Dispatch from the Jersey Shore

A family tradition that began soon after we started our own family was to vacation with our in-laws on Long Beach Island. Traditionally we have gone after Labor Day when the crowds were smaller, but our kids starting pre-K in early September meant we had to brave the more crowded island during the height of the summer season.

Human beings have a need to feel the power of nature around them. Living in a big city has many advantages that cannot be replicated elsewhere, and I don’t regret making New York City my home for a minute. Where else in the world can you see Renoir’s By the Seashore, the New York Yankees, and NoRedeeming Social Value all in the same day?

But a large city requires the conquest of nature on a large scale. Skyscrapers are their own majestic entity, they cannot compete for space with California Redwoods or the cresting waves of the Atlantic Ocean—my friends in the Rockaways do manage to surf in the Atlantic Ocean, miles away from these skyscrapers.

We lose something when we commit to living in a city, our awe is taken up by what mankind has achieved, and we lost the much-needed perspective of the power of the Earth itself. I believe that human beings need regular contact with nature in order to keep our minds right and in the general order of things. Being close to nature is the way human beings are supposed to be. We did not evolve from glass towers or produced in a sterile, state-of-the-art lab. We were born from the savages that evolved from organisms born of mud, shaped by our ancestors need to know and respect the murderously indifferent natural world around them. If we do not keep in contact with this primal truth in some consistent way, we lose our bearings and don’t function well. Though I have worked in Manhattan consistently for nearly two decades, I have always tried to walk through a park at least once a day in order to enjoy some greenery.

Long Beach Island is a tourist destination that does not put on airs of being otherwise. There are people who live there all year, but most of the people you seen between late May and mid-September aren’t from here. The island understands that it is a great destination that attracts people for its natural beauty and the accessibility of its beaches. There is a respectability that locals and tourists alike embrace their roles. There is a goodness and truth in that honesty. While you are here you can enjoy the arts at the SurflightTheatre and then enjoy singing waiters and waitresses at the Show Place Ice Cream Parlor.

But the miles of beach are what bring people here, and a trip here is not a success unless you spend some time on the beach.

While I try to stay out of the sun, I have learned to appreciate sitting on Long Beach Island and doing as little as possible. A few walks into the ocean though will give you an appreciation of the greatness and vastness of the ocean in front of you. An expanse of blue (that appears green when you’re up close) that stretches to the horizon.

Going deeper into the ocean, the current was more powerful and the water cooler. The power of this ocean, even at this calm period, was immense. You can’t help but be pushed and tossed around by the waves. A sting ray darted into my sight, close to a young boy on a body board but turned and was just as quickly out of sight. A tidal pool left behind dozens of tiny fish, numerous shells, and even a small live crab for children to marvel at.

Even when the heat is at its most punishing, the breeze from the ocean offers a cooling respite. Time moves quickly when you are away from the churning world of commerce and asphalt, and I must soon return to that savage expanse. I am grateful for the time I have here where the ocean calls the shots and people are united in their efforts to get away for a little while.

The Anti-Wanderlust of Wintertime New York

There is a habit of New Yorkers to head South for the winter once they’ve reached a certain age or level of financial security. I can understand why but will fight to stay north for the winter as long as I can.

The deep chill of a January and February in New York can be no fun. The outdoors is windblown and desolate, and the normal stroll through the city that is normally a joy is an appointment with wincing pain. The chill combined with the dry air of the indoor heat stresses and fractures the skin, our eyes tear with windy cold, and we fumble for our gloves and try to find the way to both be agile of hand and not feel frostbitten.

But give me the most frozen winter on record and it will still be preferable to the constantly warmer climate of regions south. I can say this with certainty as I’ve had to go to Florida twice in the past three weeks for work and don’t wish to live in a perpetual spring and summer all year.

My first trip to the Fort Lauderdale area earlier in January was a suitable introduction to the tourist-fueled aquamarine madness of South Florida. Just because your company sends you someplace nice for work doesn’t mean that the real word stops, and it’s hard to enjoy the seaside camaraderie when you know a thousand emails are piling up on your laptop.

