Coney Island and the New York We Left Behind

Chapel Hill is great, but Michael Venutolo-Mantovani has designs on someday returning to the city he loves most.

Photo courtesy of the author.

The photo has hung on every refrigerator we’ve shared as a couple. Eight-by-ten and glossy, its white paper frame grows more yellow with each passing year.

Her hands are white-knuckled around the safety bar, her upper body almost doubled over as if that might provide some protection, should the Cyclone’s old white wood finally snap after nearly a century of fun. Her eyes are closed tight, teeth clenched shut, waiting for the first drop to rise in her lower stomach. She does not like this.

I am nearly twice her size, with a smile as wide as the Atlantic, stretching out behind us. The rush of wind as the creaky coaster’s ancient first car crests the hill and plunges down that famous first drop, my short hair blown back over my head. I love this.

Coney Island is the site of many moments in the story of our relationship. Me meeting her at the finish of many a Brooklyn Half Marathon, with hands full of Nathan’s hot dogs and bottles of water. Her indulging my insatiable appetite for the smell of sea air and fresh clams on the half shell. Us marking every Valentine’s Day with a pizza pilgrimage, starting at Lombardi’s, where Spring Street meets the Bowery, weaving our way to Spumoni Gardens, and finally ending at Totonno’s, as the frigid February winds roar down Neptune Avenue.

But in that moment—the one captured by the Cyclone’s automatic camera that clicks just as the first car passes over the crest of that giant first hill; that has snapped pictures of millions of couples old and new, scared women and men, and boyfriends and girlfriends who pretended they weren’t—in that moment, she and I were almost brand new.

It was long before we married; long before we had our first child, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed puddle of love, a boy we call "Budgie"; long before my wife endured the late-stage miscarriage; long before we had our second child, a little girl whose spirit is a cyclone unto itself. It was before we ever thought we’d leave New York City.

As our love for each other grew, our love for New York waned. The little hiccups that are the daily routine of any New Yorker —delayed subways, overcrowded restaurants, greenspaces jammed with sun-worshipers on a perfect spring day — became more and more disruptive, more and more disheartening. Eventually, and much to our surprise, the tiny conversations about whether we might someday leave New York to raise our not-yet-family became full-fledged plans for where we might escape to, where we might raise a daughter or a son or both.

We were young when we met at the ice rink at Bryant Park in 2011 but not that young. I was 28, Emily 29. She was nearly a foot shorter than me, with an effervescent cheer that belied her status as a longtime New Yorker. We both knew right away that we’d found each other for a reason. Our relationship skipped the passionate first few weeks and months that almost always fade away as fast as they come, as we immediately settled into a routine. It was comfortable and intuitive, as if we had been together our entire lives. We worked hard, her in the television industry, me in the record business, and, like many professional New Yorkers, assumed we’d start thinking about kids after the age of 35. Anything earlier would cut into careers, into parties that raged far too late into the night and well into the morning.

But, as our love for each other grew, our love for New York waned. The little hiccups that are the daily routine of any New Yorker —delayed subways, overcrowded restaurants, greenspaces jammed with sun-worshipers on a perfect spring day — became more and more disruptive, more and more disheartening. Eventually, and much to our surprise, the tiny conversations about whether we might someday leave New York to raise our not-yet-family became full-fledged plans for where we might escape to, where we might raise a daughter or a son or both. We considered Asbury Park, not far from where I grew up on the Jersey Shore. We looked at the Hudson Valley like so many other then-recently expatriated New Yorkers. We love L.A. but agreed it was too far from both our families, full of lifelong East Coasters. We decided that if we were going to move, it would be far from New York and to a place we’d never lived.

“The Southern Part of Heaven” is what the locals call Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and in many ways, it’s exactly that. The skies most days are cloudless, the temperature often perfect, and the people amongst the kindest I’ve ever met. The food is great and the scene in our little college town is eternally vibrant, and forever optimistic. It’s idyllic. A terrific place to live, and will be a wonderful place to raise our kids.

But the idyll hasn’t been without issue. While we have plenty of friends and even more acquaintances, both Emily and I have found it hard to connect much beyond superficial friendships built over common interests; workout friends, parent friends, friends in the music, film, and art scenes. That’s not to say those relationships are valueless.

Quite the opposite.

But it’s as if there’s a shared consciousness amongst New Yorkers, an unspoken soul-language in which my wife and I are fluent. Now we live in a new place, with a new soul-language. It's been a decade and still we don't quite speak it. I'm not sure we ever will.

Emily and I talk constantly about moving back. But those theoretical conversations hinge on our kids being grown. Maybe after they've left for college, we say, we'll move back to the Lower East Side or the Greenpoint, Brooklyn that backdropped the first days, weeks, months, and years of our relationship. And who knows what New York will look like then, if it will even resemble the City we so love and miss. Every time we go back, which is at least a few times a year, the City looks different, feels different. Things grow faster when you're away from them.

