in new york
BIG LIGHTS WILL INSPIRE YOU
Hova I could take or leave, but Alicia’s always been my girl.
Not too many things take flight the way an Alicia Keys guest vocal does, and this is probably the prototype. In NEWWWW YORRRRK…
The New York Knicks won the NBA title last night after 53 years of frustration, some truly awful teams, and a suite of top-notch broadcasters calling the action good or bad.
I grew up outside of Boston and the Celtics will always be my ride or die, but I’ve got a soft spot for the Knicks.
And that soft spot comes from my genuine, soul-deep love for New York.
The city, but also the state. The boroughs, but also Westchester and the Island.
I went to college in upstate New York and lived in New York City for seven years thereafter, but the story starts back in Massachusetts in 1983 or thereabouts when my family got cable TV. It is not overstating the matter when I say this was one of the most important days in my development as a young kid.
We got MTV. (Early MTV was awesome, like life-changing awesome.)
We got ESPN. (Back then it was like Wide World of Sports every day. Everything.)
We got…ahem…HBO. (Life was different after 8 PM.)
And we got WPIX and WOR, the two New York superstations,
PIX had the Yankees and WOR the Mets, and then they had a lot more:
They had the Lullaby of Broadway commercials for the Milford Plaza.
They had Sinatra singing in about twenty five different ads.
(I mean fuck, they had Sinatra.)
Cats on Broadway. Nobody Beats The Wiz. Carvel Cookie Puss.
And they had the call. I mean, they had The Call:
The city that never sleeps…the idea that there was this gritty, sprawled, klieg-lit, sometimes schmaltzy but crazy-quilted world unto itself and if you could make it there, well, you know the rest…
I love Boston. I do. Always have and always will. And I think Boston in 2026 is a different place than it was when I was growing up, and that’s in some ways a very good thing. (Because it’s okay to be different, and that is something that aspects of old Boston have always had a very hard time with.)
But New York?
Man, that was Gatsby’s green light. The Empire State Building lit up after dark. Times Square and Broadway.
And the trains. The ones that brought you into the city from points in wherever hinterlands you were aimed from.
The lights in the tunnel. The chug, cough, stop and start.
You got out at Penn Station or Grand Central, and there you were.
In the middle of it all, ready to write your story.
And you could start over as many times as you needed to.
No one was watching, except for the whole world and the smallest part inside of you that yearned to write itself in lights.
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.
Nothing you can’t do.
Knicks in 26, baby.