Why New York City Now Feels Like a Lazy Tourist Town
For a city that never sleeps, early keeps getting later around my New York.
I’ve always found the city most intriguing when it’s me, shopkeepers and a few neighbors testing the streets. I do my runs early, usually with sunrise, and keep working out for a long time on weekend mornings. This started with a jog on the beach during a friend’s surreally wonderful Caribbean wedding weekend in 2005. The jog, slated for an hour, turned to two, and my thoughts turned to breakfast. Since then, anywhere I am, I’ve instinctively headed out before sunrise and tracked the smell of espresso roasting and pastries splitting to find my way back.
But on my Lower East Side home turf, lately I come back to shutters at storefronts at 7 am on Sundays when my workout ends. In nearly all the many places in my neighborhood that sell espresso and baked goods (aka handheld cake), 8 am is the new normal and 7:30 is the new early. Roasting Plant, Brunswick, Irving Farm, 12 Corners—even the surf-themed coffee bar a few blocks away, which you would think would deliver piping doppios to the dudes before their dawn trips to Rockaway. Cafe Grumpy leads the pack at 7:30. What gives?
