I DARE YOU

Publisher’s Note

Someday in the not-so-distant future, many of the Brooklyn dads we know and love will become – in a way no previous generation ever quite has been – Brooklyn granddads. And all the people who are just now leaving New York to return home, to go abroad, to move to LA: they'll remember their time here as a blip defined by one person or two apartments or a job that taught them, eventually, that moving on isn't giving up. If you stay long enough, the life you're living now might even come to represent a lost city that changed too quickly for you to feel you could continue to understand it, if you ever did. 

Remember: not everywhere is like this! I dare you to research what rent can cost in Boston. Consider that what felt wrong about suburbia writ large may have had something to do with other more specific elements of your childhood. And moving back might mean access to a pool that is all your own. But for many of us, just remaining is a badge of honor – years since moving to New York are counted with the weary pride that might otherwise be reserved for rotations at Antarctic research stations. Leaving feels for some reason too big to imagine, like quitting coffee. Could tea really wake you up in the morning? Would you become one of those people who drinks soda for breakfast?

This issue, we're lucky to feature contributions from and about the broad spectrum of options: staying, leaving, really leaving, and never knowing this place at all. 

Wherever you are, as always: thank you for reading.