Sari Botton, GOODBYE TO ALL THAT (REVISED EDITION): Writers on Loving and Leaving New York

[1:55]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write a New Publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Three different women joined Zoom for me to discuss the anthology Goodbye to All That, the revised edition, Writers on Loving and Leaving New York. It was edited by Sari Bodin with contributors Karolita Johnson and Rosie Schap. But there were many other contributors, but these are the ones who I spoke to. So Sari is the essays editor for Long Reads. She teaches writing courses at Catapult and in Bay Path University's MFA program. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Village Voice, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire Moore, and The Rumpus, plus other publications and anthologies. She lives in Kingston, New York. Welcome everybody to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. We're discussing Goodbye to All That edited by Sari Baden, writers on loving and leaving New York. And we are joined by Carolina Johnson and Rosie Schapp as well. And Sari, so here we go. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for having us. As a lifelong New Yorker, I was particularly drawn to the topic of this book and your other book, both people who have left New York and people who love New York and both, and the intersection of both of those. And the three of you, Sari, not only did you curate this collection, but you contributed to it as well. And then, Carlit and Rosie, you both have written essays in the book. So I was hoping, Sari, maybe you could start by talking a little about what inspired you to sort of collect all these essays to begin with. And I know you have come from like a long reads background and if that informed this collection here. Then I'd love to hear from Rosie and Karolita about their essays and maybe everyone could just share what their essays are about. So I originally

[4:14]Sari Botton: published this book in 2013. I had been trying for years to get publishers and agents interested and everybody said it was a great idea, but I shouldn't do it because I didn't have enough platform and anthologies don't sell. But I had moved up state in 2005 after my husband and I got kicked out of our apartment in the East Village. And I kept meeting other versions of myself, people who had had to leave New York or wanted to leave New York. And then also outside of the Hudson Valley where I live, I was a columnist for the Rumpus. I kept interacting with people who either had left New York or had thought about leaving New York. And the Didion essay kept coming up in conversation. Joan Didion iconic essay that she published in 1967, first in the Saturday Evening Review. Is that the name? Saturday Evening Post. And then in her collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. And so I just kept thinking, what about a collection of essays inspired by that? And I eventually went to Seal Press and they were interested. The book was a hit. It was such a hit that in 2019, Seal came back to me and said, Let's revamp this. It's still doing well. It could do even better. And also New York has changed. And what I didn't know was that a few months later, the pandemic was going to come along and make things even crazier, like more people leaving New York for the Hudson Valley. And in Karolita's case, going back from the Hudson Valley to Queens. And it just became so much more interesting. And it was so exciting to work on again at this time. So there are seven new essays. And Karolita and Rosie are two of the new contributors.

[5:57]Zibby Owens: Excellent. Well, you have such an amazing list. And I'll just like just as not in addition to all of you guys as well, but Roxanne Gay and Chloe Caldwell, Lisa Coe, Danny Shapiro, Emma Straub. I mean, is Marcy Darmanski. I had a lot of these people on my podcast. That's pretty cool. Hope Adelman, Megan Dumb, Cheryl Strayed. I mean, this is like, is amazing. You had so many people coming together. And by the way, as someone who is now, I had an anthology come out in February and I have another one in November and people said all those same things to me too. You know, everybody always tells you not to do basically everything you want to try, I've found. Right? Like anything that's worth doing, people say, forget it. It's too hard. I'm like Yeah. There's a lot of no. A lot of no. Gotta ignore the no's. And okay. So Rosie and Carlito, why don't you talk about your essays? And Rosie, yours, I didn't memorize the titles, but That's okay. I did read them and they're wonderful. So Rosie's the first one called Homemaker.