One of the more interesting parts of the trip was talking to the Uber drivers that ferried me about. In one evening I met a woman from Costa Rica who was an animal rights activist and got caught up in some controversy in her home country around money she raised for abused animals. Later on that night I had a driver whose full-time job was inspecting airplanes that were manufactured; he had been burned in a recent divorce settlement but was working his way back to fiscal and emotional health and had no problem telling a perfect stranger that (well, Uber passengers aren’t perfect strangers – the drivers arrive knowing your first name and have the right to charge your credit card; this may count as intimacy in this day and age).

My second trip to Florida was to attend a financial conference, the biggest of its kind for the investing niche it represents. It was so popular that I could not get a room at the hotel where the conference was held, and instead found shelter a few minutes’ drive away at the Margaritaville of Hollywood Florida.

As it sounds the Margaritaville is a hotel chain based on Jimmy Buffet’s tropical music. And despite this it’s actually a nice place. The room I had was nice with a balcony that had an ocean view. When I arrived, I thought the woman ahead of me at the check-in desk was wearing a pair of beige pants that made her look crudely exposed. But I was mistaken: my fellow hotel guest was speaking to the hotel clerk wearing nothing below the waist except a flimsy G-string bikini bottom and a pair of flip flops. This is what Floridians refer to as “business casual.”

Again, it was the cab drivers that wind up giving you a better flavor for the place. On my final day in Florida, I got to speak with a driver who had moved to Florida from New Jersey in 1973 (you meet very few native-born Floridians in Florida) and had seen it change tremendously. He liked it when it was less populated and he was younger. He had the easygoing manner of someone who had escaped the rat race years ago and could enjoy whatever life threw at him. He was a moderate liberal Yankee who was at ease with the easygoing ways of South Florida and could drink all afternoon with more right-wing friends and still go home friends. He maneuvered around the traffic islands and stoplights with an ease that escapes many of the ride-share drivers of today’s generation. It was a good way to begin my final day in the Sunshine State.

As the conference wound down, people were finishing up their business and making arrangements to get out of town. I managed to book an earlier flight and quickly caught a cab to the airport.

It was 75 degrees when I flew out of Fort Lauderdale and 39 degrees when I landed in New York. It was a strong slap in the face of cold air, but it felt like home.

A dispatch from the New Jersey shore

New York City is such an intense and captivating force that New Yorkers must all leave their beloved Gotham from time to time for areas more peaceful and serene, places where the air is cooler and the pace of things slower. City life is an immense trade-off. We have the greatest art and culture in the world but must endure great hardships, annoyances, and inconveniences. It’s this crucible that makes our standards so high and our quest for excellence so unforgiving.

These past few days have found me on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, a beautiful beach community that is best visited after Labor Day, when the summer season is considered officially over. Plenty of other people have had this idea also. So the island is not a ghost town but can look that way at times if you turn down one of the quieter streets. The restaurants are starting to board up for the fall and winter or have at least cut down their summer hours.

Long Beach Island is one long excuse to sit and marvel at the beach and ocean. It is a thin, string-bean like island that is geared towards renting to or selling to people coming here for the summer. It floods easily and the oncoming series of hurricanes that are lined up to punch the United States now are on the top of everyone’s mind.  

While this end-of-summer escape is welcome, the travails of life remain. This time of year especially, the days around September 11, are times when we are reminded about the fleeting nature of our very existence and the fact that life commands us to enjoy every moment.

This awareness does not all have to come in tragic form. I formed a habit of quickly taking photos of the sand castles I help my children build, because before long one of my daughters will crush them quickly without hesitation. She is not yet four years old yet she is a destroyer of worlds. She has not yet grasped the value of leaving something behind that is beautiful in part because of its vulnerability. It is more fun for her to feel that collapse of the cool, wet sand under her feet.

Long Beach Island is a place where you will miss out if you don’t take the time to walk along the beach at night and enjoy the light of the moon reflecting on the ocean. It is where the best thing to do is to sit on the sand under an umbrella and attempt to clear your mind of everything. The beauty of the landscape belies the chaotic, violent, and tragic nature of our lives, which is why we seek to surround ourselves with beauty as much as possible. The world will hand us enough ugly all our lives.

In a few days my family will return to New York City, which has now been rebuilding for more than 16 years since the September 11 attacks. A whole new generation of New Yorkers are alive who did not know life before that day. Our responsibility, among many, is to give this generation an appreciation of all that we have given them as family and all that we have built as a people, because it could very easily not be here tomorrow. 

Being outside civilization is good for you

This August is a perfect time to be outside of civilization. I recently experienced this when I went camping with my family in the Catskill Mountains, about 100 miles north of New York City.

