places i keep returning to
(in my mind)
yes, we all have favorite memories. and i don’t know about you, but there are some memories that — even if nothing monumental or spectacular was taking place — everything felt right, if only for a few moments. here are my hall-of-fame happy places. i’d love to hear yours!
alimento (silver lake, los angeles, 2020)
everything was bathed in a light the exact shade of a perfect vodka sauce — a warm, pink glow that enveloped the marbled white bar and turned the otherwise minimal aesthetic into something cozier, softer. it was a quiet sunday evening and it felt that way in every sense, even though it was the first night of what became a whirlwind, magical LA vacation and i was unknowingly about to meet hilary duff at a mandy moore concert in an hour. i sipped my white wine and twirled pieces of spaghetti with my fork, picking up little bites of dungeness crab and bottarga breadcrumbs along the way. every sensation felt like a revelation, and i felt fully realized; a 34-year-old woman who inexplicably felt completely at home by herself in an unfamiliar city, all because of a plate of pasta, a glass of sauv blanc, some good lighting fixtures, and a friendly bartender. a younger millennial woman a few seats down, also solo, talked calmly but incessantly on the phone. i wasn’t even bothered.
macondray lane (san francisco, 2015)
i never knew hills so steep could exist — and that people lived on them! — until i visited san francisco. it was my first solo trip, spurred solely by impulse and a virgin america sale. i was still learning how it felt to travel alone, to explore without companions, to have that be enough, and to relish in it. i wound up, and up (and up) russian hill on an uncharacteristically hot september day, and it felt like a refuge when i turned down the alley. shaded, secluded, deserted. like it had appeared just for me, just then, and promptly evaporated. never mind that it was the inspiration for author armistead maupin’s tales of the city novels; i would have believed you if you told me that the greenery sprouted, the cobblestones set, and the twinkle lights turned on just moments before my arrival. homes were tucked all along the street, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. and when i got to the end and stared out over the bay, i cried, but in the way that feels like a big, beautiful sigh. and then i went and sat at a bar and ate duck bolognese.
my best friend’s friend’s apartment (bed stuy, brooklyn, 2008)
it was the summer after we graduated college, and my best friend and i headed down to new york city via boltbus to attend the annual siren fest music festival at coney island. as any early 20-somethings do, we opted to crash at her friend’s sizable place in the yet-to-be-gentrified neighborhood of bed stuy. after all, one of the roommates (who, funny enough, i became friends with years later) was away, so i could stay in her room. the trip was a bit of a comedy of errors, involving a sweltering hot pizza place with no A/C, a sweltering hot return bus with no A/C, and several hours at a rest stop, telling our fellow stranded passengers about how we saw danny tamberelli aka little pete from pete and pete standing in front of nathan’s famous after the festival.
but the night we arrived? it was perfect. after incredible burgers at the now-shuttered mullanes bar & grill in fort greene — which was all exposed brick, dark wood, and nostalgic neighborhood tavern vibes — we walked back to the apartment under the verdant trees, soaking up the perfect brooklyn summer night. along the way, we stopped into one of the many buzzing, fluorescently-lit bodegas to impulse buy a box of brownie mix. as soon as we got back, we booked it to the modest galley kitchen and got to work. and by “work,” i mean adding eggs and oil and popping them in the oven. the brownies were… as good as any brownies you can make from a box, but they unexpectedly grounded me in a new place with ease. and when i think of that trip, despite the bands and the bars and the bus bedlam, i always think of the brownies first.
my tiny house bed (charleston, SC, 2019)
i had never stayed in a tiny house before — and truthfully, as much as i loved this one, i probably won’t ever again. i’m not claustrophobic, but i began questioning how even two people could comfortably exist every day in the space when i was practically climbing the walls by my third day. and i barely spent any time there! there was also the impracticality of climbing down a ladder in the dark to pee in the middle of the night; during one such instance, i was convinced this was how i would perish. but i digress. my first night there, before the stir-craziness set in, i carefully scaled the ladder with a box of freshly-purchased pralines, retired to my little lofted bed, and navigated the mounted flat-screen TV’s streaming services to orchestrate a glitchy youtube viewing of the oscars, occasionally glancing over the sketchy adjacent parking lot because the view was so novel. just me, a pixelated bradley cooper and lady gaga, and a handful of buttery, sugary southern treats. a trifecta of coziness, comfort, and confections.