[6:53]Guest: Right. Well, hi everyone. It's nice to see you and thanks for having us. And Sari, thank you again for letting me be part of this beautiful book. A friend of mine when it came out said, did you leave New York just for the possibility of being in this anthology? And the thought might have occurred to me, but I had other reasons to leave that I talk about in the essay. When Sari asked me, I was so excited, but I had an idea and I wanted to make sure it was really okay to write about leaving a home of more than twenty years, leaving an apartment of more than twenty years, then writing more broadly about leaving New York. In some ways, and I know Karolita, you're a fellow native New Yorker. In some ways, I was so used to being in New York. I feel like I kind of, as a native, took New York for granted in some ways. I never had that Didian experience of what it feels like to arrive in New York and to see this whole new world. And I don't wanna sound like I was blase about it, but maybe in some ways I was. What kind of got me more as I was getting ready to leave the home of my lifetime was leaving this little apartment that I'd made into a home as a young woman that I'd put so much into. And now I had to say goodbye to that as well as the city. I was sort of hoping for pictures of the apartment. Do you have pictures? Because it's so visual how you described it. Maybe

[8:15]Zibby Owens: in revised edition number three, you can include some photographs. Right.

[8:20]Sari Botton: Rosie, I love the specificity of your piece and that it is so much about that apartment, which was the focal point of your New York City life for so much of your time So there as an I love that, you know, that it's not just about the city, it's about the specificity of exactly where you were living and how you had made that place your own.

[8:43]Guest: Yeah, thank you. And for me, one interesting thing about the book is seeing sort of relationships among essays. I think for me it was impossible not to notice a similar thread in my essay in Karolita's about widowhood and how that affects life decisions. And you sort of see these affinities among different essays, which I really love in the book. And even the way you described

[9:06]Zibby Owens: your whole sort of tenure in this apartment when you said, I moved in as a 25 year old single woman who spent most of her time in bars. I lived there when I got to know a good and thoughtful man who loved cooking and loved Wordsworth and not long after our first date, he moved in. We lived there together when the planes hit the towers. And when not long after my father died, we got engaged there and married. There were dinner parties, holiday parties. And then just to jump down a little farther, I lived there when we separated and when he got sick and when we unseparated in February 2010 at 39, I became a widow there. And that's when it was time to move out, but I couldn't afford it. I'm really sorry for your loss by the way, Rosie. Thank you very much. I'm so sorry. But what a wonderful way to write about this whole experience through this lens. It's like it feels like a play, like an Off Broadway play. Right? The one set not moving until later, of course. But, you know, all the things that happen through time, it's it's it's amazing because often life does feel like that, right? We're just like in one place pressing fast forward and zooming through and every so often you have to stop and catch one of those frames on pause, right? But I don't know, I feel like I should have hired you a mover or something. Maybe you should do some collaboration with Mayflower moving or something. I

[10:24]Guest: did have help, it wasn't just me but I probably could have used a little more. And even your conclusion here when you're sort of mourning the loss of the apartment

[10:34]Zibby Owens: and everything and you say, they are only things I remember telling myself after my friend had issued his judgment. And although I love them, I could live without them. Afterward, I often wondered if I'd told myself the truth two decades later, I discovered that I had. Oh, so beautiful. Thank you. Beautiful essay, seriously beautiful. And you have a new book coming out. So you're the author of Drinks Becoming

[10:57]Guest: a Sommelier Now, Slow Road North. Tell me about that book. It's coming. I'm working on it now. It's been, I think everyone can agree, it's been a strange time to do anything, including write a book. And when the book is about a place and the people in it and you can't really engage with those people, it's been challenging. But I am still hopeful that the book will be out next year. Excellent. And the main what's the main crux of the book? The main crux is what a native New Yorker is doing in a small coastal village in Northern Ireland. That sounds good. What coast? I'm on the coast of County Antrim. Where is that? So I'm about 30 miles north of Belfast. Okay, got it. Yeah, come on over. It's a good place to be and to write and to think. I used to dream of living in Shirkin Island, which is just off the coast of Baltimore. I visited there once. I haven't been to Shirkin Island, but the Cork Coast is beautiful. I'm in the Southwest. Yeah, was beautiful. It's beautiful.

[11:52]Zibby Owens: Rosie, are you required to keep like green behind you in all of the zoomed So funny.

[11:58]Guest: It's actually a little mortifying. People ask that and I don't know if the tourist board, this house used to be a holiday house, if they enforce that. But I'm hoping I can change it soon.

[12:10]Zibby Owens: I'm referring to, for those who can't see, I'm talking about Rosie's green beautiful plates in her

[12:16]Guest: cabinet behind her. Anyway. The plates I'll keep. The paint job I think I'd like to change. Yes.

[12:23]Zibby Owens: And Carolina, let's talk about your essay and that is called Goodbye, Hello, Goodbye, Hello.

