But after I gave Hackensack the once over,

"No one should come to live in New York unless he is willing to be lucky."- E.B. White

(UPDATED: Hey. My name's Dan. I run am.fm.pm. Thanks for the kind words on this post. For the most part, I try to write in the third person to give the posts an air of professionalism- like a magazine, you know? The thing is, sometimes, more personal posts come out sounding like this site is being written by Venom. Like this one, for example- a little re-edit was certainly in order. Again, thanks for watching, and do stay tuned to am.fm.pm.)

The very first job I got when I moved to New York City was at a Starbucks, one of the 24 hour Times Square locations. The hours were odd (3am - noon), the customers grotesque (you haven't seen "childish" until you've seen a grown Lehman Brothers executive swear at a single mother for failing to put whipped cream on his hot chocolate), and the pay was laughable. It was however, the perfect job for me given my situation at the time.

I was paying $400 a month to sleep on a futon in the living room of a 37 year old gay Ecuadorian gentleman named Jimmy (by his own tongue pronounced "Yhimmy"), the dubious winner of a disheartening Craigslist hunt whom I would one day find passed out in a pool of his own blood-tainted urine, call an ambulance for, and never see again. (But that's another story for another time.) Needless to say, we didn't have too much in common and rarely saw one another what with my odd schedule. Savings fluxuating between meager and non-existent, the free loafs of lemon bread, coffee cake, cookies and the like that this shitty job afforded me were more than welcome. On a day to day basis, there was very little social interaction to be spoken of- I really didn't know anybody in New York, having been unceremoniously dumped by the Sarah Lawrence student/Dagny Taggart fetishist I'd followed to the city from the social womb of my hometown all of three weeks after moving there.

It was a Thursday in July '06, a morning rush like any other at the Times Square Starbucks, the lapping sea of routine caffeine team players crashing into the bank of registers at the store's front when a well dressed man- I took him for a banker- presented himself at my till and ordered a multi grain bagel with cream cheese. Suspecting that our store was without those little cream cheese cuplets that morning (a common occurrence) I prepared his order. A cursory pass of the mini fridge hidden behind the counter confirmed my assumption, so to compensate, I tossed two jelly packets and some foil wrapped butter pats into the sack, hurriedly passed it off, and continued the transaction. This would not pass the gentleman, who asked, hurt, "Where's the cream cheese?"

"Sorry sir", I responded, "but we're all out this morning. You've got some jelly and butter in there, though."

"Well", the man stammered incredulously, "what the hell am I supposed to eat my bagel with?" In my (retrospectively) needlessly snippy and clever way, I retorted "My condolences?" Cocking his arm back, banker douche whipped the the little brown bagel bag at me, bonking my nose. It didn't hurt, but was still plenty embarrassing. "Fucking faggot!", the man barked, promptly turning and leaving the store. Richard, the assistant store manager, signaled for me to come to him.

Richard was a short, stacked man, the kind of guy who was most likely a "with it" camp counsellor back in the day. He led me into the back office and explained that he'd seen what just happened. He told me that he understood how difficult customers can be, and that he was sorry that the incident had occurred. Perhaps sensing my reticence, he then asked me to sit, and got out the next month's in-store promotions manual. Richard was a nice guy, and excluding my resentment of anybody that asks us to "do that funny voice!", I'd like to think the two of us got along pretty well. Having said that, it is impossible for a person to hate another as much as I did Richard when he began dictating "what an exciting time it (was) for the company," and what an "important role I just know you're going to play in all this." The hyped "all this", he confided with flaccid enthusiasm, was that in fall 2006, Starbucks was going to start serving breakfast sandwiches. He relayed what an upswing for business it would be, how product turnover would boom, and other such sound bytes of corporate white noise. Politely and bluntly, I told Richard that I was taking my lunch break. Right then. He agreed, and I left the store, still wearing a syrup spattered green apron.

Sticky, shell-shocked and reeking of dairy, I staggered out into the "crossroads of the world!" over to the 42nd street McDonalds, a tourist choked Colosseum of unhealth where "Dollar Menu" means anything from the "Dollar and Thirty Nine Cents Menu" to the "Two Dollars and Nineteen Cents Menu". I felt like I was on a different planet. This sleep schedule was fucking with me, badly. I was drinking upwards of twelve shots of espresso during a daily nine hour shift. Everybody in this restaurant looked like they were missing a chromosome. This wasn't what I'd moved here for. Breakfast sandwiches? BREAKFAST SANDWICHES?

I sat, munching my limp lamp-warmed McChicken, feeling sorry for myself. And then- get ready for it- the song "Stay" by Lisa Loeb came wafting through the tinny McDonalds P/A system, and straight up, I fucking lost it. I just started bawling- big, embarrassing, pitiful sobs. Not my proudest moment, but it was the last time I cried in public. It was the last time because I promised myself it would be the last time. I didn't go back to Starbucks that day, or ever again for that matter. I just stopped. Stopped going, answering phone calls, all of it. And while I know that the attitude of our coworkers was surely "Oh, what, poor suburban white kid couldn't handle serving coffee to a bunch of leather necked day-trading hard ons?", you know what? They would have been right. Poor suburban white kid couldn't handle it. All I knew was that then and there, I felt simply awful about every aspect of what my life had become.

At the moment, it sounds like I hate this city. I don't. I've since got a much better job: an advertising office jockey, and while it sends me home much cleaner, it's not without it's frustrations. I've got a better apartment, but consternations with roommates still flare up on occasion. No life is without it's idiosyncrasies, and I can admit that it took me a little bit longer than everybody else to accept that. At times, a person gets the feeling the world is made up of what my older brother calls "the other 85%". Then you realise that New York is all 15 percenters, every last person. The magic of this city derives itself from those little non-sequiters, those off nights where you end up spending nine hours at the MTV studios watching your comedy heroes wrap up a live 24 hour broadcast, or you get to talk shop with John Lutz for all of 30 seconds, or that cute NBC rep that comes to your office gives you a kickass pen. It's the AM New York guy that yells "Get your damn news!" outside Grand Central, or the feeling I get looking out at the Manhattan dusk when the N train comes above ground at Queensboro plaza, and I see the color behind that brooding cliched skyline and my chest starts to hurt. I didn't know it at the time, but that- that's why I came here.

I will sleep here and eat here and love here and hate here and hurt people here and get hurt here and fail here and succeed here and one day, one perfectly ordinary day I will give this city a medal. A beautiful gold medal covered with spikes.

Modest Mouse "Dark Center of the Universe"

DJ Cappel & Smitty "Juicy/New York, New York" (Notorious B.I.G. vs. Frank Sinatra)

Tom Waits "Midtown"

Ernie Ford "Sixteen Tons"

Coven "One Tin Soldier"

The Carpenters "Yesterday Once More"

Nico "Chelsea Girls"

The Libertines "The Man Who Would Be King"

Tom Waits "Union Square"

Regina Spektor "Braille"

Tom Waits "Downtown Train"

Elton John "Levon"

The Five Stairsteps "Ooh Child"