Who’s Moving to the Suburbs? The Crips and Bloods, that’s who!

April 14, 2009 by

Now, this is certainly exciting news.  Who wants to live in an area bereft of some of the urban conveniences offered by gang colors, tags, hand signs, drive by shootings, and easy access to illegal drugs?  No one, that’s who!

So that’s why it’s such good news to hear about a recent FBI report that gangs are starting to expand into the suburbs.  Just like Starbucks!

Here’s what the FBI had to say:

“Gangs have long posed a threat to public safety, but as this study shows, gang activity is no longer merely a problem for urban areas. Gang members are increasingly moving to suburban America, bringing with them the potential for increased crime and violence,” said Assistant Director Kenneth W. Kaiser, FBI Criminal Investigative Division.

Talk about serious hipster credibility.  There are gangs in the suburbs.  Gangs!

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Filed Under: Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs, SUMA Lifestyle, Who's Moving to the Suburbs? Tagged With: ,

In the News: The Suburbs are cool — just ask Details Magazine

April 13, 2009 by

I know I’m on to something when I’m in agreement with a magazine that has pictures of hot women in it along with bodyspray ads.  As David Hochman in Details Magazine pointed out a few years ago, the suburbs can be cool, too. Here’s the money quote:

But in the past decade, the distinction between city and suburb has become blurred. “Commuter towns” in places like northern New Jersey, the eastern shore of Seattle’s Lake Washington, and Orange County, California—once considered cultural Siberia—are now filled with work-from-home hipsters who care about things like independent cinema and what Arianna Huffington has to say. Long-ignored suburban outposts are being rebuilt with cool arts facilities and retro-chic cafés. In short, the things we always thought we needed cities for—decent sesame noodles, fabulous eyewear, lesbians—are now available where once there were only Aunt Goldie and her mahjong group. . . .

“From a cultural standpoint, cities are becoming less interesting and the suburbs are increasingly where the action is,” says Joel Kotkin, author of The City: A Global History. “Partly because of the freedom the Internet gives us, but also because cities have become homogenized, inhospitable, and expensive beyond belief, people now live by the ethos of ‘everywhere a city,’ even if they’re in an outer ring, an outer-outer ring, or beyond.”

And since we’re talking about Suma, we even have an example in Dade Hayes, a writer, who moved from Manhattan to Larchmont (in Westchester):

After decades of living in New York and L.A., Dade Hayes, an editor and author, recently did the unthinkable: He bought a house in Larchmont, New York, a mile from where he grew up. “When I was a kid, Larchmont was a sleepy town where the most interesting restaurant was probably Charlie Brown’s,” he says. “Now there are late-night martini bars, a singles scene, an indie movie house a town over—and all without the glorious urine stench you get in Manhattan.”

Late night martini bars, an indie movie house, no urine stench?  Now, THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!

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Filed Under: Living in the Suburbs, News, SUMA Lifestyle Tagged With: ,

Who’s Moving to the Suburbs? Amy Winehouse, That’s Who!

April 12, 2009 by

You always want to be on top of a trend, right? Well, it’s good to see I’m not alone in making the move to the suburbs: crazy person Amy Winehouse is apparently also moving to a quiet suburb of London when she gets out of her latest rehab. Sadly, her purpose is not to bring her particular brand of falling-down-drunk to the suburbs; instead, she’s moving there to avoid the temptations of the city.

This sort of goes against my Suma philosophy, the idea that you can bring a little bit of your city to the suburbs.  My point is that I’m going to try to find something in the suburbs that feeds that pretentious, pseudo-hip sides of my personality that’s so deeply important to me.  Then again, my pretentious, pseudo-hip side doesn’t include a massive heroin problem (which I guess is what you get when you’re really seriously hip, not pseudo-hip), so my baggage is a lot easier to carry, like on rollers.

And I guess Amy would be moving to “Sulo,” not “Suma”.  But it makes me happy to know that celebrities are doing what I’m doing.  I feel validated!

UPDATE: This didn’t work out so well.  RIP, Amy.

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Filed Under: Living in the Suburbs, News, SUMA Lifestyle, Who's Moving to the Suburbs? Tagged With: ,

What is Suma?

April 11, 2009 by

What is Suma?

Well, here’s the thing.  I am not ready to leave Manhattan. I know I need to, I know it’s time, but I can’t stand the thought of leaving good bars and great restaurants and cool people and great things to do and the center of the world and all that.  I can’t bear it.

So I’ve convinced myself that I’m not leaving.  No, not me!  I’m just moving to a new section of Manhattan, a hot new neighborhood like Dumbo and Nolita and all those other acronymic (is that a word?) Manhattan neighborhoods that magazine writers or real estate brokers are always discovering.