[12:32]Guest: Yeah. And probably goodbye again at some point. Yeah. I've been going back and forth between New York like a yo yo since I left in 1987 for the first time. And unlike you, Rosie, I've never lived any place for twenty years. The longest I ever lived anywhere was seven, and that was in Inwood in New York. And and I also don't consider myself like a a native New Yorker because I grew up in Queens. So I did actually experience the awe and excitement when I first began going to college in New York City. Like, that was the first time I started going to the city alone. And I remember I was like, I was really, I was, I actually bought very dark sunglasses because I found it impossible not to meet people's eye because it's not like Queens was like some little village or anything like that. But, you know, it was actually pretty unfriendly, but it was also still smaller and more homey. And I was, you know, fresh out of high school where, you know, everybody. Yeah. Like I just found it impossible not to meet people's eye or like involuntarily smile at some creep, you know? So I deliberately got very dark sunglasses because I found myself walking down 14th Street getting in trouble. So that's, yeah, I was in awe. I did experience that awe of the big city in college, but I did leave. I left because I just, I needed to. Was one of those, like, coming of age kind of leaving. I had to leave my parents' house and I needed to get as far away as possible. So, I went across the ocean with a one way ticket. So, that was the first time I left. And I stayed away for, I guess, about eleven years. But I didn't live in the same place there either. My life has been just a series of little moving from one place to another, like within five, like within less than five years, mostly. The longest I ever lived was that place in Inwood, which I lived in with my husband for seven years. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

[17:05]Zibby Owens: And you say in in your book, when you talk about moving to Kingston, not your book, sorry, your essay, you said, I've been moving northward ever since my last return, starting with Brooklyn, then across the river to the Lower East Side to Harlem, then with a partner to Inwood. When he turned 69, I decided it would be wiser to skip getting priced out of The Bronx in five years. So we made for the Hudson Valley to Kingston, where I thought we could live unfettered by financial worries into his old age. In Kingston, I never had to network. Kingston networked me. And then you continued and said, I've always thought it's utter snobbery to live in a city and not work in it. So I applied for and for and got a few shifts there within a month, even before I needed the money, which I certainly did later. When my partner was diagnosed with stage four cancer, everyone knew it and kept an eye on us and helped me care for him. When I found myself alone again, I wasn't really alone. Kingston was there for me. This is true. This is true.

[17:56]Guest: Sari came in, sat Shiva with me. And I met Sari because of the job I got at that cafe. I think, like, within a week, Sari, you came up you came up to me at the counter, like, bought something and then said, hi. I'm Sari. Well, someone had told me. Yeah. Emily Gould had said, oh, I love this writer and cartoonist.

[18:18]Sari Botton: I think she just moved to Kingston. So then I found myself at the counter at the cafe and there you were. So I, of course, looked you up and I was like, I'm sorry and we're supposed to meet. We became friends Yeah.

[18:30]Guest: And everybody told me you were the queen of Kingston. That you knew everything. That you knew everything there was to know about Kingston. And and the rest is history, isn't it? That's probably why I have mono. Too busy. Probably. Yeah. So, yeah, Kingston, that job was that job was definitely the key. I think the key to any city is working in it. I firmly believe in that. Like, when I lived in Paris for eleven years, I never got around to going up the Eiffel Tower. I said, I'm gonna if you're like a native, I'm just gonna work and and live. And I refused to be a tourist. So all the tourist attractions of Paris remain for me to see. And same with New York. Although I did come and see the when I first returned after eleven years, I paid my taxes for the first time because I didn't pay any taxes in New York for ages. And it was a fortune, by the way, because I owed a lot. But when I I think I spent it was the first time I'd ever spent $4,000 all in one shot. And to celebrate, I went up to the top of the Eiffel Tower not the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building with a little takeout of sushi and ate up there. I had dinner at the top of the Empire State Building after dropping $4,000 at the at the main post office behind Penn Station, which felt very New York. Very New York. So it's just you and your sushi there at the top of the world. Yeah. Champagne. Champagne in your bag? No. I think I have one of those little bottles of sake. Oh, good. You know, with the cup that spits on top. I've always loved those. Those are great. Yeah. New York is a great place to be alone. It is. It's a fantastic place to be alone. It is. I mean, feel like that's kind of one of the major themes of your essay, Sari, is just the sheer pleasure of being a walker in New York. Yeah. And I'm not struck by pangs of homesickness often, but that is something I miss.