City dwellers take pride in being in the center of it all, in being connected to what is happening here and now. Our ability to navigate our asphalt jungle is another source of pride, the result of finding our way, learning the ins and outs of each place and its peculiarities, being able to surf upon this insider knowledge smoothly.

But it was vacation time and I took pains to be ready to unplug. My boss told me to enjoy my vacation, and that he didn’t want to hear from me unless I had video me wrestling a bear into submission or something equally sensationally bear-related.

On the way up to the mountains though, real life interfered and I got some work-related calls. I felt they could wait and I kept driving, vowing to look at my phone again only when we managed to get our tent set up and hot dogs on the grill.

It was raining when we pulled into the Woodland Valley Campground, which has plastered bear warnings on almost every single surface imaginable. It even has wooden bear silhouettes attached to its fence by the road as you enter; there is no missing these warnings unless you are blind. Even then, the woman at the campsite office reminded me to lock up all of our food in our car, noting that a young male black bear, recently made to live on his own by his mother, was known to frequent the area.

The heavy tree canopy allowed us to set up our tent and get a fire going before things got soaked. Once things were settled, I looked at my phone again, and realized that the emails and calls I had received could not wait. I tried to respond only to find that we had no signal. None. We were less than 100 miles away from the greatest metropolis in the history of the Earth and we could not connect to that great civilization.

I went to the campsite office to see if there was any information on getting a Wi-Fi connection. I’d even pay a little extra for it. They must have that, surely. ‘Need Wi-Fi?’ read a sign, it was followed by the address and the infrequent hours of operation of the Phoenicia,New York public library, which was about six miles away.

“I have to respond to these emails,” I told my wife. They were the result of a lot of work on my part and not doing so would let down a good friend I have known personally and professionally for a long time. I prepared an email on my phone asking people to email me back and schedule a call for a few days later, so I could drive back into town the next day to retrieve whatever emails they had sent me. A few hours later, after we had feasted on hot dogs and s’mores and put the children to bed, I made the drive into town through the dark mountain roads in the rain. I hoped that I wouldn’t have to go very far before I got reception, and kept my phone within sight.

I wound up driving all the way into town and parking at a gas station in Phoenicia that was across the street from several bars and restaurants and an antique store called TheMystery Spot. It was night and I didn’t even know if the gas station was open. I tried to get signal, and then tried again. Finally, after several tries, I had signal long enough to send my email. I was joyous. I celebrated by walking into the convenience store and buying some diet Pepsi and two cigarillos.

I drove back to the campsite and was the last one awake in our tent when the rain became a deluge. Moisture on the inside of the tent would occasionally rain down on my face, and I examined every sound outside the tent for its likeliness of being a black bear.

The next afternoon, I drove back into town and parked near the same gas station in order to get mobile phone reception. I got the emails I needed and learned I had a call scheduled in two days. I collected whatever other messages would register on my and my wife’s phones and then bought some supplies at the gas station convenience store.

Two days later it was time for my important work phone call and I had to drive to several different locations in town to get reception, even then the call dropped three times and I begged forgiveness of the person I was speaking with and his secretary.

I got through the call and after buying more ice at the gas station, drove back to the camp site, stopping here and there to take some photos along the way. We left later that day, as rain was forecast for our final day and we didn’t want to pack up during another downpour.

So in total my vacation saw me with only one full day completely unplugged. That’s not good. The trip was a success in every other way. My family got to experience nature, see interesting (non-bear) wildlife and get fresh air. My children spent four days with no television or tablet games, only family and books, and the weather was much cooler than in the city. I got to spend time playing with our children and take them to wade in the Esopus Creek. We hiked the trails of the campgrounds and ate lots of hot dogs, even for breakfast.

Arriving back, we found civilization had not improved much. Civic life continues to become more vile and violent, and to comment on events of the day has become a futile exercise.

Being outside civilization is a good thing. We cannot escape it but in short bursts, and we must learn to savor these. 

(Temporary) Escape from New York

It is time to escape New York for a week as our beloved city continues to bake in the summer heat. We are headed to Cape Ann, Massachusetts to attend a friend’s wedding and then enjoy the New England coast.

Summers in New York City are marked in part by our efforts to go elsewhere as weekend getaways snarl traffic on Friday and Sunday nights and holiday weekends can send people away from the five boroughs in droves.

