8 Million of My Closest Friends

Here's a new one for ya': I think New York City would be a cozy place to live. That's right. Nothing says cozy to me like 8 million plus people crammed onto 300 or so square miles. Such a peculiar impression of NYC. I don't think many, if any, would tell you they'd feel cozy in a city that never sleeps. For me, though, it's the character NYC has that gives it a cozy feel combined with the idea of having my own little refuge in the middle of all the chaos. For the small space obsessed, there's no better place to find a piece of minuscule real estate than New York. What a dichotomy it is; a city where everything is larger than life and in-your-face-BIG, the vast majority of residential space is tiny. With an enormous price tag, of course. But it's cozy to me to be able to retreat to a tiny slab and escape the constant barrage of people and noise. Sort of a port in a storm, if you will.



The character bestowed upon New York City is a big contributor to this coziness I feel when I am there. Take, for instance, grocery shopping. (There I go again with groceries.) Manhattan is not a city of strip malls. When I think of shopping for food in New York, I picture myself not so much at Zabar's, but in a corner market or "bodega" if you're attempting to go native. I love these places and I love that most trips to the "bodega" are not hour long, sprees of bulk purchases. Being a hugely pedestrian city, you can't double park your mini van on Columbus while the grocery porter loads your car with a month's supply of groceries. In New York, it's a totally different game. It's an appealing idea; popping into the corner deli/market on your way home from work and grabbing whatever it is you're craving for dinner and then taking it up to your sixth floor walk-up. Equally appealing is having groceries delivered to your front door. A self-proclaimed shut-in, I feel this is a service that should be taking the country by storm. I love that in New York you can have just about anything delivered at any time of day. No need to leave the apartment if you don't want to. Heaven, I tell you.





The historic nature of New York makes it cozy. Pre-war buildings and subway tiles are just two of my favorite examples. New York is an epicenter of the progressive and yet, hasn't forgotten from whence it came. I love that contrast.



Some will argue that I am romanticizing New York a bit; that it's a very hard and exhausting and insanely expensive place to live. Perhaps. But I've found that life is a trade-off and I don't think NYC would be any different. It all depends on what you're willing to sacrifice in the name of feeling comfortable and content and, yes, cozy, in your surroundings.