Stand clear of the closing doors, please.

She's a "real" New Yorker folx.

What a time it is.

I am continuing on with the subscription donation project. And, in fact, I am restarting it…now. The organization for August is the Entertainment Community Fund, a fund that supports workers in the entertainment industry, including those who are affected by the current strikes.

If you are new here (welcome!) or need a refresher, you can always find more details of the project on my About page. The About page was recently updated so it is so fresh and so clean clean. Also, if you want to be a matching donor, let me know.

This newsletter means a lot to me. If you are connecting with the work at all, please consider clicking the heart button and/or leaving a comment and/or sharing it. We’ve got the whole city at our feet and I could always use more buddies.

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I’ve been thinking about this particular month for a long time. 

Okay, that’s not totally true. When I walked into the room I sublet when I first arrived in New York, I thought, “I’ll get through grad school and reassess.”

Okay, that is also not totally true. When I walked up the ramp in the Spokane International Airport with two suitcases and a backpack, refusing to turn around to look at my family for symbolic reasons, I thought, “I’ll give it a decade, and then see what happens.”

OKAY, who knows if that is true?? It was a while ago. I barely remember what I did yesterday. So. 

But what I do know is that it is ten years later and I’m still here. It is ten years later and I still like it here. It is ten years later and that means it is the official start of my

Depending upon what lore you believe, it is either seven years or ten years in the city that makes you a “real” New Yorker. I figure I basically have both. Well, I do have both in actual years. But, my first three years in the city were in grad school and that is simply a different New York than just living here. I had loans contributing to my living expenses, I had classes, I had activities, and I had friends already built into the equation. In a post-educational setting, it is a different city to navigate. So, I’m at ten years with grad school or seven years minus grad school and any way you stack it, I’ve got the requirements covered. 

She’s a “real” New Yorker, folx.

For many transplants this milestone might come and go without much notice. Enmeshed in the city, it’s just another day. For many born and raised New Yorkers, it is not an actual thing. Or they hit the milestone when they were ten years old and that’s a different sort of party. For others, it might be an acknowledged time but a quick one— a celebratory dinner, a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, a post on instagram.

I am not any of those kinds of people. I am a highly sentimental and nostalgic kind of person. I am a person who has spent a good portion of their life not feeling like I had real roots, even in the place I grew up. I am a person who likes any excuse to do activities, something out of the norm. I am a person who has spent years trying not to feel weird focusing on myself, letting other people focus on me, and celebrating myself a little bit. 

I still feel weird about it. But I’m gonna do it anyway.

August 22nd is my official ten year mark in the city. My original plan was to focus all activities and/or celebrations in the month of August. But, there were a couple of roadblocks to this level of ambition: 1) that would be so many activities to try and fit into 31 days and b) a lot of the stuff I want to do will cost money and, as we know, I got laid off in May so my financial situation is not so stable. And also, to be fully realistic, I wouldn’t have been able to pay for everything on the list even with a job so…my twinkling city light-eyes were a little bit big for my bank account.

Instead of these roadblocks being…well, roadblocks, I saw them as opportunity. It’s an opportunity to not push my introverted soul into doing too many things too quickly, particularly after nearly three years of doing so little outside (for good reason, obviously). It’s an opportunity to truly take my time and savor the place that I live. It’s an opportunity to make lasting changes in my life in regards to stamina, how I interact with the world, and my recharge mechanisms. 

I decided I’m going to take the whole of my tenth year to celebrate and do activities. And what are some of these activities, you might ask? Even if you didn’t ask that, I’m going to tell you anyway. 

I’m going to be out-and-about as both tourist and New Yorker. Activities will be both new to me and old standbys. There will be museums, lots of restaurants, fancy drinks, cemeteries, and parks. Maybe I’ll finally see Hamilton on stage! Or Chicago! I feel the urge to take some sort of class— cooking, chocolate making, ceramics, tap dance, what have you. A staycation or two sounds nice. Maybe at the TWA Hotel and/or the Plaza. I have a plan to walk Manhattan from top to tail, a cool 15 miles. I’ll revisit the Museum of Natural History, which was the museum I went to on my first full day here. Of course, I want a New York themed tattoo. That one will require some savings but the thoughts are percolating. 

This is a partial list, but you get the idea. I’m always up for more suggestions too, particularly of classic tourist things that people actually like to do. (And if you are my friend and live in or happen to visit New York and want to join for an activity or two, let me know.)

I’ll wax poetic as to what the last ten years have actually meant at some point, probably. Although, if you need some poetics before then, here’s the NYC-aversary post from last year. For now, this is the announcement and the start of one of my explorations for the next bit of time. (Something called Queer Renaissance might be coming as well…so…)

And, actually, NYC decade-aversary has already begun. You basically get two newsletters for the price of one. It began on August 1st with an activity that was punctuated with a confetti cannon. Seems almost too fitting if you ask me.

