A Windowless Room Called Hope

The places in New York City where New York City ceases to exist

There are places in New York City where New York City ceases to exist. 

Up an elevator, somewhere in the fifties, lies one of those places. It’s a wellness spa that’s neither a Chinese massage+ parlor, nor is it a high-end Tribeca temple of solitude and selfies. It’s somewhere in between — an oasis of woo-woo, rented by the hour for cold plunges, acupuncture, and the like. Here, there are no employees, only guides; no classes, only journeys; no refunds, only store credit at the discretion of the manager. 

The space screams, I was founded by a previously miserable corporate raider who ventured upstate to sit with plants under the tutelage of a once miserable corporate raider turned shaman. On day two of the journey, Grandmother Ayahuasca communed directly to him. 

“Shed your ego, my child, for you know not about life.” she said.

“But what am I to do?” he pleaded. 

“Give up your worldly possessions and devote your life to compassion and nothingness," she whispered. 

“So, like, give everything away and go be poor?” he replied. “That sounds like it sucks.”

“Not poor, but rich! Wisdom and lack of attachment are gifts worth more than gold," she offered. 

“Can I, at least, keep the Hamptons place?” he pleaded. “We just added a salt-water pool.”

“My child, the Great Mother has already given you the bounty of this blessed Earth," she replied.

“Meh,” he replied. 

“Meh?” she responded, growing impatient. 

(An awkward pause ensues.)

“Okay … so what I am really hearing you say is that I should leave my job in finance, enroll in a 20-hour course in shamanism, and open a business to guide people on the path to oneness!" he said animatedly. 

“Wait, what?" she replied, “I didn’t say that at all. I said you should give up your…”

“Yes, yes, that’s it!” he yelled, standing up on his feet now. “I shall open a wellness spa in midtown!”

“Seriously, dude!” she responded forcefully. “You have so many issues of your own to work on first. Let’s start with when you were eight years old and …” 

“Wow, thanks Grandmother Ayahuasca! I now know my purpose in life!” he said, radiating in his own self-delusional golden light. “I shall take all of my unprocessed feelings and extensive knowledge of commodities markets into the realm of healing after one sitting with plant medicine.”

He started to sob with tears of joy. 

“Come on, seriously? They are just letting anyone sit with me these days!’ she lamented, looking directly at the shaman who only came to the realization to be a healer six months ago. 

“Let us bow to Grandmother Ayahuasca and her infinite knowledge of self. May we always listen to her and let her guide our path forward. Aho!” the shaman offered with a bow, as the session came to a close.

Moments later, the enlightened soon-to-be spa owner was on LoopNet scouring venues in midtown and calling his floor guy to start sourcing Peruvian tiles.

“Thank you, Grandmother Ayahuasca!” he repeated, as he put down a deposit for 3,000 square feet of office space. 

But she was long gone, having been summoned into a circle in Williamsburg, as a group of 30-year-old girls intended to shed their egos by livestreaming their journey on Insta. #grateful 

It remains unclear if it was a vision from the plants or the advice of his business coach, but he added in a sensory deprivation tank to his offerings. Such spaces welcome you back into the womb, assuming that your mother’s birth canal was made of ceramic, smelled of essential oils, and sounded like a Reiki practitioner’s waiting room. 

These spaces take you as you are and shield you from anything and everything else. Just you and you — or to personalize it for this story, just me and me. I would occasionally find my way into the tank and away from New York when I felt this city was on the verge of breaking me. And, this city will eventually break everyone, especially those whose jobs involve trying to make any tiny corner of it better - or, more appropriately, less terrible. 

Eager to fix a broken sidewalk? Call 311 and then wait four years for a response telling you that a city representative will be with you in 5-7 business years. Want a new park? Devote the next three generations of your blood line to arguing with your community board. Desire to make our streets less of a dangerous hellscape of murder? Spend your career yelling into the endless void of elected leaders who couldn’t give a fuck.

