I Grew Up Riding The Subway — But Driving Changed The Way I Thought About Independence

For New York City kids, independence is a form of currency. You learn to trade in it early: Whose parents are letting them take the subway alone, first? Who gets a cell phone? Who gets the latest — or better yet, nonexistent — curfew? 

I grew up on the northernmost tip of Manhattan, in a neighborhood called Inwood. Every morning, I took the subway 40 minutes, 18 stops, to my high school on the Upper West Side. My best friend lived another 50 minutes into Brooklyn, making our high school the exact middle point between us. On Fridays, I would pack a bag and decamp to her house after school, which was more centrally located on the map of our weekend social life, and therefore a better homebase for commuting to whatever party happened to be transpiring in Queens (requiring 3 train transfers, regardless).

No one I knew had a driver’s license. That’s not to say, of course, that we didn’t have the option to undergo the thrilling tedium of Driver’s Ed like all teens, but why bother? There was already, seemingly, no limit to our freedom.  My most prominent vehicular reference points consisted of television shows about Friday night football games in distant Texan lands and one fuzzy, time-altered Kodachrome photo of my dad, age 25, leaning on his beloved forest green 1980 FJ40 Toyota Land Cruiser.

Much like our suburban counterparts, however, we craved the experience of departing from our hometown. Apparently, the existential urge to escape the specificities of your youth is area-code agnostic. At 17, my friends began waxing poetic about gothic stone buildings on liberal arts campuses in Ohio and collegiate snow-shoed hikers in Vermont. For me, it was the genetically un-New York allure of winter-less school spirit — set against the backdrop of a city — that brought me to Miami. I thought I could cleverly swap one major American metropolis for another without too much thought.  

 Having only had the most cursory knowledge of Miami before accepting my admission, it hadn’t occurred to me that the “city” as I knew it wouldn’t translate. Upon arrival, I quickly learned about spray tans and the social graces of clubbing. We had a campus alligator! There was no workable public transportation, and people questioned your emotional stability if you suggested walking (and anywhere you might need to go was five to 45 minutes away…by car). For the first time in my life, I felt trapped. I was euphoric and lonely and sweatier than I knew possible — delighted by the novelty of existing in a new context, and simultaneously feeling that I was maybe better suited for anywhere else.

I wanted to run, to retreat back across the Verrazano to safety. I scolded myself for my hubris, my inability to see what I’d had back in New York. As the months went on, I perused transfer applications for NYU and the New School. To give myself something to do — and perhaps as a tangible way to convince myself I was committing in one direction or the other — I also signed up for driving lessons. 

My instructor was named Chris, and he drove a silver Toyota Prius. He had the face and disposition of a seasoned Disney World dad: cheerful but resolved, with wire-frame glasses and a seemingly endless rotation of khaki shorts. I’ll be honest — I was petrified. But I appreciated Chris’s practical sensibility and it put me at ease; if he thought this was an okay plan, I could believe it. We started our lessons at 7am because Chris, I discovered, held a full-time job that involved patrolling the waterways to protect manatees from rogue propellers. I was a proud, lifelong “adopter” of several manatees, and so he started mapping our driving paths to the best manatee lookout spots. We’d approach an overlook, and I’d remember to turn on my blinker. He’d explain the manatee swim patterns and why they floated the way they did. To pull back out: a three-point turn.

After the requisite number of hours on my signed and dated timesheet, Chris thought I was ready, so I set off to take my driving test. To my surprise,  it turned out that in Florida, the entirety of this monumental occasion takes place in the parking lot of the DMV — other cars not included. The steps, in the exact order I performed them: pull out of a vertical parking space, turn left, turn right, back up in a straight line for 50 feet, do a three-point turn, accelerate to 30 miles per hour and slam on the brakes, pull back into a vertical parking space. I was in the car for less than 10 minutes — and I passed with flying colors.

All in all, I ended up staying in Miami for several years. Some things didn’t change: I was in love with my friends but homesick beyond belief. I was somewhat directionless, academically. But I now had an old sedan on loan from my grandparents, and to tell you the truth, it’s likely the reason I stayed. Whenever being out of place became momentarily unbearable, I got in my car.  

Down in Coral Gables, right before you hit the university, I-95 turns into the two flat lanes of US-1. If you keep driving down, you’ll hit the southernmost tip of the United States in less than two hours. At night, after a long stint at the library or a particular bout of restlessness, I would get behind the wheel, usually solo but occasionally with a close friend, and drive straight, all windows down and sunroof open (the crushing heat of the days made for absolutely perfect, perpetual summer nights). Sometimes, I’d play music so loud I couldn’t hear myself sing, and sometimes just the grumble of someone accelerating to 30 miles an hour and then slamming on the brakes was soundtrack enough.  

For the first 20 minutes, you’d be surrounded by the ecosystem of a reluctant college town. The bagel shop, a Trader Joe’s, Party City, all sandwiched into interchangeable outdoor malls. Then there was the strip club, and after the strip club there was a pawn shop, and after the pawn shop there was one railroad station, and after the railroad station there was nothing I ever got to — which was just fine, because that was all the release I needed. I still counted miles in city blocks (one for every 20, if you didn’t know), but with each passing one, I relaxed a little bit more. Although I’ve never successfully meditated, I imagine it feels something like this: briefly lapsing out of yourself and grounding in something larger. Driving on US-1 took me from what was real — my ennui, my stress, the inconveniences of 90% humidity on my waist-length hair — to a dark, suspended infinity, a world made up of asphalt and lined with sugarcane fields.

I’ve yet to find a road that gives me that same exact feeling, but I’ve come close. In so many ways, driving is the diametric opposite to subway riding. Completely solitary (or exclusively curated). Insulated from the space you’re moving through. Noise-controlled and safely strapped-in. But they share something in common, too: Both override the ease and apathy of staying put; antidotes to the often stifling stasis of being in any brain, in any body, in any city in the world. Sometimes people say the best way to maintain an earnest love for New York City is to leave it frequently. But maybe you just need to be in the driver’s seat going north on the West Side Highway while the sun gets low and the bridge looms large.