It was the girls’ night out seen around the world: on Wednesday, Taylor Swift and her longtime friends Alana and Este Haim joined Mariska Hargitay courtside at Madison Square Garden to cheer on the New York Knicks during the NBA Finals.
Plenty has been written about Swift, the Haims, and Hargitay’s custom “Stevie Knicks,” “Knickelback,” and “Knickole Kidman” T-shirts (some of it by, well, me). But seeing Pennsylvania-born, Tennessee-raised Swift—who in late May attended a Knicks game with her Cavaliers-backing fiancé, Travis Kelce—and two of the three famously Valley-coded Haim sisters joyfully losing their minds over the Knicks’ astonishing Game 4 win—not to mention observing various social media meltdowns over Jennifer Lopez’s controversial Subway Take about what constitutes a “real” New Yorker—has me musing on what it really means to belong to a city, or have it belong to you.
I was born in New York, but I moved to Moscow and Rome for my parents’ work as an infant, returning to New York shortly before I turned nine. I would remain in New York for the next 10 years, until I left for college, but I wouldn’t return to the city by choice until my mid-20s. Weirdly, it was only then, holed up in Prospect Heights with a coterie of roommates, that I felt like I was really living in New York, instead of just there by circumstance.
By my count, I’ve lived in eight different cities and towns over the course of my life, from Austin to Rome, and while New York will always be my birthplace—and the city in which my middle-school Gossip Girl book collection and college diploma and age-weathered Ugg boots reside—it’s not the only, or even the main, place I identify as home these days. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for the past three years, first trying out the City of Angels immediately postgrad before duly fleeing for a few years and returning again in my late 20s. And between the affordable, excellent food from every continent, the plethora of swimming pools, and the subtle, lovely neighborliness that flourishes even in times of strife, I’ve yet to find a city that suits me better.
I’m not the world’s most devoted sports fan (except once every four years, when women’s gymnastics invariably dominates the Summer Olympics), but I’ve cheered for the Liberty in Brooklyn, chatted about the Buckeyes’ championship shot in Cleveland, gotten pleasantly drunk at Astros bars in Houston, and fallen for the Dodgers—or, at least, the perfect combination of Dodger Dogs and overpriced water—in Elysian Park, and not until recently had I ever stopped to question my suddenly acquired passion for any of these teams. Sure, some may call me a fair-weather sports fan for my propensity to cheer wherever I land, but it’s not really the athletes I’m a fan of, but the regular people (and celebrities alike) whose love for them vastly outpaces any that I’ve ever felt for anything even vaguely sports-related. (I myself have never claimed to be devoted to anything except Miss Piggy, and maybe Andy Capp’s Hot Fries.)
In a Thursday interview with Vogue, Alana Haim herself called Wednesday’s Knicks-Spurs showdown “maybe the greatest basketball game ever played” and said of the Lakers/Knicks fandom divide: “I think we can all be friends. There’s no animosity there.” I’m definitely not approaching the Knicks’ current domination with the all-consuming zeal that my friends who still live in New York are, but why not let myself enjoy things that are nice, even from the other side of the country?
#Taylor #Swift #Haim #York #Knicks #Taboo #Thrill #Repping #City
