Seven Things We Won't Miss

I've lived in New York for ten years.  I moved here when I finished college and spent five of those ten years sharing tiny apartments with awesome roommates in Manhattan.  After I met S, we moved to Brooklyn where we have been for the past five years.  S moved here immediately following college (way back in the day, before I moved here), but he packed up and headed South for grad school after only a year.  But the city never left his soul, and he came back.  He has been here for the past 6 years. 

New York is a city that we both love inside and out.  It's a city that oozes with energy and fun and excitement, but it is also a city with community and friends and lazy afternoons in the park. It is a city we will greatly miss.  And while S and I could sit around waxing nostalgic and discussing all the things we will miss about New York, there are also a few things that we absolutely will NOT miss about this city.  Some things that we are actually excited to put behind us and that make planning this huge career/lifestyle change all the more exciting.  What are they?  Well since you asked...

7 things we won't miss:

• Urine Scented Subways.  Yes, the subways are convenient when trying to get from Point A to Point B and they're part of what keeps this city functioning from day to day, but honestly, they stink.  Like pee.  Like a big stinky toilet, and it ain't pretty.  Some stations smell worse than others, but every station  still has that unmistakable odor every time you descend underground.  That smell will not be missed.
• While we're discussing the subway, let's talk about service disruptions on the weekends, which is another thing that will not be missed.  You see, whenever the Metro Transit Authority decides something needs fixing, they do it on the weekend.  Okay, I get that.  No one wants their weekday commutes thrown out of whack.  But unfortunately it means your normal routes and regular trains are probably not running on the correct schedule, if at all.  Sure, sure, the MTA tried to make it easier on passengers by creating The Weekender, a nifty little map that tells you all the changes, cancellations of service and whatnot, but it still sucks.  Spend 1.5 hours trying to travel what in the end amounts to 3 miles?  No thank you. That is why we rarely go into the city on the weekends. Or we drive.
• Wait, did I say drive?  Yes. And we drive over potholes the size of craters.  We will not miss those potholes.  And neither will our car.  And neither will our right wheel hubcap that we lost somewhere around Exit  31 on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.  S still claims that pothole just came out of nowhere.  Yeah right.  Bye-bye hubcap and adios potholes.
• The lack of closet space.  We love our apartment, but we have two closets in the whole place. And yeah, that just doesn't cut it.  Our poor son, E, doesn't even get one.  Why?  Because Mommy uses his while Daddy uses the one in our bedroom.  His clothes have been relegated to a three-drawer dresser and Tupperware bins under his crib.  Poor kid.  At least he has his own toy box.
• Dishwashers.  You don't find many in NYC apartments, and boy do I MISS dishwashers.  I haven't had one in TEN YEARS.  S will tell you that I would rather scrub toilets with my bare hands than wash even the smallest dish, and he would be right.  I hate washing dishes and I actually dream about the day I can take a crusted pot or pan and toss it in the dishwasher without a care in the world.  Cascade can do all the work for me.  I don't mind.  Really, I don't.
• Winter.  I was born and raised in the South.  I had seen snow once before moving up here and that was during a freak snow storm when I was seven.  And by storm I mean 2 inches that melted the next day. While snow days here can be beautiful, that beauty usually lasts for the first 2 hours.  After that, all the bus exhaust and speeding taxis turn it into an obstacle course of black slush.  The whole city turns grey and depressing and cold.  None of that will be missed.
• And finally, the high cost of EVERYTHING.  S and I have grown used to the obscenely expensive rents, the high cost of food, gas, etc., but it is still refreshing to travel outside of the city and purchase, say, a beer for $3 instead of $7.  I can still remember one of my first trips back home after living in NY for a year.  I offered to buy the first round of drinks for myself and three friends, and when the bar tender told me the amount I handed him two $20 bills for what I thought was a $30 tab.  The bar tender handed one of those $20 back to me immediately and continued to make change from the other $20. Turns out the tab was $13, not $30. My jaw dropped.  Here I was thinking $30 was cheap for four drinks and they weren't even that much.  Sigh.  No, we will not miss those outrages prices.  

But with all that said, we will still miss living here and we plan to come back to visit often.  Tune in next time for a list of things we WILL miss about this place.  Hint: another park besides Central Park.