[20:28]Sari Botton: Just walking the streets of the city. I felt like the city was my companion in a lot of ways. When I was there, I was a single woman.

[20:35]Zibby Owens: I was still in that phase where you date unavailable men. And I think part of it might've been deliberate because I didn't want anybody to interfere with my relationship with New York City. I wanted to just walk around by myself half the time. Your essay called Real Estate rose a lot of, you know, not rose, listened to a lot of interesting questions because of your consultation with this medium or psychic and how she was ten years off, but eventually, you found the guy with the letter b and, you know, the jetting sideways. I'm not explaining this right, but but she had envisioned you would meet him at some, like, sharp cornered buffet situation. And in fact, that is what happened. A room with mediocre

[21:15]Sari Botton: food and and sharp angles.

[21:18]Guest: I mean, was, like, the weirdest clue. I love how New York psychics double up as rest as food critics.

[21:24]Zibby Owens: Yeah. Exactly.

[21:25]Sari Botton: Sort of full service. When I told a friend that it was his wedding that where I had been, he was like, you thought the food was mediocre?

[21:35]Zibby Owens: I saw a psychic. There was one in college, like when we were all in sophomore year, they had one for some on campus event and you could go in. And, of course, all I wanted to know was, like, when am I gonna meet my husband? You know? Blah blah blah. I shouldn't have said, of course. That's, like, so, you know, not very of the moment. But, anyway, that is what I wanted to know. And she said, well, you'll meet your husband at a sporting event. So then, of course, I started going to like a million sporting events. Right? Because I was like, which one is it gonna be? And I met a boyfriend of mine at a lacrosse game, like, year later. We were both watching our younger brothers. And I was like, Oh, this is what she meant. Look at this. We're at a sporting event. And I met him. But I think that like to your point about it happening at some point, I eventually met and he didn't become my husband. But the man who's my husband now I met playing tennis, like at a sporting event, you know, doing sports. So I was like, you know, these psychics, it's like a once in a lifetime, you know, you get like one thought and maybe it happens, right? So it's funny, but you found your place too. I did. I did.

[22:34]Sari Botton: Tenth Street Lounge, Sharp Angles.

[22:37]Zibby Owens: Yes. And how ultimately she had told you not to give up your apartment and

[22:42]Sari Botton: you did. And of course, for New Yorkers, giving up a great apartment is like a sin. Not only that, I gave it up a month before we found out we were losing Brian's apartment where I had moved. So, like, that one month overlap, like, if I had just waited,

[22:57]Guest: we would have still had a place in New York City. I kick myself. I love the old lady you met who said that she did not give up her apartment and was full of regrets, but I just wanted to pat her on the back. I think of her too. I think of her all the time. Yeah. I think was right. Yeah. I think she should have had no regrets because she looked like one of those salty New Yorker types that probably wouldn't have been happy, like, getting married anyway. You know what I mean? Yeah. She kept the rent controlled

[23:25]Sari Botton: apartment for $150 but it had kept her from she had called off engagements. She had not traveled. You know, she was an actress. She hadn't been in traveling casts around the world because she was afraid to give up her apartment. That apartment had become a prison.

[23:42]Guest: Know, but I bet all her friends were really jealous of her by now, you know? She still has a place to live. I wonder if she's still alive.

[23:50]Sari Botton: I wonder.

[23:51]Guest: And it seems like such a New York thing and I'm sure people in other really expensive housing markets feel it too where you can kind of feel imprisoned by low rent And that sounds outrageous and awful and unappreciative, but it isn't, it's a very real feeling. And there were so many things I loved about my apartment, but the main reason I stayed as long as I did and overstayed, as I wrote in the essay, I really would have liked to have left when Frank died, was I just knew I couldn't afford anywhere else in New York. So there is a time to go. Agree. I think you got good advice from that lady. I would like to be imprisoned by low rent someday. Careful what you wish for.