I love our life in Chapel Hill. I love that our kids are growing up in a place so verdant, so kind, so quiet. I love the people, the food, and the heat of the South. I love the accents and the way the locals tell stories, and how they want to make sure you’re okay before they bother worrying about themselves. But I miss New York. I miss New York. I miss New York.

Of course, going back now makes no sense. Trading our big house in our quiet neighborhood—mere blocks from one of the most beautiful public universities in America—for our old seven-hundred-and-fifty-square-foot apartment—whose front door opened to a daily trash heap and whose foyer reeked of piss—seems impossible. To swap our backyard—our kids' playground, battlefield, private jungle, spaceship, pretend Sahara—for a subway ride to a tiny patch of green surrounded by concrete, overwhelmed with other exhausted parents—seems impossible. To simply return to the brutality of New York life after having grown soft by its standards seems impossible.

I love our life in Chapel Hill. I love that our kids are growing up in a place so verdant, so kind, so quiet. I love the people, the food, and the heat of the South. I love the accents and the way the locals tell stories, and how they want to make sure you’re okay before they bother worrying about themselves.

This series is inspired by my NYC anthologies. Order the books…

But I miss New York. I miss New York. I miss New York.

I miss my friends, the ones who held me up when my mother died. I miss my morning commute, a slow walk down Allen Street to where it becomes Kenmare, then down Spring until I got to Hudson Street. I miss Washington Square Park, where I first kissed her, and the cacophony of horns, sirens, and shouts that punctuated the night in our tiny apartment above Delancey Street. I miss the Bowery Ballroom. I miss my fruit guy at the corner of Spring and Varick who‘d sell me an apple and ask how I was every workday morning. I miss the A/C/E and I miss Showtime busking on the L train. I miss NY1 and Pat Kiernan reading me the morning’s newspapers. I miss Bryant Park and the ice rink and I miss real pizza. I miss my friends. Oh, how I miss my friends. I miss the stuffed shells at Bamonte’s and eating family-style at Patrizia’s. I miss the eggrolls and Vanessa's dumplings. I miss walking across the Williamsburg Bridge only to turn around and walk back to our home on the Lower East Side. I miss eating ice cream along the Hudson. I miss telling people that I was a New Yorker, because of the pride with which it filled me. I miss the young man I was, even though I’m happy with the middle-aged man I’m becoming. I miss Midtown. I never thought I’d say that. I miss Brooklyn and I miss the Mets. I miss trips to Coney Island, whether by train, by car, or by bike—to eat clams or walk the boards, to ride the mighty Cyclone with the woman who would soon become my wife and the mother of our children.

Someday we’ll move back, I’m sure. Someday those hushed, theoretical conversations will become real. Maybe in a decade, when our kids are off to college, and New York even less resembles the city we lived in than it does today. Maybe one or both of our kids will make their way there themselves, choosing to study film at NYU or journalism at Columbia, and we’ll follow in tow. We’ll want to be near them, but really we’ll just be looking for a reason to move back to the city that we made our home for so many years, the city we miss so much.

Emily and I talk constantly about moving back. But those theoretical conversations hinge on our kids being grown. Maybe after they've left for college, we say, we'll move back to the Lower East Side or the Greenpoint, Brooklyn that backdropped the first days, weeks, months, and years of our relationship. And who knows what New York will look like then, if it will even resemble the City we so love and miss. Every time we go back, which is at least a few times a year, the City looks different, feels different. Things grow faster when you're away from them.

Our kids will stomp and stammer and beg us to not move to their new college town. We’ll come to an agreement, promising that we won’t move north of 34th Street if they're at Columbia or west of the Bowery if they're at NYU. They’ll acquiesce and their mom and I will laugh in secret, knowing that we had no intention of ever living north of 34th or west of the Bowery.

We’ll show them all the places that were landmarks in the relationship of their parents, pointing out the ledge of Washington Square’s fountain, where I grabbed her by the waist and kissed her on that first night; the location of our favorite apartment, the one above Delancey Street; where our beloved pizzerias used to be; the route their mom used to jog home after spending the night at my place, before we moved in together, from Greenpoint all the way down to the bridge, and across to Alphabet City; and the sites of all of the little rock and roll clubs their dad used to play.

And we’ll take them to Coney Island to eat fresh clams on the boardwalk and share a pie at Totonno's. And we’ll ride the Cyclone up to the peak of that first drop, the one they’ll no doubt recognize from an old picture on their refrigerator, from back when their parents were brand new and far too young to know they’d ever leave New York City. And down we’ll drop, the four of us together, in the city that will always be our home.

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