Should I Be Happy about This or Not?

(This post might not be about a movie theater.)

I was walking to the train station on my way to work one morning and saw this.

It seems the renovation of the Mamaroneck movie theater is now complete.  At one point the theater was slated for demolition to make room for more condos. The building was saved and now we have movies in Mamaroneck again.

I have no idea how I am supposed to feel about that.   

Part of me is happy.  Yay!  We have a movie theater again.  

Part of me dreads this.

Let's revisit the topic of parking, which all my friends know is a constant headache for me in this town.

For years I have been complaining about how hard it is for me to park in my own neighborhood.  I don’t have a space in my building’s garage.  I pay for a permit to park in most of the municipal lots in the area, but I don’t have a designated space.  I park wherever I can find a place in one of the lots.  My permit used to be specified for day and night use.  

There is a small municipal lot behind my building that contains several permit-only spots and three spots with meters. When I first moved in, one needed the day-and-night permits to park there at night.  The spots with meters were open in the evening after the meters were off.  Ever since I moved into that building, I parked my car there.  For the first few years it was easy and convenient.

When Molly Spillane’s, the trashy bar disguised as a family restaurant, opened around the corner, it made parking at home more difficult.  My parking lot was convenient for Molly Spillane’s patrons.  The signs that designated most of the spaces as permit-only at night were not clear.  Although cars needed an overnight sticker to park there after 6PM, most people ignored or misinterpreted the signs.  They parked there without permits and the authorities rarely did anything.  If Molly’s was having a busy night, I couldn’t easily go home.  I had to drive around and find another lot.

When the restaurant closed, I had it easy for a few years.  Then along came Hurricane Ida, which flooded much of the town's industrial area and forced out some businesses.  Now my  parking lot is the permanent residence for the local landscaping companies.  When the day is over, the landscapers' trucks take up three quarters of the spaces in the lot.  I am competing with other residents for the few spaces the landscapers don't use.  Now that the movie theater is open, I will be competing with moviegoers as well.

You see, the town no longer requires an overnight sticker to park in my lot.  Anyone can park there after 6PM.  The lot for which I pay $625 per year is a free-for-all at night.  The problem was alleviated somewhat because the town now allows permit holders to park in lots that were previously only for daytime parking, but I  have to compete for those spaces as well.  If I come home late at night, I sometimes have to drive around quite a distance from home to find a place to park.

I don't see the problem lessening any time soon.  Every bit of empty space in this town is being converted into more apartment buildings.   This means more cars, which means more parking headaches, along with more stress on the roads and more traffic congestion.  Is this any way to live?

So what is the solution for me?  

The simplest answer is "move".

Is it that simple?

Seven years ago Kevin received a bonus at work that enabled us to pay off our mortgage.  We flirted with the idea of moving, but ultimately decided to stay here.  Living without a mortgage has allowed us to coast financially a bit.  It assures us the horses are cared for.  It freed up money for our travels pre-COVID.  It gave us cushion when Kevin was out of work for over a year.  We have a nice lifestyle if I do say so myself.  

But now we are beginning to question if our quality of life is as good as it could be.  Our building is twenty-five years old.  It wasn't built that well to begin with and there is always something going wrong.  Assessments pile up to the point where it feels like we might as well have a mortgage again.  We have to deal with having neighbors causing us grief in all sorts of ways.  When water was leaking through the ceiling into our bathroom, we had to beat down doors to force the neighbor upstairs to allow repairmen into her apartment and make it stop.  Our bathroom was destroyed by that leak and we had to fight to make the building pay for repairs.  A CO2 alarm went off while my former downstairs neighbor was on vacation.  It beeped nonstop for over a week and destroyed both our peace in the daytime and our sleep at night.  The building management would not force access into the apartment and end it. Various neighbors have had dogs that barked and howled for hours.  Our hallway on any given day can smell like cat pee, fish dinners, or marijuana, and those aromas sometimes seep into our apartment.  Speaking of smells, the cigar store around the corner often stinks up our balcony.  The elevators break down on a regular basis.  We can manage without them, but I feel sorry for the elderly and disabled in the building.

