Three weeks in New York, a good café, and black coffee by the window. My wife works across from me, focused and beautiful. Outside, the city moves fast. Inside, it’s loud investment advice, thoughts of bookstores, and a quiet plan to maybe open one someday.
I am sitting at a table next to the window at Daily Provisions, a coffee shop in Manhattan near Hudson Yards. My wife, sitting in front of me, working on her business, laptop, ear pods, glasses on and everything. She is beautiful, and she looks very interesting when she is working.
This is the first time we visit this coffee shop. It is a modern coffee shop serving small bites, pastries, and good coffee. As usual, we are drinking drip black coffee, no milk, no sugar, just black. If you want to taste the flavor of coffee, this is the only way to do it. No other flavors competing for your attention, just coffee.
There is something about coffee shops that helps me focus, but I got to say, sometimes there are people who think being loud makes them sound bold, smarter, but in my humble opinion, it does exactly the opposite. You are sitting in front of another person, you are close to them, the music volume here is at a good level — no need to be loud. I am not interested in your conversation, and I am sure, most people aren’t either. And I hate to say this but I have to, it is often younger people who do this, perhaps I am in that age now, yelling at young people passing by: get off my lawn!
We are about to start our third week here in New York City, it’s the first time we spent such a long time in this city, or anywhere else in the states other than the place we live. We’ve have had long stays in Europe and Mexico, but in the states I think the max has been probably two weeks. This is a great city, it’s full of energy and interesting moments. Like any other city, it also has problems, many of them, and the subway… the subway is a great asset for the city but also a big problem. I am enjoying my time here. I like the idea of seeing my kids casually any day of the week and definitely on the week ends.
Tomorrow Saturday, it’s my turn to head the group to a full day of activities. I of course added a stop to one of my favorite book stores here in Manhattan, the McNally Jackson Books store in Seaport. We are starting in Hudson Yards, same place we are right now. My schedule has the Blue Bottle coffee shop inside the mall as the first stop, and then we’ll walk the High Line towards Chelsea. At the end of it, there is a Leica store (Meatpacking district), and I signed up everyone for an event here: conversations with Peter Turnley as he discusses and unravels the stories behind his new book, Paris Je t'aime.
I hope everyone enjoys the conversation with this photographer about his book. After this we are having brunch at a Mexican place nearby, I am craving huevos rancheros, and their menu promises to fulfill this need. Since Mexican breakfasts tend to be heavy, we’ll probably walk to the waterfront near Brookfield Place, you get a nice view of the Statue of Liberty, and Jersey City. We might make another coffee stop along the way, and then after that we’ll stop at the McNally Jackson Books store in Seaport. What can I say, I enjoy walking around bookstores and seeing all the books, the people looking for books, notebooks, pens, everything. I think I might open a book store one day, and serve wine and coffee — not unlike Bibliotheque here in SoHo. I have also been reading more than before, and my reading queue is getting smaller, so I have to find more books to fill it.
My morning at Daily Provisions has been good. The staff are attentive and friendly, which I appreciate since they seem very busy with all the to-go orders and the non-stop flow of people coming and going. The coffee was excellent, the egg, bacon and cheese sandwich was good, and we lucked out with a nice table by the window since we got here. We are lucky to have this table, trust me, this place gets busy.
We are probably going to walk a little more after this stop, I want to show my wife the giant pigeon sculpture atop a bridge just a few blocks from here. That will make a fun photo. Later tonight we are going to see Chris Botti at the Blue Note Jazz club near Washington Square Park, it should be fun, we haven’t seen him live since we went to his concert in Austin, TX many years ago.
We still have a few more weeks here in New York City, and then we are making a quick stop in Mexico to visit Merida and then Cancun for a New Year’s celebration, so although we are in the cold windy climate of New York, we’ll end up the year in the warm weather of the Yucatán Peninsula.
Many people have come and gone while I’ve been writing this. My coffee is getting cold, and some of the people around us are still talking loudly. I think the loudest sounds come from a table behind us, where a couple of young people are discussing capital markets and investments. One of them, likely working in finance, is explaining—yelling really—how these complex markets work, detailing what his companion should and shouldn't do. I lean back, an internal monologue forming in the face of all this stressed urgency. If I could offer them a quiet, unheard piece of wisdom, it would be this: financial success is often found in simplicity, especially when starting out. For those in their twenties, the best investment advice is usually the most boring: Invest early, be ruthlessly consistent, set up an automatic contribution into a few solid index funds, and then simply forget about it. You’ll find you’ve built more than enough by the time you reach your late thirties or early forties. The key isn't the loud, complicated strategy; it's the quiet discipline of time and consistency.
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