Postcard 055 - Crosby x Howard
It’s remarkable how quickly the foreign becomes the familiar.
Four years ago, I met up with a high school friend to wander SoHo, eventually stopping for drinks at NoMo SoHo — a hotel I’d never seen in a part of the neighborhood that felt entirely unfamiliar to me.
Now, I can name most of the stores along Crosby Street where it meets Howard. My favorite retailers and barbershop are there. When I’m not staying with a friend nearby, I stay at a hotel down the street. And my cousin lives just a few blocks away.
As I walked to my Blue Bottle this morning, I was struck by how normal this felt. I’d walked down Broadway to this Blue Bottle dozens of times, though rarely at 6:30am (thank you jet lag).
And as the coffee hit, I snapped out of it, recognizing that having a familiar routine in a city you don’t live in (or didn’t grow up in) isn’t actually normal.
Last week, I had the chance to see Do Ho Suh’s “Walk the House” at the Tate Modern — an exhibition that asks the question “Is home a place, a feeling, or an idea?” (If you have a chance to see this, go.)
My initial reaction to the question (and my takeaway from the exhibit) is that home is all three, together. Home is not just a place, not just a feeling, and not just an idea. It’s when our idea of home aligns to the place we are and how we feel.
And while I long for my home on the West Coast, I’m grateful that (for now) the intersection of Crosby and Howard is filling that role.