Hudson Valley, NY
I grew up in the Hudson Valley, surrounded by beautiful green trees, dairy farms, and dirt roads. My mental map was basically my house and the bus route to school. That was my world.
As I got older I started hanging out at my best friend’s house a lot. I’d have my parents drop me off at the mall and wander around causing havoc, or sneak into movies at the theater. My world was expanding.
I’m very lucky to have grown up a train ride away from the city. The train station was only about 15 minutes from my house. The kids I knew who had moved up from Manhattan were always the coolest, the most street smart. Everyone cool I knew went there or had plans to move there, or had just moved back.
When I was 16 I asked my parents if I could go to a the 2600 Hacker Conference HOPE. Somehow, they agreed. It would be my first time taking the train into the city on my own.
My mental map expanded as I watched the countryside turn into city from the window of a Metro North train. The train took me from rural upstate New York, down through New Jersey, into Manhattan.
New York, NY
When the train arrived in New York I found myself in Penn Station, the busiest train station in the western hemisphere. I was intoxicated by the city and all of it’s exceedingly busy inhabitants. I tried to imagine their lives, wondering “who are these people who get to LIVE here?”.
Luckily for 16-year-old me, the HOPE Conference was being held at the Pennsylvania Hotel, right across the street from Penn Station. I think that’s part of the reason my parents let me go. Penn Station would become my ‘home base’ in New York City, the place all of my journeys began.
On the final night of the conference, the hackers I’d been hanging out with came up with a plan. I don’t remember exactly how, but we ended up on a freight elevator with an access key to the roof. We walked to the edge and looked down 33rd street to see the Empire State Building lit up. So close it felt like we were touching it. “So this is New York?” I thought. This enormous unattainable city felt smaller, understandable. I started to feel comfortable around Penn Station. I knew it. It wasn’t much, but I knew it. My mental map had changed.
As a teenager I kept going to the city and slowly expanded my mental map to cover the streets around Penn Station more, and the areas around venues where I would see bands I liked.
But mostly it was a disconnected understanding. I would take the train in, go to the venue, try to make it back to the station in time for the last train home around 1am (otherwise I’d need to sleep in Grand Central Station until the next train came at 9am, which sucks).
Oakland, California
Then at 19 I took a new job at a start-up in San Francisco. I packed my whole life into a car and rove to California. I was in an entirely new place, across the country from where I grew up. Realizing how expensive it was to live in San Francisco, I decided to see some places in Oakland. As soon as I got off the train I fell in love.
I found a perfect place Downtown, a few blocks from City Hall and Frank Ogawa Plaza, which housed a huge old Oak tree, the symbol of the city. The BART station was a quick walk to city center. I’d walk around Lake Merritt after work get handmade noodles in Chinatown on the weekend.
San Francisco, CA
Living in Oakland and working in San Francisco I had 2 completely new mental maps, and my world was rapidly expanding. When I first drove to the bay area, the first hotel I stayed at was the true-to-it’s-name Best Value Inn in SoMa. It formed the new center of my new world. After I had spent all my hotel budget but still hadn’t found an apartment, I found a couch I could crash on using Couchsurfing.com. The apartment was directly across from AT&T stadium and you could hear the crowd erupt for every good hit. I felt like I was in the middle of everything. On the weekends I’d go to the Ferry Building for fresh bread and the farmer’s market.
I also began exploring and falling in love with SoMa, which unlike the rest of San Francisco was relatively walkable and full of great coffee shops and hipsters making art. It was where I felt most comfortable in San Francisco.
Back to New York City
After a year and a half in the Bay, I realized that I missed New York and that I wanted to work in journalism. I moved back and began my job as the Graphics Editor at a small news site.
I was much more comfortable with living in a city, and growing up I’d always wanted to live in New York. So I decided to find an apartment of Brooklyn. I had my tiny mental map of New York from growing up, but living in the city you start exploring new places just because you have to. After 2 years, I’d walked around pretty much everywhere south of 34th street, and plenty of other places too.
