Fleeting Moments + A Dance to Remember
Living in New York City, I’ve learned to never get too comfortable in any given place at any given time. Whether your roommate gets bedbugs or your landlord raises the damn rent, it always seems as though that perfect apartment never lasts too long. Therefore, I decided to pick up my paintbrush to pay homage to some of the old stomping grounds that I’ll never get to call home again.
Quincy St. Rooftop, 2022
Growing up on Staten Island, the need to move closer to the action of Manhattan was always looming but never felt dire. The sheer cost of NYC rent kept these ambitions quite low, especially as I first entered the workforce after college making a whopping $12/hour as a dental assistant. However, I did eventually leave the nest and landed three total apartments that I once called, home. None were perfect per se, but there are details that stick with me, even to this day, that I miss.
The tiny balcony in Long Island City where I hung my “Happy Birthday” banner (which inspired a stranger to get me a bottle of wine to celebrate), the beautiful white and blue kitchen backsplash of our Upper East Side apartment (that distracted from the huge roach that I found eating crumbs off the stovetop), and our current residence in Ridgewood that is still perfect to me in every way that I can’t pick just one detail. Expanding on that a little bit more, the reason why Ridgewood is so perfect is not only my familys’ space, but the space right upstairs.
As a kid, I met another little girl who lived right around the block. I was first introduced to her one day when I saw her and her younger sister running down the hill after a bouncy ball that somehow got away from them. It luckily bounced right into my yard and we have been friends ever since. The great thing about having your best friend live around the block, is that your best friend is living right around the block. However, just as I flew the coop, so did she, and just like that we were no longer neighbors. She wound up hopping around from apartment to apartment and even city to city for a while before scooping up her sister’s old spot in Clinton Hill. There were a lot of great things about this apartment but by far the loveliest feature was the building’s unfinished roof. It had a great view, loads of space, and wasn’t pretentious. This roof felt like the epitome of a Brooklyn rooftop; complete with a tangle of electrical wires and decorated with string lights and a formal dining set. We held many dinner parties, celebrations, and casual summer hangouts here. Like most moments of time, it felt like we were going to be in this era forever… until I took this photo. I don’t remember why we were hanging out on the roof that evening, but I do remember the dancing. The temperature was mild, the sky was clear, and we were just enjoying this time together at an apartment that would eventually be a distant memory.
Although she did wind up leaving that Clinton Hill apartment with the perfect roof, I still remember that feeling. I was able to put paint to canvas and immortalize that moment that felt so surreal and fleeting. Some could see this as a sad story; ending this chapter of my NYC life.
But you really never know what story is on the next page, because guess who moved in the space right upstairs.
