Thanks to an amazing Nike party, I spent the majority of last week in New York City. New York is known to many as “the greatest city in the world,” and I grew up believing it.

I project an impossible image of Manhattan into my head. I see a 17 year old Madonna playing in punk bands with Vincent Gallo, wearing a homemade Samo shirt, Andy Warhol attending their shows. Lou Reed talking shit about them. I’m always searching for that memory. Maybe if we look hard enough we can live it.

The romance of NY is that it doesn’t completely fail at that impossible memory. The things I’ve lived in New York I will not forget, no matter how many Sonic Youths move away, no matter how high rent becomes, no matter how much the city has fallen. Anywhere else could be the future, but I go to New York because it is the past.