What? Leave Manhattan? by Lisa Steinhart

What? Leave Manhattan?

I'll go soft, I tell you. I'll start to like the quiet and forget how I tolerated the pushing and shoving. I'll start to hate the subways -- no, not the way New Yorkers hate them, but in that out-of-towner, gee, everything's so much cleaner where we live kind of way. I'll lose my hostile edge and stop needing to bang on the hood of cabs that try to cut me off while I'm crossing the street.

I'm afraid that I'll start appreciating supermarkets with wider aisles and cheaper prices. I'll get used to putting groceries in the car instead of lugging bags home 15 blocks by foot, sweating in 30-degree weather from the effort, with my hands stinging from the handles of the bags digging into my skin through my gloves. God I love that!

I'm an addict, hooked on the drug N-Y-C. I need my fix of aggression and dirt and crowds and culture and constant activity on the streets.

If I leave, gone will be the days of the 10:00 p.m. phone call on a Wednesday night from a friend telling me to get in a cab and come downtown for a drink -- just one and then you can leave. You can't leave after just one drink when you have to travel on a train that has printed time schedules! Forget a last minute decision to walk home alone just so you can spend the rare, leisurely hour with the streets -- your old friend who kept you company when you had no one else.

Yes, there is more space out there. Trees, quiet -- it makes people feel good, makes some feel freer, I know. But to me, nothing speaks of freedom like running to the corner bodega at 1:00 in the morning for a hostess cupcake and milk and the early edition of the New York Times. Nothing says freedom like being able to meet friends for dinner, stop by a party, run to your other friend’s art exhibit just to show your face and still make a movie all in one night. How often do I still have nights like that? Never. But the point is I could if I wanted to at any time.

If I leave, what's to prevent me from becoming one of those scary, perky people I've heard exist outside the city who actually know and regularly acknowledge their neighbors when they see them out on the street? What if now when people from out of town come to visit, I actually feel compelled to pick them up from the airport? After all, do cabs even travel to where you're suggesting we move?

And please explain to me who, without access to Pat Kiernan, is going to read the morning papers to me. Exactly what number do they use out there to trigger a needed weather report? I currently get mine on the ones and at the risk of sounding difficult, I really don’t think any other number will do.

The suburbs to me are a sign of weakness. Don't look at me like that, I know you think I'm crazy, I know you're disgusted by my pretension. But it's true. It's a documented fact. Do you think it's a coincidence that the word suburb starts with sub, meaning below, beneath the urb for urban? I'm urban baby, get used to it!

Anyway, I won't be able to fall asleep out there with all that quiet. Without car alarms sounding as I lay down for the night, how will I know that I haven't entered that Twilight Zone episode where the man finds himself mysteriously alone in a town he doesn't recognize, only to learn he's been kidnapped and is living in an alien girl's dollhouse?

And, aren't you even worried about the garbage truck guys that I yell at every morning around 2:00 a.m. to quit screaming and to move that noisy excuse for a truck the hell away from our window ASAP? It gets lonely out there in the dark of night. Who will be there for them if we go?

Look, you can keep your SUVs. I spit on SUVs. Keep your big space and your mowed lawn, I've got Central Park any time I want, with no one barking at me on Saturday mornings to pick weeds. I’ll keep the stress, and the crowds, and the noise and the lights, and the paved streets where I've walked a million steps to think things through and talk things over -- steps that led me to discover a life so layered and diverse and rich and amazing that it cannot be left.