white barn inn (kennebunkport, ME, 2021)
“do you have reservations with us this evening?” the valet asked as i pulled into the parking lot and raindrops pelted my windshield. “...uh, no?” i answered meekly. “you might want to see if they can accommodate you first,” he said with a smirk. my friend cassidy promptly leapt out of the passenger side and ran up the stairs to find out as i sat, engine idling, awkwardly waiting to know whether we’d be brutally rebuffed. she returned moments later. “they were very rude,” she began, rolling her eyes. “but they have a couple seats open at their bar.” success! in short order, we were ordering glasses of white wine and pasta topped with melty burrata in the intimate tavern and trying unsuccessfully to have a conversation with the snobby southern couple next to us as an N95-masked pianist played in the corner.
to be fair, we were the only ones wearing jeans in the establishment and looked slightly like drowned rats. but after spending the day with a mutual friend in nearby portland and scheming over margaritas at an empty west end mexican restaurant, we hatched a plan for a spur-of-the-moment fancy dinner at this upscale hotel. i’d been wanting to visit ever since a former neighbor worked as a server there during her tenure at boarding school, and its lore loomed large. the food was warm, the rustic wood and checkered floor ambience was warm, the cocktails kept us warm. the people were cold, but at least we had each other to share in a spontaneous couple hours of indulgence and luxury.
pam’s house (corning, NY, 2022)
the first thing you should know about pam’s house is that it contained a frilly, four-poster canopy bed that made my childhood princess dreams come true. the second is that it was pam’s primary residence, full of family portraits and “live, laugh, love” decor, but was vacated for a long weekend so it could serve as an airbnb for a septet of 30-something women who were celebrating their friend’s impending nuptials. it was my first visit to pam’s, but others’ second, and the veterans noticed that the chickens previously on the property had mysteriously disappeared. there was still an above-ground pool, however, where we floated a day away. there was a fully-stocked kitchen, where we cooked big, family-style brunches and pasta dinners, made french press coffee, and taste-tested prospective wedding cocktails to varying success. there was a proper parlor, where we gabbed and gossiped. and there was a very hunting-husband-coded bar, which we didn’t use, but which really rounded out the vibe.
we grilled burgers while listening to ashlee simpson’s autobiography. we created a multicolored balloon arch to flank the driveway that was so instagrammable, i still can’t believe it existed in real life. we watched legally blonde as it poured outside, eating cheese and crackers and doing nail art while inventing an entire backstory for who was likely pam’s son, based only on his school photo next to the television (we called him brayden). i snuck away to the front porch for five minutes to enjoy the rain and pretend i was in an early-2000s teen movie. we carried monogrammed wine tumblers from room to room, refilling them liberally, and posing with them on the porch for self-timer photos once the sun re-emerged. we made soggy s’mores to get our money’s worth from the firepit. we took edibles, turned on a blacklight, and sang youtube-on-laptop karaoke to “everywhere” while screaming “justice for michelle branch!” because news of patrick carney’s infidelity had just broken the previous weekend. i laid in my perfect canopy bed that night — the perfect level of stoned — thinking that i couldn’t possibly imagine being happier than i was in that moment. it’s still true.
my apartment (arlington, MA, 2013)
after nearly two trying years in orlando, florida — during which i obtained a master’s degree, lost a gallbladder, and only went to disney world twice — i was more than ready to return to new england. and once i made that decision, the universe seemed to spring into action to assist me. i had two job interviews lined up upon my arrival, an offer from each of those jobs on the same day a couple weeks later, and a signed letter by the end of may. and while i was grateful for the temporary accommodations at my parents’ new hampshire home, i began looking for a boston-area apartment in short order, which also appeared almost immediately. the hungover, gum-chomping realtor unlocked the door of the 1950s walk-up to reveal a modest, cozy space with hardwood floors, lots of light, and a peaceful, grounding energy. it was the one.
the actual moving process was more fraught, and cemented my belief in mercury retrograde. there was the couch that took six weeks to arrive, a massive “loaner” sofa that couldn’t even be maneuvered up the building’s stairwell, and endless, annoying setbacks in the pursuit of cable television. in the meantime, my dad and i devised a janky, but functional, temporary workaround. he brought over some old-school bunny-ear antennas that, if you positioned them just right outside of my third-floor window, allowed me to watch network TV — though the building’s brick exterior did its best to hinder me.
it was the second week of july, and that wednesday night, NBC premiered a short-lived dramedy about summer camp, appropriately called camp. i sat in a big wicker chair in my couchless living room and cranked up the volume so i could hear it over my thunderous A/C unit. as the signal flickered in and out, i watched and smiled, even though i couldn’t fully follow the plot. a new chapter of my own life was beginning, with or without comcast.