I’ve been talking about doing a zine for almost a year now and I promised myself that when I finished up school, I would do it. For the last couple of months, I’ve been brainstorming ideas for this booklet, never quite sure what to call it and never quite sure of the format. I wasn’t even completely sure of what I wanted to say.But, during my last two weeks in New York City, everything sort of came together. On a Sunday morning, I was walking crosstown from the 1 train to St. Mark’s Books via Washington Square Park. And under a partly cloudy sky with the wind stinging my face, I realized how sad I was to be leaving New York. For almost a year, I had been agreeing with something that my grandpa used to say, “the only good train in New York is the one that leads out of it.”
With my departure becoming very real and near, my view of the city started to change. No longer was I looking forward to riding the train (or plane) away from the Big Apple. Instead, I found myself reminding others and myself how soon I’d be returning. After a year of lambasting New York and itching to get away from it, I started to understand that Bob Dylan lyric, “I'm going back to New York City/I do believe I've had enough.”
Nostalgia spurred me into a massive memory unearthing session. Strange little stories starting coming to the surface and I realized that some of them were pretty funny, others were very telling, and still others were a bit painful. And it was then that I knew that I wanted the first issue to be a hodgepodge of anecdotes about my experiences in New York.
When I settled on the topic, I didn’t expect the process of writing and designing this booklet to be as fun as it ended up being. So, I hope I’ve done the city and my experiences justice. And I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together.
Cheers!
A.K. Gold
January 2002
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