this article about the cost of living in NYC just makes me laugh…on paper, it sounds ridiculous! but living here, singing at places like Carnegie Hall, being able to walk through the sights and sounds of Central Park on a daily basis, having bodegas and shops on every corner and a support system of other families in our building…somehow it all comes together with an illogical perfection. some “highlights” of the study:

A person living in Manhattan needs to earn $123,322 a year to be considered middle class, the equivalent of a $72,772 salary in Boston and a $50,000 salary in Houston.
The average rent is $2,800, which is 53 percent higher than San Francisco, the second-most expensive city in the country.
New Yorkers pay higher taxes than people in any other major U.S. city, roughly 50 percent more than the average in other cities and nearly triple the U.S. average.

it’s no wonder they say “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere”…anything seems possible once you’ve figured out how to thrive in NYC. i’m not saying i’ve put away the Cape Cod/SoCal/Home Ownership dreams, but i do know that no matter what, i could never leave New York entirely. i’ve heard it said that “after 10 years” you’re officially A New Yorker. i’ve been here for 11, and it sure does feel like home.

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i’ve been loosely working on a set of pictures called “the Urban Butterfly” (along with the “Em & her parents” weekly photos and the “Grateful Daily” set) for about a year…shots of Em doing her thing, city-style, what it’s like to be a kid in NYC, etc… i don’t know what to do with them; i’ve thought about a children’s book, or some sort of gallery thing, or just a little photo album that she can look back on later. (yeah, i dream big. ambition has never been my problem, just follow-through). in any case, here’s the latest from the Urban Butterfly series: the subway on a sunday afternoon.