I find it more enjoyable to stay in the city during some of the more popular times to leave. Going around the city on Labor Day can make New York feel like a ghost town in parts.

But New Yorkers need to leave the city for long periods of time over the summer in order to maintain our sanity. New York is an intense and crowded place. It can get even more crowded and oppressive in the summertime as our transit system and the areas near where we work are flooded with slow-moving tourists who are often clueless about the way to behave in a big city and slow things down. We don’t hate tourists; we like and need tourists, but their increased presence intensifies an already strained existence.

And the often unrelenting humid heat of New York helps bring our regular misery stew to a high boil. The city traps the heat with its high buildings, blacktop and concrete, jacks it up a notch with the captured exhaust of car and bus traffic and tops it off with some extra hot blasts from air conditioning units. Too many weeks and months of New York City heat can drive you insane and long for someplace, anyplace, where you can enjoy looking at trees or relax with cool grass under your feet.

When I was growing up my family made Lake George in upstate New York our regular vacation spot. Lake George is far enough north that it is cool at night and not obscenely hot during the day. You can see lots of stars in the sky and the place is enough of a popular tourist destination that they have large amusement parks. There are also historic forts you can visit that are rich in history of the Revolutionary and French and Indian Wars.

This is the first year my wife and I are taking our daughters on a vacation. We had a brief visit in Maine with family but we are about to embark on our first vacation of the four of us as a unit and we are heading to Cape Ann, Massachusetts.

My father’s family vacationed in Cape Ann when my Dad was growing up and he and my aunts and uncles were photographed in front of the Fisherman’s Memorial in Gloucester. We plan to recreate these photos as best we can with our girls. Rockport is also going to be having its annual Lobster Fest while we are there and I have promised to attend.

I plan on eating seafood, visiting with friends and otherwise doing as little as possible. It’s not too late to plan your own summer escape from New York. Be sure it’s temporary. 

A Long Angry Summer is Coming

Local Law 11 is the ordnance in New York City that requires all air conditioners be installed with proper reinforcement on multi-dwelling buildings. It’s good that this law exists because too many people are doing what I did and installing their air conditioners with a jerry rigged effort involving a 2x4, cardboard and tape. People without drills still need to keep cool too.

So in our apartment we recently had a new air conditioned installed in the manner that meets this requirement. Our old air conditioner was broken anyway. The problem is that the company we bought this service from installed the wrong air conditioner (#FirstWorldProblems). They’re coming back to replace it, and just in time. The official summer season starts this coming Memorial Day weekend and it’s going to be a long, angry summer.

Despite the harsh, snow-heavy winter, we had a record-breaking warm March and we’ve already seen temperatures approach the 90s before May hit double-digits.

The subways are getting more crowded and service is deteriorating even as fares increase. People cram on to subway cars even when there’s really no room. Being pressed up against strangers is a lousy way to start your day, turning up the heat on this commuter bullshit sandwich is only going to make things worse tenfold. I’m surprised I have not seen more violence on the 7 train as people try to make room where there is none. Maybe the increased temperature will finally bring things to a boil.

New York, like the rest of America, is a melting pot that is always on the verge of boiling over into something ugly. Summer adds more tension to the played-out and media-fueled racial dramas that have come to consume our news feeds with controversies both real and manufactured.

But despite all of this, despite the humidity that turns my skin to an oily slick before I’m even done getting dressed for work, despite the fog of heat that shrouds you and clings to you through every day, despite the intense blowback heat reflected off of our streets and buildings and topped off with car exhaust, New York does not lose its magic over the summer.

Surviving summer in New York is like going into a hot tub filled with bum piss and meat sweat, but you haven’t lived in New York until you’ve been through a few summers here. There will be times you will retreat to the sanctum of a heavily air conditioned movie theater but be relieved to feel the awful yet real and true weather on your skin when you come out.

Living through summer in New York means being happy that on some weekends the city is less crowded, that many of the effete snobs who crowd our weekends are off in the Hamptons.

Summer in New York means not having to deal with people who would use summer as a verb. Summer in New York also means free Shakespeare in the parks, good people watching, ice cream trucks, air conditioning and iced coffee.

Living through a New York summer means you’ve endured a crucible that makes you a stronger person and a more seasoned urbanite.

New York City is a cauldron of fetid misery between June and August. Don’t miss it.