Jamie’s Move to NYC

Last updated: November 18, 2024

Jamie is 22. She just moved to New York City.

She’s going on a date tonight. It is her first date of the season.

I want you to imagine what it is like to be in your 20s and new to Manhattan.

You live in a tiny apartment that you share with your best friend.

You walk 30 minutes to work each day and you love every bit of it.

You love the hustle, the bustle, the garbage, and the rats.

You meet new people constantly.

Every single day your world gets bigger.

And your career- your career seems limitless.

Life is good. You’re young. The city is big. And anything is possible.

~~

I left New York City four and a half years ago.

I loved it here. I made it here.

I made it, I really did.

I started my company, I sold my company, and I wrote my book The 2-Hour Cocktail Party in New York.

I couldn’t have done those things anywhere else.

But after 13 years I think I was over it.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I think the city had started to wear on me.

Lugging groceries up 4 flights of stairs. The constant sound of sirens. Garbage bags piled up on the sidewalks.

I left New York City but I was quickly replaced by Jamie and thousands of young people like her.

And so today I’m going to follow her around.

I want to see Manhattan through her eyes. And I want to remember what makes this the best city in America.

~~

We meet up at 8:30AM on the corner of Prince and Mott.

It is Friday morning and I’m going to walk with her to work.

Jamie always dreamed of living in New York.

“I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t thinking about moving here.”

She loves it so much.

We start to walk north.

She’s a morning person and the conversation comes easy.

“This is my first time ever experiencing fall. I grew up in Texas. My friends and I, when the leaves started changing colors here, we were all freaking out. It’s so beautiful! I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

I look up around me and it’s true. The changing leaves are beautiful. I forgot about that.

She works in fashion. So I guess she sees colors better than me.

When you live in New York City for a long time, you can spot the tourists from a mile away with one singular tell-

They’re the ones looking up. They’re looking up at the skyscrapers. Wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

I love the skyscrapers. But I stopped looking up after a few years. And then I missed the leaves.

They are beautiful. And we don’t have these colors in Texas.

~~

We stop at the next corner to visit her bodega.

There’s a guy named Taz who she knows behind the counter and he calls out her name when we walk inside like she’s been coming here for years, not just a few weeks.

“He’s remembered my name since day one!”

Taz makes her a breakfast sandwich that she will eat at her desk.

He plays music as Jamie waits for her order. They dance a beat, and then we keep walking north towards her office.

The air is crisp. It is a pure fall morning.

We pass a matcha place that she loves. And she points out a sushi market that sells plates for half-off after 8PM.

It’s a little neighborhood that has become her own in the few weeks since she landed.

~~

Jamie works in product development for a fashion brand that most women have heard of.

She creates tech packs and manages samples all day.

Tech packs are extremely detailed specification sheets for mass market clothing, like architectural drawings.

“Every piece of commercial clothing that anyone in the world wears comes from a tech pack.”

She points at my shirt.

“Like your shirt, this gray, the color of the threads, the types of buttons, and the pockets. It’s all in the file.”

She shows me a PDF of a tech pack on her phone for a new shirt that she made.

The file is 38 pages long. Every thread and button is meticulously detailed.

She explains the tech pack in detail and I can see that she loves her work.

I could never do this work. But I also wore the same blue t-shirt for a year after I left New York.

Some people love clothes and style and Jamie is one of those people.

And if you love fashion, it is New York or nowhere.

I ask Jamie if she’s happy and if she’s happy that she moved here.

She gets quiet and we walk in silence for a few blocks.

“Little me would be so proud that, like, I did it. I got my dream job. I made it.”

I remember that feeling. Standing in my first Brooklyn apartment after I had lugged home a futon from IKEA.

She’s so proud. I can feel it. Maybe her eyes are cold. Or maybe she’s tearing up now.

We turn left at the top of Union Square and walk through the farmers market to catch the train uptown.

I ride with her for a few stops to Midtown and I take her picture.

She has a bounce to her step as she goes off to work. Maybe it is because she has a date tonight. But that’s a story for another scroll.

~~

New York City attracts ambitious people.

You move here for your career but you get sucked into the sparkle.

You see the city with fresh eyes.

And I guess Jamie’s story isn’t unique. It’s a pattern of people that have probably come to New York City for a hundred years.

New blood. Fresh eyes.

The city renews itself, one dreamer at a time.

Anything is possible. And those leaves never change.

THE END 

Originally posted on my X / Twitter. 

Hi from Nick! I’ve been doing these interviews with people like this one and posting them on my Instagram and Twitter / X. I’ll add some others into the Profiles category. Leave me a comment if you liked this and I’ll try to add some more.