I’m just moving to “Suma,” the “SUburbs of MAnhattan.”  Just like “Tribeca” is the “TRIangle BElow CAnal” or “Nolita” is “NOrth of LIttle ITaly.”   Just another neighborhod of Manhattan!  Really!

Suma is not a neighborhood per se, of course, but it’s a state of mind, the state of mind that I might be moving to the suburbs, but I’m going to retain my Manhattan sensibilities, pretentious though they may be.

I’m not going to give in.

I’m not going to get a cookie-cutter house.

I’m not going to become the organization man.

I’m not going to eat every meal at a franchise restaurant.

I’m not going to stay in on weekends.

I’m going to find my Suma.

And, yes, of course, I’m seriously in denial.

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Filed Under: Best of, My Life in the Suburbs, SUMA Lifestyle Tagged With:

I Love Manhattan, but I’m leaving….

April 11, 2009 by

I love living in Manhattan.

I love watching the evening news, and seeing that someone was run over by a car or stabbed or something, and being able to say, “hey, that’s like three blocks from my apartment!”

I love getting room service any time I want from my big book of delivery menus that my wife has actually collated, three-hole-punched, and put in a binder organized by ethnicity.

I love going to Central Park on Saturday mornings for some of the pickup softball games in the Great Lawn or the uptown ball fields.

I love the fact that my little neighborhood sandwich shop, Lenny’s, is now all over the city, and that other people get to share in the joy of a Thanksgiving turkey sandwich all year round.

I love pretending that I go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art because I have a membership card that says I’m a supporter, even though I never go.

I love my local restaurants Calle Ocho and Barbao, run by people I like and respect, although I liked going to brunch at Calle Ocho more before everyone else found out about the free sangria.

I love going to the meatpacking district and remembering where the transvestite hookers used to hang out, and seeing people buying $1500 handbags there.

I love walking around my neighborhood on the upper west side, playing the game of “what used to be here.”  Like, the northeast corner at 82d and Columbus is a “corner of retail death,” one of many in the city.  It’s now a Mexican restaurant called Comida.  Before that, a semi-Southern-creole-could-never-quite-figure-it-out place called Madaeline Mae’s.  Before that, a faux Irish pub called TJ O’Briens.  Before that, the estimable and lamented Kitchen 82.  And before that, Corner (run by the Lenny’s folk until they realized they could do better just making more Lennys).  And, finally, before that, a local grocery called Casanas, which I still miss because they had these cheap homemade burritos that I’ve never been able to find anywhere else.

I love the fact that you can buy a nudie mag on pretty much every street corner, not that you would when so much more effective material is available now on the internet.  But they’re still there, and basic economics says that someone must still be buying them.

I love being able to decide spontaneously to drink one night, knowing I don’t have to drive home, and that I can get back to my apartment so long as I can remember my address and be able to speak it out loud.

I love it all, and yet, and yet…..I am leaving.

I’m moving out.  Selling the apartment that I bought in 1994, renovated and combined with another unit in 2004, and getting out.  No more Upper West Side.  No more delivery food. No more Central Park.

Why would I do this? It was time.  I’ve lived here for almost 20 years, soaking up as much Manhattan as I could.  But I work outside the city, and have for about six years.  A 45 minute commute, each way, every day.  That wears on you.  And, frankly, as much as I love Manattan, I wasn’t getting a lot out of it when I’m getting home at 8PM exhausted from my drive and long day.  And as much as I love my brownstone apartment, I’m tired of climbing stairs every day.  People joke about how it keeps me in shape to climb two flights to my living room.  It doesn’t.

But here’s my problem.  I grew up in the suburbs, I work in the suburbs, and I know the suburbs.  And I’m terrified about living in the suburbs.  I don’t see why my life should change, I don’t know why I shouldn’t be able to create some semblance of my city life in the suburbs, with interesting bars and good restaurants and fun things to do.  So I’m writing this blog to document my search for that life, that search for an urbanized existence in a suburban environment.

But some of the signs are not so good. My wife and I were exiled to the suburbs in 2004 when we were renovating our apartment, six months of Cheescake Factory Fridays and bars filled with guys wearing flannel and wierd sections of the New York Times that I never saw before.  We kept saying we’d come into the city, and we did.  Three or four times.  Not a good sign.

Can I really live there? Can I live without mixology and Malaysian delivery and a short subway ride to Yankee Stadium?  Can I find new friends and new places to hang out without becoming the suburban guy that I was as a kid.

I’m going to find out.

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Filed Under: Best of, Humor, Living in Manhattan, Living in the Suburbs, Moving to the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs, SUMA Lifestyle Tagged With: , , ,
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