Cheeky's Hideaway

...On the Other Hand, New York, You Sometimes Kinda Suck

As a companion piece to the things about New York we're going to miss, here is a short but by no means complete list of things I WON'T miss about the city....the stuff that makes me want to gouge my eyes out and punch people in the back of the head. 

• The subway platforms in August
• Midtown
• The complete lack of customer service.  Anywhere.
• Carrying groceries home from the store by hand.  On foot.
• Cabs with no leg room
• The BQE
• No stars
• Assaulting, pervasive, continuous noise
• Over-privileged Upper East Side assholes
• Scaffolding. Always with the scaffolding.
• Fashion Week
• The corner of 86th and 3rd
• 22-year old asshole investment bankers
• Velvet ropes
• Penn Station
• The kind of behavior that reinforces racial stereotypes
• Gristedes
• The overwhelming stench of urine and B.O. in the summer
• Over-rated pizza
• Jets fans
• Tiny little dogs that wouldn't even make a good appetizer
• My first studio apartment: 525 sq ft.  $2350/month
• Delivery trucks
• Assumption that every bike ride may end with you splattered on a windshield
• The Knicks
• Slack-jawed tourist assholes jamming up the Brooklyn Bridge path
• The Puerto Rican Day/St. Patricks Day/Gay Pride/Dominican Day parades
• Alternate side parking rules
• Anything even remotely associated with Times Square
• Getting poked in the eye by umbrellas
• Hyper-literate, condescending artist/writer assholes
• Pre-school tuition
• Weekend subway service changes
• The industrial waste that street vendor hot dogs float in
• Being fiscally raped on EVERYTHING
• The faux drama of the Yankees
• Constant threat of alien, monster, or asteroid attack
• Self-righteous, aggressive asshole Park Slope sancti-mommies
• Air conditioner window units
• Long Island City
• The embarrassing hole where the World Trade Center used to be.  Still.
• Pretentious restaurants and clubs that pump house music until your eardrums bleed
• Friends who visit and make you take them to the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, etc.

What can I say.  New York, I love you, but you're bringing me down...

New York, We'll Miss You...

I'm starting to get all misty about leaving New York now that the day is finally approaching.  I've been compiling a list of all the things I'm going to miss about living here, and I keep thinking of new things every day.  If you live here or are just visiting I highly recommend you check all of these out (except maybe for Zucco..)

• Autumn
• Henry's End
• The water park on the west side piers
• Taking the 2 train to an Yankee day game.
• The balcony at the Bowery Ballroom
• Rat fights!
• Avenue Q
• The anchor on NY1 who literally reads the newspaper to you
• Bongo players at the Fulton Street station
• Weekends on the North Fork
• Belvedere Castle
• Zucco, our old super, and his 80 decibel coughing fits
• Drinks on the roof at the Peninsula Hotel
• Biking to Coney Island
• The Fairway at Red Hook
• Spider-man
• Punk rock karaoke at Arlene's Grocery
• The unexpected fireworks on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade
• Counting Al Roker, Gabriel Byrne, or Little Stevie Van Zandt as neighbors.
• Chatting up Hope Davis after seeing God of Carnage
• Anything emerging from the kitchen at Union Square Cafe
• random street fairs
• The way our neighborhood turns into Sesame Street in the summer
• Bridgewaters and the South Street Seaport, where we were married
• "The Sphere" that used to be in the plaza between the World Trade Center towers
• Pointing out landmarks from "Ghostbusters"
• The armor exhibit at the Met
• Barcade
• Trying to guess the language of the person next to you
• Cold Spring
• Shining a laser pointer into other peoples apartments
• Easy access to grandma
• Taking the water taxi into the city
• The Strand
• Smith Street
• The exhilarating terror of landing at La Guardia
• Buying socks from a street vendor
• A roasted duck meeting a cleaver in Chinatown
• The Ziegfeld
• Empty subways on Jewish holidays
• The weird fish smell the Gap at the seaport never seems to shake
• Battery Park
• Dive 75, Tribeca Tavern, and Revival
• Pierre, Liz, Doug, Brian, Isabel, & Anna
• Running around the Reservoir
• Unlimited food delivery options
• The 311 hotline
• The shared hatred of bicycle delivery men
• Dr. Z
• The fountain at the Brooklyn Museum
• The mojitos at Coffee Shop
• Grand Central Station
• Catching air on the FDR as you pass NYU hospital
• Hell's Kitchen
• The depressed polar bears at the Central Park zoo
• Outdoor movies at Brooklyn Bridge Park
• Neighborhood fire stations (and the NYFD overall)
• Never having to leave your building to visit your friends
• Governors Island
• Understanding Jon Stewarts inside jokes with his audience
• Stone Street
• The smell of nuts roasting on street corners
• Always being within two blocks of a bodega, pizza, or a Starbucks
• The most genuine people on the planet

That's not even the whole list.  But don't worry...my list of what I WON'T miss is coming next, which should be infinitely more fun to write...

The Stars at Night are Big and Bright

So....big news here at Casa de Cheeky.

The CroutonClan is moving to Austin.

Some of you poor souls who follow me throughout the rest of the statusphere probably already knew that. The whole thing has had me so preoccupied and introspective that writing something more than 140 characters long seemed like climbing the Cliffs of Insanity without a rope.  That's why I've been wasting your my time writing about movie characters and music instead of my normal fart-strewn narratives (if I've written at all).

I didn't want to jinx it. 

Here's the deelio.  You may recall a few months back when my former employer saw an opportunity to kick me in the teeth and send me off to explore the magical bureaucratic world of COBRA and unemployment benefits.  Although this has given me ample time to re-exert my role as Alpha Parent and work on my tan, it's a lacked a certain something. 

The New York job market, at the same time, has collapsed like democracy in Iran. I started out with some enthusiastic recruiters but it wasn't long before I stopped hearing from them.  Everyone I knew described themselves as either "keeping their head down" or "shit-canned, too."  And although the prospect of financial destitution may be appealing to Depression Era cinemaphiles it forced us to consider radical alternatives to make ends meet.

Which brings us--literally--to Austin.

The job itself is fundamentally similar to what I was doing before (which I loved) but with more responsibility, better clients, and people who clearly recognize talent when they see it.  It's in a state with no income tax.  And I have as yet to meet anybody who has been to Austin that doesn't claim they LOVE it.  With a shrug and a collective "Why not?" we went for it.

Holy crap.  It worked.

Now we're faced with a bazillion choices that are making our heads swim.  When do we move?  Do we buy or rent?  Where will Cheeky go to school?  How do we deal with the summer heat?  Do I drive like a liberal asshole, a redneck asshole, or just a regular asshole?  Do I loathe the Cowboys, or just despise them?  Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria!

It's enough to drive a man batty!

Despite it all, though, I'm totally psyched.  I'm really glad to have a job again.  I'm thrilled to be moving to a city known for music, tex-mex, and its cultural idiosyncrasies.  I even know a blogger or two down there, which should make the acclimation a little bit easier.

More news to follow soon...it should be a grand adventure...

Happy Birthday Cheeky!

FOUR?  Are you kidding me?  Four????  How the heck did you get so old??  Where did the time go?  And yet here you are...funny, precious, exhausting, talkative, kind, energetic, annoying, beautiful, and perfect.  All four years of you.  Happy birthday, kiddo.  Every day you expand my capacity for love.