The Magic of NYC at 2,000 Feet
New York and I were never supposed to fall in love, but there we were, romancing at 2,000 feet above the skyscrapers and the Hudson river, the night illuminating the hum of a city alive with promise of .... something.
You get to choose what that something is.
It's easy to LoveHate, or HateLove New York. I Love New York when I'm out for happy hour dollar oysters and sharing an entire day with good friends, walking up and down Manhattan and realizing Central Park is practically my shared backyard. I Hate New York when I land in JFK and have to take the subway home, only to see that the E train is just... not working today. No reason. Sorry not Sorry, says the MTA. I Hate New York when I'm walking through Times Square and make the fatal mistake of trying to go shopping around the area, but I Love New York when I unexpectedly arrive in a karaoke room singing a Moulin Rouge duet at the top of my lungs, disco ball lights streaming around me in blues and whites, making random friends in a bar in Koreatown, strolling down the beautiful neighborhoods and imagining life in one of those brownstones, trying to guess where Sarah Jessica Parker lives.
Sometimes though, looking at the strained, exhausted faces, I am reminded that New York is a very competitive, decidedly unromantic city to live in. It seems like people here can be encouraged into a steady diet of neuroticism, desperateness, and sarcasm that makes them suspicious of others and a continuous cycle of dissatisfaction, no matter what apartment they have, no matter what great job they have. Nothing is ever good enough. There's always something better.
Living in NY is like living on the edge of the world and looking out into heaven, but never actually being able to jump into the elusive paradise.
It's the disease of a city of promise; the search will always continue, and even if you are aware of this fact it still infects you unknowingly because everyone has caught it.
It's a city that I dream about leaving on a regular basis, to escape the disorganized chaos and find my hypothetical sanctuary ocean-view villa of the coast of Italy or Spain somewhere... but you know what, at the same time I can't imagine ever living anywhere else.
For now, at least.
There's just...
...Something about New York.
Okay, we all know everyone in New York is bananas crazy, like nuttier than a pint of almond butter.
But let me be clear, I love New York. I often feel bipolar about this city, because one day the first word out of my mouth is "Goddamn mother f***ing city I fu**ing hate New York." Then the next hour I see a play that changes the way I look at the world, or witness a random act of compassion that makes me believe in humanity again. I'll take a yoga class with the best instructors in the country. I meet people from all walks of life and all countries in the world, I am continuously surprised by the warmth that exists here underneath the gray exterior. It's a city that you also can't generalize, because it is a different city for everyone!
I really do love New York. Walking down the streets and hearing ten different languages casually spoken on my way to work, going to a comedy show and seeing an unexpected celebrity make an appearance, spotting famous authors and actors hanging out casually in Brooklyn, wondering what movie is being filmed in the street that has been closed for the day. New York is everything all at once, anonymity and fame, hideousness and beauty, glorious all day brunches with five flowered mimosas and cheesy soggy pizza at 4:30 in the morning on the sidewalk as you say goodbye to your friend who lives in Queens so who knows when the next time you'll see her is. I love not having a car, I love eating everything that I could ever want at any hour of the day. I love the endless possibilities of creating new lives here.
It’s not a perfect city, and it literally uses me like a psychopathic ATM with no regard for my health or sanity, and it makes me feel like becoming a crazy dog lady is my destiny, but there’s always something more to find and discover and see. (and eat).
“New York is a magical place,” a flight attendant once told me after a trip. “You can be anyone.”
Alright, I can be anyone you say NYC? I decided I would choose to be a pilot. My reasons can be found in a future blog post that I'll link to here, but for now I'll just say that we need female blood in the flight deck. The cultural shift that will happen in the next ten years is something I'm excited for, and can't wait to be a part of.
This is why and how, my friends, I found myself up here looking at my newly found city with a fresh perspective. When I'm working, I never get to see what the passengers see; we are busy getting ready for the service, we are sitting in our jumpseats with only a tiny portal window that barely shows us the clips of clouds.
This view was slightly more appealing.
I’m very grateful that my friend Hersh, who has recently earned his own private pilot’s license, has been so encouraging for me to follow this path and let me tag along on this magical night ride across the skyline. The tiny Cessna Skyhawk only fit me, Hersh, his instructor, and another pilot.
"This is only my fourth night flight," he announced to me as soon as we departed the ground and soared over the majestic land of New Jersey.
"Jesus," I laughed, cursing and praying at the same time. He landed flawlessly, and it was an amazing, smooth ride.
This flight definitely solidified my decision to take flying lessons myself this year and earn my pilot's license. It's my hobby now to try and recruit any flight attendants I'm flying with on a trip to do the same. Right now there are currently only 4,000 commercial female pilots worldwide.
WORLDWIDE PEOPLE.
THAT IS NOT WHAT THE FUTURE SHOULD LOOK LIKE.
To be fair, it's not because the male pilots are against female pilots joining them. Every male pilot I've spoken with about my desire to earn my gold wings has been nothing but encouraging and supportive, and they are incredibly nice and helpful and say "You gotta do it, we need you up here. The best time is now. The money you spend will come back to you so quickly, you just have to do it."
I do, however, think that a lot of women I work with don't want to become pilots because they don't want to be "trapped" up there in the flight deck forced to talk for hours with some old guy that may or may not be a complete asshole and tell inappropriate jokes and say racist life observations. It is, after all, still an old white boy's club, whether they understand the nuances and difficulties of existing within that culture or not.
I love singing and dancing in the galley with my coworkers, acting silly, telling scandalous stories on a red eye flight to keep each other awake, bonding over our love of travel and free spirited attitude towards life, just coming onto the plane and knowing that we "get" each other automatically, without saying a word. Would it be the same up there in the lonely flight deck? Would I have the same kind of joyful fun with a 55 year old ex-military guy from Wisconsin?
No, probably not. But do I really want to be handing out diet cokes to disgruntled travelers in 20 years? No, probs not.
We can accept status quo and decide against making four times our salary, or we can say "move over fatty," and claim our spot in the driver's seat and change the good old boys club into something more relatable and cute. What I really want is to make the flight deck into a fabulous gay time with secret handshakes and dance routines. But that might be a little too presumptuous of my own talents to change society.
But hey, this is New York, remember? We can literally do anything, and be anyone.
A Very Very bad picture of me with the tiny plane, but it was rather dark outside. Isn't it just the cutest plane you've ever seen?
A good place to start is up in the clouds, where all my dreams spawn from. Sometimes you don't know the dreams you have until you see them from a distance.