When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was to live in New York City. I was born in Manhattan, and when I was around age 4, my parents took us to live in New Rochelle. As soon as I was old enough to realize what had happened I would complain. Both my parents would commute to their jobs in the city and I would be stuck in the suburbs missing out on the life I thought I should have had. I finally got into Pratt Institute and I moved to Brooklyn, much to the horror of my parents. Not only was I going to be an artist, but also, I was moving to their ancestral homes that they had worked so hard to distance themselves from. They both grew up in Brooklyn and saw it as dirty and threatening. I saw it as alive and full of energy. I loved Brooklyn, and moved around for 5-6 years to a number of apartments between Classon and Franklin Avenues scattered across Bed-Stuy and Prospect- Heights, all in search of cheap rent and lots of space. The streets were noisy back then. Everyone seemed to play their car radios and boom boxes for the neighborhood to hear. There were no ear buds to keep things private, and no iPhones to distract us. There were billboards for beer and cigarettes and everything seemed to be covered in graffiti. I miss the look of New York from those days, although these days, as I am walking down Bergen Street towards CLEA RSKY to an opening on a Sunday afternoon, with the Franklin Avenue Shuttle roaring over head, I can sometimes get the feeling that not much has changed in New York over the years since I first got here. Thank god some things really don’t change.