Herbert Huncke Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Just got back from a long weekend in New York City, where I lived and worked for several years after law school but hadn’t visited in almost two decades. A place as insistent and sprawling as New York stakes a large claim in a person’s psyche, I think, and indeed there were places in the city I chose not to visit, simply to avoid the mnemonic thunderstorms that surely would have followed me around afterward. I generally enjoyed the trip, though Manhattan seems more crowded and expensive than ever, and my ability to cover long distances by foot—important on those long between-the-avenue blocks—has diminished markedly. Some high points: Broadway (Pati and the girls and I saw an unheralded show that was nevertheless almost criminally joyous and entertaining); Bryant Park, thronged with sun-worshipping mid-towners; Central Park (on a gorgeous breezy day it stood as a sort of living, shimmering tree museum, resplendent and magnificent, obviously lovingly maintained); the food (astonishing, if pricey); the New York Public Library (and its fascinating current ‘6os-flavored exhibition, “You Say You Want a Revolution”); and of course the unbeatable people watching, featuring a never-ending cast of humans of every size, shape, and ethnic group under the sun. (I talked to three cab drivers on the trip, young men from, respectively, Bangladesh, Mali, and Egypt, this last individual a Coptic Christian who relayed his satisfaction with the progress his fellow worshipers have made in establishing churches not only in New York but now, he said, every state in the union.) Low points: the subway (decrepit and baleful again, after a sort of mini-renaissance in the 80s and early 90s); the Brooklyn Bridge (it might have been easier to swim across the East River, such were the crowds on the span); and not being able to see anyone at the wonderful school where I used to teach, Saint David’s, due to what seemed like a pretty comprehensive rehab/expansion project. I’m back in Austin now, and despite, or perhaps because of, the 103-degree heat, it feels like home. I’m older now and set in my ways and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t live in NYC again. But hey, I’m glad—and maybe a little proud—I did. There’s no other place like it.