I’ll admit I was in a bad mood. Boy issues, maybe, or something at work? I don’t remember. But I do remember that, in the middle of whatever it was, I had to take my trash out. So I yanked the Hefty bag out of my garbage can, only to realize it was leaking. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I screamed into the world’s tiniest abyss: my 400-square-foot West Village studio.
That Hefty bag was stuffed into another Hefty bag, which I then lugged down three flights of dimly lit stairs as trash juice seeped deeper into my sweatpants. I threw open the door, ready to chuck my double-Hefty monstrosity into the dumpster below.
In so doing, I nearly hit four 20-something girls taking photos on my stoop.
“Sorry, excuse me,” I said, pushing past them.
They shuffled to the side.
I dumped my bags and turned to head back up. They’d already re-assumed their photo-taking positions.
“I need you guys to move again,” I said, irritated. They shuffled back over as I stomped up the stairs.
When I reached my door, I turned back around. “You can’t take up someone’s whole stoop,” I hissed. “People live here.” Then I slammed it.
My older neighbor Beverly, who sometimes taught guitar lessons out of her apartment, peeked out into the hallway. “I think we should put up a sign,” she said.
You’ve likely seen my block before, even if you’ve never been to the West Village. It’s the one supercut in all the TikToks—the “Days in the Life”s, the “Come with Me”s—and the one in the backdrop of the Instagram of your favorite high-profile creator. And I get it: Its charm is why I wanted to live there in the first place.
I moved to the West Village during the pandemic. Things aligned perfectly: Rents in the neighborhood had plummeted just as I got a raise at work. When my lease on my old apartment in Yorkville ended, I signed a new one in a historic 19th-century brownstone that was once a boarding house for sailors. They paid pennies for their rooms. Two centuries later, I paid thousands.
The price wasn’t reflective of the space (dark, cramped, and, as I’d later find out, plagued by a slight mouse problem), but the block itself: a tree-lined one with townhouses and critically acclaimed restaurants that spilled out onto the sidewalks. It felt like something from a movie—because it actually was. Film crews often shot there, and one building on my street had famously stood in as Rachel and Monica’s in Friends.
But the main reason I moved to the West Village? I wanted to say I lived there. So many of my literary heroes—including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway—resided at one time or another in the neighborhood, writing in their walkups and drinking at Chumley’s. Meanwhile, I had cut my teeth as an assistant at Vanity Fair under Graydon Carter, who lived on Bank Street and treated Waverly Inn like his personal clubhouse. My new West Village address made me feel like I had finally made it as a successful creative, after so many years desperately trying to become one.
That’s not to say I didn’t know the neighborhood had changed: West 11th Street, a few minutes’ walk from me, had become a de facto billionaire’s row, and I’d seen the tourists crowd the Perry Street brownstone that was the filming location for Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment in Sex and the City . (Afterwards, they’d go to Magnolia Bakery or to see Sarah Jessica Parker’s rumored townhouse nearby.) But in those diseased days, when the city was largely abandoned, it felt like a blank canvas.
Just as I moved in, Chumley’s closed. Everything inside, from its green leather booths to its author portraits, was sold in a fire sale. “This fabled West Village, NY location is closed for good and everything must be sold regardless of price,” declared the auction house that oversaw its liquidation.
Turns out, I was far from the only new arrival with romantic notions of the West Village. As the recent New York Magazine cover story “It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl” pointed out, as the city bounced back from the pandemic, a number of influencers found a niche posting about their lifestyle in the neighborhood. (It usually involved matcha lattes, Pilates, and Aperol spritzes or an espresso martini at a quaint restaurant nearby.) And they weren’t just doing it on Instagram, but also on the then-new social media platform of TikTok. And on TikTok, things go viral quickly and, well, massively: Its algorithm is such that even a small account can post a video that racks up hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions, of views if they use the right hashtag.
And followers did what followers do: They followed. They went to the same restaurants, coffee shops, and workout classes, which they then posted to their followers on TikTok who, in turn, did exactly the same thing.
A place or experience rendered trendy by social media is far from a phenomenon. (See: the Cronut.) But the West Village feels…different. On Saturdays and Sundays, every single establishment—even the mediocre coffee shop—on my street had a line that stretched out the door. Sometimes, two lines would get so long, they collided. Most of the patrons waiting fit the same demographic (white, aged 25-34) and dressed in the same jeans, white T-shirt, and tiny sunglasses. I’d walk a block over and see the same scene.
I’m not here to cast judgement on influencers, influencing, or the stereotypical “West Village girls” the New York article describes. (Nor can I: I’m also a white female, aged 25-34, who likes Aperol spritzes. ) But I do wonder if this is more than merely a demographic shift accelerated by the internet, but proof of the mass homogenization of culture. You used to move to New York to be whomever you wanted to be. Now it feels like you move to the West Village to be just like everyone else.
If you type West Village into TikTok’s search bar, the like count on the top videos—many of which are similar in aesthetic, feature the same places, mention Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw—are astronomical: 252k, 523k, 609k, 955k. And the views? Those are in the millions. When millions and millions of people are repeatedly exposed to the same image of a place, is it any wonder that that place morphs more and more into its social media likeness? And most of all: Isn’t it kind of scary that it does?
The funny thing is, for all the TikToks, Carrie Bradshaw never lived on Perry Street. It was just an exterior. In the show, the character actually lived on the Upper East Side.
I’m across the park from her now, on the Upper West. I have a punch card for my favorite coffee shop and walk into restaurants with cacio e pepe that’s just as good as those with a two-hour wait. My neighbors are a veterinarian who wheels around his crusty white dog in a stroller and an elderly man. In the early evenings, he practices his saxophone. I listen to it through my wall.
On Saturday morning, at just after 10 a.m., I stepped outside in mismatched athleisure, a New Yorker hat, and no real plans to do anything. A small line had formed by the brownstone next to me. I looked over to see why.
Two children were selling lemonade for a dollar.
I smiled and then joined the back of it.