The question is, if we leave, where do we go?

We are tired of our condo, but are we tired of Mamaroneck?  On a warm evening a couple weeks ago Kevin and I were sitting outside at a restaurant on our strip. The neighborhood was full of happy people walking up and down the street.  Couples were strolling.  Children were playing.  It felt like a true community.  Kevin remarked that there was a lot to like about living here.  

He's right. It's a good place to live.  It's a short walk to the train, making an easy commute to work for me.  The main drag is full of restaurants (and now a movie theater).  I love taking morning walks at Harbor Island, and evening walks to the ice cream shop.  We have an excellent public library, and an adjoining theater, in walking distance.  Shopping is convenient.  We have more independent businesses than national chains.  We have easy access to major highways.  Most of our family and many of our friends are within an hour's drive.  In short, we have as many reasons to stay as leave.  

The problem is the cost.  We have no mortgage on our condo, so we could sell it for pure profit, but that profit won't buy us anything in the neighborhood.  A decent house near the center of town would cost at least twice what we would get for our condo.  We are too old for another 30-year-mortgage.  Kevin has some inheritance now, but I doubt it would be enough to buy a house in this neighborhood in cash and still have any retirement savings left.  Don't even get me started on the taxes.  We live in the middle of town, which keeps the taxes low, but the taxes on homes outside the main drag are astronomical.  Even if we could buy a house in cash, the taxes would be a huge financial hit. 

Kevin works from home full time.  I have permission to work at home full time (depending on whether or not it's a state where my company has a tax presence established) if I want to.  We can go almost anywhere we want.  

We could stay in NY, but move north a bit.  We like Orange County and it's much closer to where the horses live (not to mention my favorite ice cream shop). Houses aren't cheap there, but they are cheaper than homes in Westchester.  It would even be possible (although a pain) to commute to the office a few times a month or as needed.  It wouldn't be impossible to spend time with our Westchester-based friends and family.  If my out-of-state friends came to visit by train, I could still pick them up at the Amtrak station in New Rochelle and drive them back to my place within an hour. 

For years we dreamed of moving to Chincoteague.  Maybe this is the sign that it's time to do so.  I can work from home in Virginia.  One major issue with that is it's not easy to find housing in Chincoteague right now.   Since the pandemic began it seems everyone who ever had a dream of living in Chincoteague has done so.  The nicest houses are snatched up as soon as they are on the market.  Kevin said he prefers to buy land and build our own house on it anyway (more likely to be assured of it being flood resistant), but that's a whole other layer of bother.

Across the bay from Chincoteague is a beautiful development called Captain's Cove where adorable new houses are going up all the time.  The community has many amenities and is close enough to Chincoteague and Assateague for me to get my beach time in when I want it.  It seems like paradise, but would it be?  

I remember what lockdown was like.  I don't do well in isolation.  It's not easy for me to be home all day with limited company.  I'm an extrovert.  I get my energy from human interaction.  Yes, I have Kevin, but he is my complete opposite.  He's an introvert who enjoys the isolation.  Chincoteague and Captain's Cove are remote.  They are busy in the summer, but things shut down in the winter.  Will I find a community?  Make friends? Find things to do when the beach is no longer a possibility?  What feels like paradise in the summer may feel like oppression in the winter.  I also have to consider the lack of hospitals and other medical services.  We're getting older and we have to consider how and where we will find care or handle medical emergencies.

We also have to consider the horses.  We have to find a place for them.  There aren't too many boarding stables in the eastern shore area.  We could still be commuting an hour to see the horses.  Jenna is 27.  Is she too old to radically change her life and adjust to a new home and new stablemates?  I also have to think of Riddle.  She may have been my project for the past sixteen years, but she is not my horse.  I could pay Mom fair market value for her and take her with me, but Mom may not want me to take her horse away even if she doesn't ride her much.  Could I bear to leave her behind?