Amid the infinite impossibility of trying to wrestle this city into some form of sensible submission — some way to acknowledge how broken, corrupt, and inhospitable we are, there are the days that will truly crush you. The moments when even the great masochistic advocates, boosters, and dreamers of New York City lose hope. When another kid was killed crossing the street, when another bureaucrat chose to study and create a task force rather than fix, when another elected leader proved themself to be a useless vessel for anything useful. 

On these particularly hard days, I would often get out of work and escape from the world for 60 unreachable minutes into a sensory deprivation tank. I’d navigate through midtown and into a salt water pod to be alone with myself and away from every part of New York City. Here, my staff couldn’t share the news of another terrible crash, an elected leader couldn’t call to yell at me about something, and the long arm of The New York Post had no press pass for follow-up questions.

Just me, floating in body temperature brine, staring at a pre-programmed starry night sequence on the ceiling. With each minute, New York City faded further into the infinite distance, as I lay with myself and my thoughts. Mind you, it was just an hour, so a hair short of enlightenment, but also not so far away from it, either.

I came to love and appreciate these moments to remain immersed in the five boroughs, and yet so incredibly far from them at the same time. To escape, but to really escape this place. In Central Park, where every plant and rock seems so perfectly planned, the skyscrapers poke above the trees and the mopeds race around the loop. Even on the beaches, the subways tracks clang in the background as vendors hock frozen drinks made in battery-powered blenders. Not even these natural escapes can shield you from the city. New York will seep into any open pore and take over.

But in the sensory deprivation tank, there was no New York. No noise. No smell of Halal trucks. No Traffic Enforcement Agents waving for you to move on from this No Floatation Zone. No mayor, city council, or community boards. No 8.8 million neighbors. 

No nothin’.

Sometimes, the experiences were profound and moving, other times just some welcome quiet and a chance to rest. When my mind finally slowed and I started to enjoy it, the session was inevitably nearing its end. Just as the nothingness washed over me and the divine was about to tell me to open my own wellness center uptown, the gentle voice of a guide at the front desk interrupted the playlist of Koshi chimes rustling in the breeze to inform me in a sweet, but all business, manner that time was up. In my moments of solitary bliss, I forgot that every minute was costing me a few bucks and someone else was racing to get in here to similarly forget that New York existed. 

But while I had forgotten this city, it had not forgotten me. The work and worries remained just as they were 60 minutes ago. Yet, I felt more centered and grounded, having done absolutely nothing, around absolutely no one, with absolutely no responsibility, in a place that was absolutely not New York.

With a shower and a sip of some herbal tea, I got dressed and avoided staring into my phone - the first wave of attack against my newfound calm. I threw in headphones to keep listening to the sounds of non-New York on max volume, and stepped out onto the street. Within milliseconds, the city struck back with a vengeance - reminding me of who was in charge. 

A taxi driver laid on his horn as he sat in endless traffic. Two men argued over nothing and soon squared up. A woman on the corner in tattered rags yelled obscenities at everyone. Meanwhile, that wonderfully expensive escape pod out of this city and into myself got physically and emotionally farther away. The newfound calm on the streets was only as strong as my mental ability to breathe deeply and not take this city personally. A beautiful invitation from countless self-help authors, none of whom had ever tried to move a bill through a city council. 

So, back to the subway, and back to trying to fix our transportation, and back to imagining a better city in spite of all of the forces pushing against change. Back to hope. Working and fighting until that breaking point, and then retreating from the five boroughs to find hope again nestled in a windowless room in midtown where New York City is refused entry. 

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If I Can Make It There is a collection of stories about the things and people, including me, that move through New York City. A celebration of the characters who crawl through endless traffic, slog through the subways, and stroll under the shade of scaffolding.

Like our fragmented and broken transportation system, some stories race with enthusiasm to a red light and others remain hopelessly stuck behind a double-parked Mercedes with New Jersey plates and blinkers on as the driver screams over the honking, “Just hold on for a minute! I’m only stopping in for a quick dinner at Sardis.” 

And, all of these stories could occur nowhere else but the greatest city on Earth - New York Fucking City.