One of the activities on my list is to see more live music. I am not stranger to live theatre, of course, but I can probably count the concerts I’ve seen on one hand. So, when my good friend and all around-badass Shayna texted to see if I wanted to go to a concert with her, I said yes. I did not know much of the band but I would be happy to accompany her, I said. 

When I’ve told a couple of people what concert I went to, they said they wouldn’t have guessed it in a million years which I actually love. My music preferences are truly all over the place. And while attending this particular concert was not necessarily a symptom of that, I do like to maintain some unpredictability. I have so little of it to begin with and I will hold on to what I do have, thank you very much.

We saw Fall Out Boy at Forest Hills Stadium. 

Let me paint you a word picture of the person I was around the time when Fall Out Boy arrived on the scene: I listened almost exclusively to musicals. In a time when I could have been living fully and musically in my teenage angst, I was making my best friend sing “Take Me or Leave Me” from Rent any chance I got. I knew all Broadway musicals from 1999-2005 backwards and forwards and would sing and dance along with their Tony performances. I sang “Gimme Gimme” from Thoroughly Modern Millie for my high school show choir end-of-year concert. Sure, there was depression but there were also musicals!  

Shayna, however, was someone who was listening to Fall Out Boy. She was also doing theatre but her music tastes ranged wider than mine, anyway. 

This concert was important for me because it was the first day of my NYC decade-aversary and I was already checking something off this list. This concert was important for Shayna because she loves Fall Out Boy, of course, and also for some other reasons that could probably be called an unwinding and a catharsis of sorts. That’s not my story to tell but I will say, I was incredibly happy to be able to join her for the concert. And am just generally proud of her. For that and overall. In life. 

Anyway, I had a great time. 

Forest Hills Stadium is only about a 25/30 minute train ride from my apartment so it seems hilarious that I had never been there before. It’s a gorgeous venue. They have great food and it’s outdoors. It’s big but not too big to be overwhelming which was key. You can see the band or performers from anywhere. The weather was incredible that night and there was a Super Moon. We couldn’t see it but we knew it was there. The sunset really showed off too.

The concert started at 530p and Fall Out Boy had three openers: Games We Play, Royal & the Serpent, and Bring Me the Horizon. Knowing that I would be writing about the concert for this week’s newsletter, I jotted down the following notes:

Games We Play 
“Pete Wentz is going to airdrop you our new song in the next 10 minutes.”

Royal & the Serpent
lady boss
Pledge of allegiance for the queers
Red microphone

Bring Me the Horizon
Accent (They were from England so…)
"I do understand. We're a bit shit"

The openers were pretty good overall; I have some new songs to add to the rotation at least. 

Fall Out Boy came on about 8p, which I thought was pretty good. From what I can tell they played a bunch of the classics which everyone loved. I knew maybe two songs? And one of them was because of Pitch Perfect 2. 

It was so fun. 

Honestly, I think it was great that I didn’t know much about Fall Out Boy or their music before going to the concert. That wasn’t the point of me going in the first place but it also meant that I could be there, be present, and in the moment. I really let the music wash over me and moved with the energy of the stadium. I tried to note all the cool stuff on stage and marveled at the stamina of the musicians. Both Shayna and I observed the demographics of the crowd with great delight. It was truly generations— there were a lot around our general age but also, parents and kids, people in full suits and pearls, and very cool teens who I would be afraid of if I ran into them in real life. Also my friend David! Who just happened to be sitting right behind us. 

There is something so special about being able to experience someone’s deep joy with them. It is something I always love and feel so honored to be included in. It’s hard to put into words what those moments feel like. It’s a connection to another person you truly can’t get in any other way. It’s ineffable but also very tangible. In some ways, those are moments I wish I could trap in a jar like fireflies. In other ways, I’m so happy they are visceral and immediate and then scatter like dandelion seeds to the wind. Those moments have to be temporary because they immediately become memories you get to keep. 

If you haven’t sat with someone in their joy lately, I highly recommend. 10/10 will do again. 

Fall Out Boy put on a great concert with some really great moments. There was literal magic that happened. Patrick Stump sat down at the piano to play some songs and said, “I feel like I may still need some therapy” which made me laugh. Gym Class Heroes made an appearance. And I got to be with a friend I haven’t seen in a while. 

At one point, Pete Wentz was talking about his family who grew up in Queens and all the incredible people who have played at the Forest Hills Stadium. He talked about how special it was to be able to share art with people and how there must have been something in the air in Queens to bring everyone here. Some sprinkles of something.

He said, “And maybe tonight there's a few more sprinkles in the air.”

And I felt that deeply in my bones.

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This week, paying subscribers got…nothing. I missed another week. Apparently, I’m a twice monthly sort of paid subscriber newsletter-er. I feel like that makes it all the more mysterious so if that sounds intriguing to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber. And for the whole month of August, paid subscriptions are 10% off.