New York's closed. Come back some other time.

Long before I lived there or even spent time twice a month there working on radio spots, I had been to New York lots of times for family trips. It was a hop skip and a jump from Pittsburgh. Sometimes we'd fly, other times we'd drive. I saw New York go from gritty and scary to a Disneyland paradise of safe. Every time I visited, it changed, and also not.

I still have great memories of it. Editing many commercials there along with aforementioned radio spots. Staying up all night with co-workers. Getting to first-name basis familiarity with bartenders and hotel clerks and bellhops. Going to "my" bodega on a regular basis.

I met my wife in New York. An erotic rom com weekend.

It's also where I went on a shoot for RZA and KAWS, which was one month after my dad died, and two months before I was laid off for the first time in my then seventeen-year career.

I have mixed feelings about New York. The last time I was there, I didn't think the food was that great and I didn't care for the middling hotel in Chinatown and the constant noise I thought of as second nature until I left for western greener pastures. Say what you will about Los Angeles, but it's never noisy. As a result, people are less on edge.

But the truth is New York doesn't exist any more and hasn't for a long time. The real New York people think of died sometime in the 80's. Most of the good places had been long since priced out. What's left is obnoxious people, vagrants and a bubble called Brooklyn which is more provincial in its snotty hipsterdom than any backwoods southern town I've ever visited. The worst type of privilege are people who lecture others about privilege. All of them live in Brooklyn.

I think of a line from "Smalltown," a song off of Lou Reed and John Cale's Songs for Drella.

Where did Picasso come from?
There's no Michelangelo coming from Pittsburgh
If art is the tip of the iceberg
I'm the part sinking below

Yeah? Well there's no  Lou Reed coming from New York any more either. Or Talking heads or Suicide or New Yorok Dolls. Or their wannabe sons and daughters, either. New York's over.

And now with coronavirus shuttering so many things around the globe, that process is only accelerating. I just read an article that Prune has shuttered its doors. Who knows if its permanent? All I know is that I loved that little restaurant and the vibe. It was the first place I had bone marrow and I've been hooked ever since.

Knowing that it's gone gives me the same hollow feeling in my stomach that my friend Mark had when he visited New York in August of 2001. He'd been meaning to see the World Trade Center, but left without doing so. His rationale which seemed reasonable at the time was "I can always visit it next time."

I'd meant to go to Prune the last time I was in New York in 2018. I uttered the same words.

I loved New York until I hated it. I don't think I'm unique in this sentiment, nor am I particularly unique in deciding to vote with my feet and leave it before I sunk under its weight. In one sense I feel like I left he party early while it was still mostly good. A decade later, athe straggler New Yorkers showed up to L.A. I can't blame them. $4,000 for a two bedroom seems like a bargain compared to $3800 for a tiny studio.

I don't know that I've ever found a place I've wanted to call a permanent home. I've always viewed home as being other people, and not a geographic location. On one level that means my roots are stronger because I'm devoted to the people I love more than a zip code I had no hand in choosing when I was placed on this earth. But I still know where I came from and what was good about growing up there, even if I don't like to think about it. I'm no Michelangelo coming from Pittsburgh, but I ain't no slouch, either. I've done all right.

I hope Prune survives in one form or another. I'd hate to think the days of wine and roses are over. I don't believe they are. But the days of tiny cramped loud restaurants might be, and maybe that's for the better.

This also makes me think of the places I got to know and love in San Francisco, a town that is arguably a lot worse off than New York. All were without exception, intimate and cramped. I don't want to think about all the places that will be force to shutter. But like the piece in the Times points out, a lot of these restaurants were all hanging by a thread any way. If you are only a week or two from bankruptcy, it's a scary proposition.

It's not like there are any answers, although I'm tired of the binary thinking that only offers two scenrios, either we all open up and people die, or we stay closed forever and people live.

Binary thinking is so lazy.

A whole bunch of things happened at once that led to a soup that is more chaotic in some parts of the kettle than in other parts. There's not really a oone-size-fits all approach and the leaders who are making arbitrary decisions based on emotion are proving this on a daily basis.

What is also being proven on a daily basis is that cities are broken. From crime to homelessness, rent prices to disease, what seemed like a civilized, if obnoxiously expensive way of life in a big metropolis now stands as a bleak reminder that being on top of each other twenty-four hours a day is not good for health and sanity.

It's too soon to say if we will have a back-to-the-country movement like America had in the 1960's when hippies decamped for a quieter pace.

The only thing for certain is that cities need a rethink.