[24:43]Zibby Owens: So now that the revised book is out there post COVID, everybody's leaving, you know. The other day, somebody I met at a wedding when I said I was from New York for the first time in my life, they said, What's keeping you there? And I was like, Well, that's an interesting question. I was like, What do you mean? And of course, then my husband's like, Yeah, what are we doing there? Stop. Our whole lives are there. But it does raise those questions. And sometimes it makes me think about, you know, even well, this is going sound terrible. But like, you know, in periods of history where it's clear you should be moving on, right? There are all these signs, like in Germany, you know, with, like, all things before the war and all these times when you should have, like, left when you look back on history and you're like, well, I'm reading it now. Like, why didn't everyone just pick up and go? And I remember, like, asking my grandparents about things like that, they would say, well, people didn't want to go because it was their homes. And I'm like, yeah, but couldn't they see that all this stuff was coming? And it's like, home is a very powerful place. And then I think about New York and I look, I read the New York Post or something and I'm like, oh my gosh, like, well, it's okay. It wasn't on my block. Or, you know what I mean? Like, I'll be fine. I don't know. It makes you question like, is this one of those times where logically you think like, well, why would you live there? Don't know. Although I just interviewed somebody from San Francisco and she's like, well, you know, living here is like living on the edge. You never know with fires and earthquakes and I don't know. Maybe there's part of the maybe there's part of that that there is an inherent sense of risk to living in these places that makes it like you double down like cognitive dissonance. You know, like, well, I picked it and it's risky, therefore I need to definitely, you know, but anyway, and then all these people of course left. That was a random soliloquy,

[26:27]Sari Botton: excuse me, but. Yeah, I mean, we're feeling it now here in Kingston, there's housing crisis. And you know I now think about gentrification in a way that I had not thought about it at all when I moved to the East Village when the East Village was a you know just a pit in 1993. I hadn't thought about it when I moved upstate. I now have many different ideas about gentrification and I recognize that I am what they call a pioneer gentrifier. I am someone who doesn't make a lot of money, who gets kicked out of a place when it starts gentrifying. And I move to the next affordable place. And I'm one of those creatives who contributes to the allure of the place. And then it attracts people with money. Luckily, my husband and I were able to buy a house three years ago. We bought a foreclosure because we were otherwise completely shut out of the housing market. And if we had to buy a house now, we would have been completely unable to. We would not have been able to compete with people coming up from the city, plunking down cash so they don't even need the bank to say, you know, we'll give you a mortgage because we agree it's worth this. They're buying things for 30% more than appraised value. And people are getting displaced. And it's very upsetting. You know, there's only so much individuals can do. A lot of it has to do with government, municipalities, what they do. And right now, our city hall is supporting billionaires, letting them get away with waiving all kinds of stipulations and things that they're supposed to do, like put 20% of their units in affordable housing. So where I can, I get involved politically? I will get involved more now that I've finished my book. And once I'm done with mono, I'm going to get more involved in raising awareness about gentrification and pushing back against city hall because, you know, for instance, they've rubber stamped a resort of little tiny houses that are now going for over $600 a night on the river, but they have stalled tiny houses for homeless people or unhoused people. And so, you know, I think that there are a lot of considerations that especially white people don't realize when they start getting priced out of places and just move to the next, you know, Brian and I, when we couldn't find a house in Kingston, we're like, all right, let's look at Troy. And then, you know, further, further and further up, like Karolita was doing, moving up, up, up. But we realized, luckily, we were not able to find a house here that we could afford, a foreclosure. But also, like, now I feel like we have an obligation to get involved. A couple of years ago, I brought Jeremiah Moss from Jeremiah's Vanishing New York up for a discussion about gentrification to city hall here in Kingston and over a 100 people showed up and we talked about, you know, what can we do? Because it was starting then, even before COVID. And he said, you know, individuals can only do so much. It's really about municipalities and their policies and then bending over backwards for developers. And the only thing you really can do is get involved in activism. So I will be getting more involved. Okay. Interesting.

[29:37]Zibby Owens: Great. Well, thank you all for coming on and talking about this great book, Abide All That, which by the way, gave to my sister-in-law who recently left, well, even so recently, but five years ago. Anyway, that was her Mother's Day present this year. So thank you for this and congratulations

[29:53]Sari Botton: on the anthology. Thank you so much for having us. It was a wonderful discussion and great to see you guys. Lovely to meet you all. Thank you. Thank too. Bye.

[30:02]Zibby Owens: Bye.