My wife and I left Brooklyn as the coronavirus pandemic started tearing through New York City and are now hunkering down in Pennsylvania — and it's making me rethink how I've chosen to live my life

Nick Lichtenberg 4 hours ago

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A view of the New York City Marathon from my stoop, in November 2019. Nick Lichtenberg

I'm one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who left New York City in March.

My wife and I made the choice once we realized the scale of the coronavirus pandemic and how much worse it could get. A couple of factors helped us make the decision, and my job as an editor here at Business Insider was one of them. I'd been reading a lot of breaking news about the spread of the virus, and we both knew we'd be able to work remotely.

Another factor that made the decision easier is that my newly retired parents live in Pennsylvania, close to the New Jersey border. They have a yard, a guest room, and a washing machine. All in all, it seemed like a good place to hunker down in an unpredictable and fast-moving situation.

So, my wife and I left the night of March 16, the same day San Francisco declared a shelter-in-place order. We were convinced that New York would be the next city to do so, maybe even the next day. New York state didn't actually enact a stay-at-home order until March 20, and New York's cases have skyrocketed far past those in the Bay Area.

The night we left, we took an Uber to LaGuardia Airport, picked up a one-way overnight rental car, and drove 60 miles straight across Interstate 78. My wife never expected to move in with her in-laws just two and a half years into our marriage, but five weeks later, here we are as a four-person household.

Over the past month, I've had a lot of time to think, not only about my extraordinary privilege in having this place to come to, but also about what comes next. The coronavirus pandemic has been a gateway to a new world in many ways, not all of them good. For us, it's also been a window into a new lifestyle, one that comes after New York.

Trying out a new lifestyle

While we have loved New York, we haven't always been dead set on being lifelong New Yorkers.

I've lived in the city for all but a couple of years since 2005, and my wife moved to New York from California in early 2016. For about a year, we've been living in an apartment in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, an easy 20-minute subway ride from downtown Manhattan, where Business Insider's office is located.

IMG_0304 Downtown Manhattan, near Business Insider's office. Nick Lichtenberg

Our place in Brooklyn has been almost, but not quite, perfect. I'd always wanted to live in an actual brownstone, and we managed to find a spacious, two-bedroom apartment on a gorgeous block — a massive upgrade from our previous cramped studio in Manhattan. But it's also a fourth-floor walk-up without any laundry in the building. Still, when the New York City Marathon ran down our street last November, it was a beautiful and fun time to live in the city. I didn't want to be anywhere else.

And we enjoyed New York for what it was: a beautiful city with vibrant street life, great restaurants and bars, a culture full of amazing theaters and independent movie theaters. Plus, it's where work is, and where many of my friends live.

We've thought about what another lifestyle would be like, and we've come up with a checklist: a house with its own washing machine, a car (preferably a Subaru), access to nature, a location maybe close to a city but not in a city. But really, what could ever make us leave New York?

Well, here we are in Pennsylvania, and it's like we've pressed fast forward on our lives.

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There's so much open space in this part of Pennsylvania — and easy access to nature. Nick Lichtenberg

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Pennsylvania spring colors. Nick Lichtenberg

This corner of the state is full of preserved farms and old houses made of stone. It has rolling hills dotted with pretty trees covered in white or pink or yellow leaves. There's a lot of nature, from the ducks swimming in a pond by the river to the hawks circling overhead.

Last weekend, we drove to the New Jersey side and hiked up a hill overlooking the Delaware River. Not only is it beautiful, but it's exactly what we told ourselves we would want, if we ever left New York.

IMG_0448 One of the many old barns that dot the eastern Pennsylvania landscape. Nick Lichtenberg

And so, five weeks after getting out of New York with just a couple of suitcases we had each packed for a single week, I'm starting to wonder if my decade-long run there ended the night I left for what I thought would only be a brief escape.

Wondering how, or if, I'll ever go back

When I think about going back, I'm excited about the idea that I could be part of rebuilding a city that's been stripped of everything I knew for over a decade. It could be like going back to the '90s or the heyday of punk rock and disco in the '70s, when the city's fiscal straits inspired the legendary Daily News headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead."

But I've also watched from our digital newsroom as record-setting unemployment numbers are filed nearly every Thursday. And many of my friends who are still in New York tell me it's worse than the headlines, that they lost their jobs suddenly and have been trying to file claims for weeks, but the state government can't process all the incoming requests.

And maybe New York City will see "peak" virus in May, but without reliable testing to know who's a carrier, I don't see how the city can open up for business without risking another outbreak.

Then there's the "wave" thing. Pandemics come in waves, and experts say another wave of the coronavirus is likely to hit before a vaccine is developed next year. I imagine New York getting back on its feet again — say, by the summer — only for a second wave to hit in the fall or the winter. Then we'll run this social-distancing show all over again.

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New York on its feet in Fort Greene, the day of the marathon, November 2019. Nick Lichtenberg

And in the long term, maybe Bill Gates has a point when he says pandemics like this might happen every couple of decades. They've been speeding up in the 21st century, after all, and humans are increas ingly likely to get infected with zoonotic diseases as we continue to encroach on animal habitats.

It's bad news for all dense cities worldwide, including the New York that has been home for most of my adult life, the one that was so beautiful from my stoop just six months ago, packed with the kind of crowds it might not see again for months or years.

Finally, there's another voice in my head that tells me that I just might not have to go back. Even if this period of remote work and sheltering in place ends in the next couple of months, I don't know what version of New York City I might go back to.

I don't even know if I need to be a New Yorker again.

Poster Comment:

Great pics at source.