest around.

i wish they were all still here.

the one man who is still around is harvey, the elevator man, at 570 7th avenue. he worked in the building that housed the aca offices back in the day. harvey has to be 90 by now so i was overwhelmed with emotion when i was walking by the building one day three years ago and discovered that he was still there. he still remembered me. i also saw him there earlier this year.

i'm not so sure he remembers me now.

when i jokingly told him it was time to retire he flashed that famous sammy davis jr. smile and said: "why? what would i do?"

since this trip was more about work than enjoyment i didn't get the chance to see harvey or many of my other friends and former co-workers. i did, however, manage to squeeze in a visit with linda, my sister-in-law from cincinnati, and her nephew, my friend nate, from cali. they were in town visiting linda's parents up in harlem. late friday night they came down to my swank eastside hotel and had a drink. i then suggested we go see the tree at rockefeller center.


ironically, i don't think i ever saw the damn tree when i lived here. nor did i ever see the macy's parade, spend new year's eve in times square or even visit any of the iconic tourist traps like the empire state building or the statute of liberty. and sadly, i never did step foot into the twin towers. i thought it would be around for a while, ya dig?

since i've become a vistor i have hit everything except the statue and the parade. the latter will never happen. little miki loathes a parade.

friday was actually my second time visiting the tree. the first time was a few years ago with my then boyfriend. it was so beautiful that it took my breath away. it was so romantic.

this time it was with people i love and it was still glorious. i normally loathe being around tourists, but i loved being in the midst of that crowd. after capturing a few digital moments we headed over to times sqaure--mostly because i love the lights and the vibe when the theater crowds hit the streets after seeing a great show. also, it was something i wanted to share with nate, a wide-eyed surfer dude from orange county.

after my mandatory stop at virgin records to check out the dvd racks and the m&m's store to get my favorite candy (chocolate, no yucky peanut), we headed back to the east side. i put linda and nate in a cab heading uptown and i called it a night. normally, i would have hit the streets again but the frigid temperatures curtailed my desires.

on saturday, after putting in a full day of work, i headed uptown on saturday to visit nate and linda at linda's mom's flat on 148th and 7th. she has the most magnificent view of the entire manhattan skyline. it's just awesome. they were putting up christmas decorations and i was reminded of what a wonderful place this is to spend the holidays.

and these giant ornaments are just the coolest!


i spent about 90 minutes with the fam and then headed downtown to do dinner with CM. i always look forward to these meetings because the conversation is always so stimulating. we met at a thai joint on the yupper west. the food was great, the wine was better and the conversation superb. it was a very good time.

again, i would have hung out after we parted because it was still early. but with the windchill cutting through my gloves like a knife, my hands felts as though they were broken. so, i hopped my chilly ass on the 1 train, transferred to the e and headed back to chelsea, a part of town that i'm madly in love with now.

i love the cobblestone streets, the bars, the bakeries, the shops and the people. it reminds me a lot of london. i stay at this place called the jane, an old residential building that once housed the survivors of the titanic. the rooms are all designed like a ship's cabin (i.e. small) and there are shared loos. i like it here for several reasons. one, the location; two, it's clean and quiet; and three, it's $99 a night.

last night, however, i thought i was going to die. the rooms have no thermostats and the steam heat was on full blast. to keep from melting i had to turn on the air conditioning, which offered little relief, and pat my self down with damp cloths.

sometimes, you really do get what you pay for!

i'm also digging the bk. like chelsea and the east village, there was never any reason to go to brooklyn unless someone you know had died. wow. that's no longer the case. the bk is seriously what's up. i discovered this a couple of years back, but it was reinforced on a recent press trip i took retracing the steps of the late biggie smalls. it was hosted by his mother, viola wallace (below), who was cooler than she ought to be!

although i had originally planned on staying in new york longer i'm leaving tomorrow night. the cold weather and the stress of the past three weeks have made me weary and hungry for my own bed, my bike, my car and the southern california sunshine.

i'll definitely be back here, however, when the seasons change. you can catch me having a pinot noir at bar 51, chowing down on the soy soul chicken at red bamboo in the west village, purusing the stacks at strand and virgin records, making sure harvey is still in the building, hooking up with CM and exploring new culinary options.

spring can't come soon enough!