Back in 1987, my parents dropped me off in the Bronx for a summer. I moved into an apartment on the 24th floor of a dorm of Yeshiva University. Tragically, the elevator was broken, so the haul up all those flights was hot and tedious. My mom was mildly horrified to leave a 21-year-old daughter in late ‘80s NYC, which had quite the reputation if you were coming from a wholesome suburb in a flyover state like Ohio.
At first I was apprehensive, but I grew to love the adventure. My roommates were from colleges on the East Coast, so I was the outlier. We would take a bus into Manhattan on Saturdays for $3.50 and stay the day, returning home after dark. Thrifting in Greenwich Village, absorbing amazing art at the Met, trying new beers in loud bars on the Upper East Side, and checking out the sidewalk offerings in SoHo filled our weekends. As the bus made its way down Madison Avenue on the way back to the Bronx at night, we craned our necks to see all the street action that was just getting started as we were leaving.
The four of us lived in an apartment with separate bedrooms and had a wonderful view of the city living that high up. One of my favorite parts of the weekend would be Sunday mornings when someone would go downstairs to buy the New York Times Sunday edition, which weighed about 11 pounds. Furnished with institutional dorm couches and tables, our sunny living room would be strewn with newspaper for hours as we each took a chunk and devoured it. The real estate/architecture section, the travel pages, the book reviews, the main news, the society section full of extravagant weddings, and the art and culture articles captivated us. At this age, we were straddling childhood and adulthood, and this was one habit that made us feel very grown up.
This delicious experience is likely obsolete now, and that’s the reason behind this post. The newspaper is significantly smaller on Sunday, and reading it as a group of young people eager to eat up big city life is probably uncommon in this digital age. Although we four have scattered to the winds and lost touch, some Sundays I wake up and wonder if they also miss our weekly ritual with the absurdly huge New York Times.
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