I remember when I was in my twenties I was dying to move down to DelMarVa and start over.  Am I too old to start over?   I became rooted to this area over the course of a few short years.  At one point in my twenties, I was willing to consider moving as far as Phoenix Arizona for love.  But a year or too later love couldn’t could not persuade me to move less than two hours away to Waterbury Connecticut.*  When I met Kevin and things became serious, I made it clear I wasn't moving to Queens, even though he had a huge rent-controlled apartment.  If he wanted a future with me, he had to move to Westchester (which he willingly did). 

Home is where the heart is.  Where is my heart?  My heart is with Kevin of course.  Wherever we go together, we have each other.  Still my heart is also with my friends and family.  I have my dance class and my theater group (there is a small theater group on Chincoteague at least).  We both stand to lose a lot if we leave.  

I also think there are some truths about myself I need to deal with.  I am not always the person I imagine myself to be.  I say I am a wannabe "country girl".  I say I hate big cities.  I say I hate New York.  I say my true place is in the woods or on a farm.  How true is that?  I'm not saying I don't love the peace and quiet of the countryside or that I am not constantly moved by the site of natural beauty.  What I am saying is I would be a liar if I said I don't have some love of what the big city can offer.  I love beautiful architecture.  I love art museums and galleries.  I love concerts and the theater.  I love restaurants.  When Kevin and I travel, we travel to visit the culture of big cities as often as we travel to see natural wonders.  

NYC is an unpleasant place filled with crowds of rude people and the stink of trash and exhaust fumes.  Regardless, I take many of its offerings for granted because they have always been mine for the taking.  Would I miss taking a day off from work to visit a particular museum exhibition?  Would I miss taking in a Broadway show after work?  Would I miss being in a place where my favorite bands are likely to be touring?  Would I miss being able to try multiple ethnic cuisines?

Kevin is no fan of New York either and once said any big city has museums and theaters and restaurants.  People shouldn't have to flock to New York for these things.  He's right.  We could find a place to live that is in or near another city with similar attractions, but what city would that be?  I have been to Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Denver among others.  All of them have their charms, but none of them call to me as a place I might want to call home.  New York may be a crowded stinking pit, but it's at least comfortable and familiar to me.  I haven't experienced the suburbs of most of these cities either, and the ones I have seen mostly don't impress me.  They aren't better than Westchester and are often worse in terms of layout and amenities.

Maybe it's because I have so many choices open to me that it all feels too overwhelming.

I am now thinking of the movie Away We Go, where John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are an expectant couple looking for the perfect place to settle down and raise their child.  They cross the country visiting various friends and relatives and realize nobody is truly happy.  Where you live isn't the cure for whatever troubles you have (in the case of this couple, Rudolph is dealing with the grief of losing her parents, and how they will never share her happiness over her relationship or see their grandchild).  The biggest problem I have with that movie is Rudolph's character has inherited her parents' beautiful home.  It's unoccupied and they have been free to live there all along.  By the time the movie ends, it seems inevitable that they should settle there and the viewer wonders why they didn't decide to move there all along (or at least I did).**

So in short, what do I want?  

• An affordable, freestanding house (preferably with all the features mentioned in the post I linked above)
• Accessible to areas of cultural interest, good libraries, and restaurants
• Plenty of physical and social activities (classes and clubs for example)
• A local theater company I can perform with
• Accessible to nature and outdoor activities, preferably near the ocean
• Has a boarding stable nearby
• Located in a state where my company has a tax presence
• Easy and appealing for friends and family to visit and vice versa
• Close to good medical facilities and hospitals
• Reasonable taxes

I think the only place I am going to find that is in the movies.

Speaking of which, if I stay where I am, I will still have a movie theater.

*That may be a topic that is related to an upcoming writing prompt post.  Stay tuned.

**Yes.  I do realize a major theme of the movie was the journey to understanding it is not the place, but the people, that make a home.  I also realize there wouldn't be a movie if the character didn't have to make that journey herself and figure it out.  Please be assured I didn't let my unmitigated envy of a beautiful free house get in the way of understanding what the movie was about.