Keeping the Magic Alive

Or, why I paid $46 to ice skate at Rockefeller Center

When I moved to New York, I didn’t bother romanticizing it. No When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail or How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days aspirations of a loft apartment or walks on Riverside Drive and singing karaoke to the person I hated but secretly loved at a work dinner. No, I arrived without any rose-tinted glasses, tired and scared and hot and utterly bamboozle, wanting to leave but wanting to be a writer more. But three weeks later, my roommate moved in, and by moved in, I mean blew in. Blew in with her queen-sized mattress and the idea that New York was going to be romantic. Honestly, I hated her for a little bit, just for that.

Walk in New York and you can quickly see that it’s anything but romantic, as soon as your plan touches the tarmac. If you’re coming from Laguardia, Riker’s is in distance. From JFK, you’ll take the J train through dilapidated suburbs that aren’t suburbs, just Brooklyn. Should you be springing $60 to $100+ for a car to Manhattan, you’ll still sit in traffic as you inch past sidewalks laden with trash. Who knows? You may even spot a rat. There’s a perpetual stench in the city; it reeks of everything imaginable and unimaginable. I will only go as far to say that if you wished to start a metropolitan fertilizer farm, you need not look farther than setting up shop at the Bowery Street subway stop.

That’s, at least, what I’ll tell you. But my roommate (and friend!) would tell you differently.

She’s the one who printed photos for the wall, foraged for furniture, stick-on wallpapered everything, hung the canvas artwork. Because of her, we fashioned some haphazard semblance of a home, instead of just keeping house for the sake of a place to sleep. Every quarter, she meticulously plans roommate hangouts. She hosts parties and drags me along to events, and I begrudgingly obliged, grumpy but pleased she’s forcing me to have some mandatory fun. One of my favorite memories is the day she took us bookstore hopping, tried to set me up with a cute guy in said bookstore and then proceeded to literally waltz across the street in her pink coat under the season’s grayest cloud.

I won’t sugarcoat it. New York is a tough place to exist, and you have to really want it or it’s just not going to work. And it will beat you down—even the most resilient. A few months ago my roommate told me she probably wouldn’t be resigning the lease next year and that she’d be leaving the city. Suddenly, our roles were flipped. Now I was the one trying to keep the magic alive. The stakes could not be higher: I stand to lose one of my closest friends here.

One day in the late summer, we ventured out to go on a “date”, due, in part, to the lack of eligible bachelors. I obviously had an agenda when proposing our outing—to prove that New York could still have the possibility to be magical, somehow.

We ate breakfast for dinner (Clinton Street, of course) and then ambled down the sidewalks through East Village, the westward ones aglow in the fading summer light. You know how we say “sun kissed”? It was exactly that. And sometimes, the light hits just right and you think, damn, I’m actually here. Here, in the case, being, New York.

“Look!” I cried, practically begging, willing this sunset to be just enough to keep the needle from sliding towards the end of the gauge that reads “resignation”. “It’s like a movie!”

This relentless pursuit of keeping the magic alive has continued, mainly manifested in the form of a bucket list of things that we must do together before she leaves. Selfishly, it’s a manifesto about why she should stay. And that’s how we ended up forking over $46 to ice skate at Rockefeller, and hauling ourselves out of bed at 6 a.m. to do it.

Newsflash: It…disappointed. The tree, of course, was quite a sight. But the statue was so much smaller than on TV. This is the teeniest, tiniest ice rink in New York. (I write this having skated at Bryant Park, Prospect Park and Wollman Rink. Not to mention spending ten years of my life at an actual rink.) There were so. many. tourists. I didn’t know that this many people would willingly haul themselves out of bed at the crack of dawn to partake in a life-threatening activity while on vacation.

But also. We were in New York! In December! It was a cloudless sunny day. We weren’t freezing to death, even though it was 28 degrees. We laughed. Made some new friends. Scurried away to a diner on 44th afterwards for pancakes. The giant Christmas ornaments were out in front of Radio City. Despite the little letdown of the actual rink, there was some magic, somewhere.

It’s true that the quotidian can be a grind—wherever you live, not just in New York. Allowing the inertia of life to roll you forward does sometimes feel like you’re being ground down to nothing. BUT NO!!! No, I say. We must keep the magic alive, friends. Once we give up and negate the possibility that it *could* be, that something extraordinary is around the corner…what are we hoping for? In 2025, I for one, will be holding out for the unexpected—something that might make this place a real, dare I say it, joyride.

What I’m Reading

“How to Deal with Disappointment”, Arthur Brooks, The Atlantic

Pixel Flesh, Ellen Atlanta (if you read one nonfiction book in 2025, make it this!!)

New York Magazine’s Rom-Com Roundup (so many good ones!!!)

“Is the Twentieth-Century Novel a Genre?” Louis Menand, The New Yorker

Jamaica Inn, Daphne Du Maurier

“How the Ivy League Broke America”, David Brooks, The Atlantic

Music Sounded Out, Alfred Brendel

“The Feminist Critic Who Kept Flaubert on His Toes”, Victoria Baena, The New Yorker

Beautiful World, Where Are You, Sally Rooney

“The Twisted World of Dark Romance Fiction”, Mina Le (YouTube!)

What I’m Writing

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