new york city summer soundtrack

  • standing in Fotografiska explaining to my straight white dude friend who lives in lower manhattan that the thesis of brat is about being a party girl in spirit but also being early thirties (she's 32, don't believe me, look it up) and trying to figure out if you want to have a baby and how no one in this city is married before 34

  • finding myself in the Museum of Chinese in America with L, standing among the absolutely heart-stopping high school art exhibit, discussing the literary themes of brat, the panic of being late-twenties-early-thirties and how everyone is getting married, silently screaming and laughing all at the same time, feeling so good, so perfect, so lucky

  • the tiny restaurant on east 13th with a brand new friend who instantly understood my most obscure new favourite joke about brat and quantization, and how easy that was

  • cycling eighty blocks up and down Manhattan and then across the Queensboro Bridge at midnight out of necessity because how else was i going to get home???

  • cycling from Brooklyn to Queens across the bridge over Newtown Creek and being stunned by the moment of stillness as i crested the top of the bridge; for a whole twenty seconds there were no cars and no ships and no one around and i took in quiet in the middle of the city like i had never found. there's a really good reason for this (e.g. it's full of toxic waste), but anyway

  • walking into the gorgeous pilates studio at the moment that they were playing iris by the goo goo dolls and the way i stopped breathing for a moment??? i was too young to be listening to the radio in 2000 but i bet this song was everywhere. every time i hear it in the wild it still stops me wherever i am; it's an unbelievably hungry song and i want to play it at my wedding but that's an objectively insane thing to do

  • the car that drove past me with their windows down playing morgan wallen's last night and the way i cheered on the inside. it might not have been the song of the summer like they said but i bet it was someone's song of the summer. it could've been mine if mine weren't already the thirty seconds of transition between brat's i think about it all the time and 365

  • pouring la colombe iced lattes into a crystal wine glass every morning. i can't believe that i wasn't doing this before and now i want to do this forever

  • spending the afternoon helping S adopt a baby cat from the shelter on Broadway and stealing a copy of Trick Mirror from his ex's bookshelf

  • Greenpoint on Sunday mornings: the perfect stillness of the waterfront vs. the suddenness of a seaplane flying into the East River, the gorgeous Lebanese café on Franklin Avenue, WNYC Transmitter Park

  • plotting out the longest chain of asian girls in the city—i'm going to move to new york city and stay forever and throw a party and the theme is just going to be "asian girls i met in nyc" and they're all going to be instant friends with each other, i'll make it happen







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