A Fond Farewell
By Brighid Mooney

At the time I'm writing this, I am just a few days away from moving out of New York.  This is a necessary, albeit tragic, step toward my uncertain future, my life's next adventure. Necessary in that my life is fairly static right now, and the world isn't. I shouldn't be either. Tragic in that I've come to love New York in the year and a half that it has been my home and I am quite sad to be leaving it already. Still eight and a half years from being able to call myself a real New Yorker (as per the arbitrary rules of someone), I may return to make up the rest of that time later on. But in the meantime, with the exception of my daily rush hour subway commute, the pervasive smell of garbage (and in the summer, hot garbage) and the unnerving feeling that someone is eventually going to run me over while I'm trying to cross 42nd Street, there are plenty of things that I'm going to miss terribly the minute I'm gone.

The little frozen yogurt stand across from Tompkin's Square Park (and the excellent frozen yogurt therein), which is still great even in the dead of winter. The Landmark Theater, the Film Forum, the Beacon.  St. Mark's Place, where I could buy vinyl records, a piercing or a bong. Greenwich Village, where I could get hopelessly, fantastically lost, and stare with wide-eyed wonder at the corner where West 10th Street intersects with West 4th. The Bowery Ballroom, CBGBs, Central Park. The guy who dances to Michael Jackson in the Union Square subway station. My first rodent-infested apartment on the Lower East Side. This city's willingness and ability to put on a really impressive protest/peace march. Of all the great and wonderful, or less than wonderful, utterly New York things that I will miss, one of my favorite moments was of seeing half a million people pour into the streets of Manhattan in a wave of solidarity on a blisteringly hot August day to file past Madison Square Garden in protest of the Republican National Convention. The sight of so many people, and the many placards with staunch, New Yorker witticisms like "No, Cheney, you go fuck yourself" almost brought a tear to my eye. I'll never forget it.

Neither will I forget all those months of riding the bus to work up First Avenue, watching all of the streets go by. The flowers in the spring. The snow in the winter. The prolonged sub-zero temperatures that persisted for the first two weeks of my New York residency. Battery Park and how you can look out at the famous Statue of Liberty while skyscrapers rise up just behind you. And so much else, everything else. Thomas Wolfe once said that "One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years." And I want to thank this city for embracing me and sucking me into its gravitational center and treating me indiscriminately like I belonged here, whether that was by a stranger giving up their seat on the subway, or an excitable crazy guy randomly threatening to kill me as I walked down the street. I know you didn't mean it, man. And even if you did ... thanks for not following through.

When Being There first got started, not only was I the New York arm of our little operation, but I was also the sole representative of the magazine this side of the 49th parallel. Things have grown since then, and the yanks have been catching up, but I hope that someday there will be someone who will take my place as Being There's New York correspondent. I know that people will continue moving here, in spite of terrorist threats and risings costs of living, for many of the same reasons I did. Because New York is one of the greatest cities in the world, and there really is no other place like it.

So, goodbye New York, thanks for everything and I hope to see you again someday...