Janet Hays - Retire in New York City: Even If Youre Not Rich

Rosemary Armao conceived the idea for this book. She and I were driving home from a ski weekend in the Adirondacks, talking about how we hoped to live the rest of our lives. Snowflakes big as nickels were falling on the car. Rosemary thought about how New York City beckoned, and about how far shed come from the days when shed been afraid to drive across the George Washington Bridge. She said, Why dont we write a guide to retiring in New York? I wanted to do it. I knew that right away.

We first planned to write as a group, and we invited several friends to join us. But, after a few effervescent meetings, the enormity of writing a book while holding down full-time jobs led everyone except me and Rita Henley Jensen to drop out. Rita, in the face of job pressures that have multiplied by powers of 10 between then and now, stayed on to write the housing section and contribute a fresh, sensible perspective to the entire manuscript. Betsy Wade joined later to add the foreword. Im grateful to both of them.

Retire rests on the shoulders of the men and women who are profiled and quoted in its chapters. And of the many others I interviewed but could not include in the book. Everyone answered my questions generously and offered perspectives that informed my thinking and writing. By telling me about their lives, my interviewees have expanded my life.

Mervin Block steered me to Bonus Books, answered ordinary and arcane questions, and taught me grammar I never knew existed. Audrey and Seymour Simon read chapters and offered thoughtful comments. Dottie Brier, Holly Butler, James C. Hall, Mary Holloway, Nancy Tomasello, James Weil, and Katherine Weissman listened to my problems, led me to others who could help, and guided me all along the way.

James C. Hall, Ariel Jensen-Vargas, and Michael Macioce enlivened the book with their photographs. Donna Macioce developed concepts for the cover design. New York City and Company also provided photographs; Maricela Herzog there was most helpful. I appreciate them all.

Devon Freeny, my editor at Bonus Books, made this book more classic, more graceful, more like what Id always wanted it to be, than I was able to do myself.

Im happy twice over to have had the continuing support and encouragement of my children, James, Joshua, and Andrew Adelson; Lisa Eisenberg and Nancy Allison. Its nice to receive their help. Its even nicer to see theyve grown up to be the kind of people who offer it.

Before I dared let Bonus Books read one sentence of this manuscript, Julia Hall read every word. In our long editing sessions over the telephone, she made countless suggestions for rearranging and clarifying ideas, for omitting unnecessary text. Net it out, she said. She plied me with relevant clippings, introduced me to potential interviewees, and pointed out aspects of retirement life I had overlooked. Julia was midwife. Without her, the delivery of this book would have been infinitely rougher.

JANET HAYS

I neednt say much more than Janet, except that I would like to thank Mary Hack, real estate management agent extraordinaire, for her careful reading of the housing section; my terrific daughters Ariel Jensen-Vargas and Shasta Jensen for their assistance and support; John Bracken, program associate for the Ford Foundation, for living in Sunnyside and loving it; and my best friend Sam, without whom none of what I have accomplished would have been possible.

RITA HENLEY JENSEN

Nonfiction

Anbinder, Tyler. Five Points: The 19th-Century Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the Worlds Most Notorious Slum. 2001.

Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. 1998.

Cantwell, Anne-Marie E. and Diana diZerega Wall. Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City. 2001.

Cantwell, Mary. Manhattan, When I Was Young. 1995.

Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. 1975.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir. 1997.

Jackson, Kenneth T. The Encyclopedia of New York City. 1995.

. The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn. 1998.

Kaiser, Charles. The Gay Metropolis. 1997.

Klaus, Carl H. Taking Retirement: A Beginners Diary. 1999.

Lopate, Phillip, ed. Writing New York: A Literary Anthology. 1998.

McCullough, David. The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge. 1972.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, New York: The City in Art and Literature. 2000.

. New York, New York: The City in Song. 2000. Compact disc.

Mitchell, Joseph. Up in the Old Hotel. 1992.

Rybczynski, Witold. A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century. 1999.

Simon, Kate. Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood. 1982.

Stookey, Lee. Subway Ceramics: A History and Iconography. 1993.

Thaxton, John. New Yorks 50 Best: Places to Go Birding in and around the Big Apple. 1998.

Vinton, John. Take Charge! The Complete Guide to Senior Living in New York City. 1999.

White, E. B. Here Is New York. 1949.

White, Norval and Elliot Willensky. AIA Guide to New York City, 4th ed. 2000.

Wolfe, Gerard R. New YorkA Guide to the Metropolis: Walking Tours of Architecture and History, 2nd ed. 1994.

Fiction

Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy: City of Glass; Ghosts; The Locked Room. 1990.

Bellow, Saul. Mr. Sammlers Planet. 1970.

Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. 2000.

Cunningham, Michael. The Hours. 1998.

Doctorow, E. L. City of God. 2000.

. Ragtime. 1975.

. The Waterworks. 1994.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. 1952.

Finney, Jack. Time and Again. 1970.

Helprin, Mark. Winters Tale. 1983.

James, Henry. Washington Square. 1880.

Maxwell, William. All the Days and Nights. 1995.

Morrison, Toni. Jazz. 1992.

Roth, Henry. Call It Sleep. 1934.

Smith, Betty. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. 1943.

Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. 1920.

. The House of Mirth. 1905.

. Old New York: Four Novellas. 1924.

Wolfe, Thomas. The Web and the Rock. 1939.

Wolfe, Tom. The Bonfire of the Vanities. 1987.

Chapter 1 points out that New York City is safer than many cities with large populations of retirees. This statement is based on a review of the FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2000, the most recent figures available at the time of publication. The following table, Comparative Crime Rates for Seven Cities, is drawn from the FBI reports for New York City; Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona; Palm Springs and San Diego, California; Naples and Orlando, Florida.

To find figures for other cities, and to learn more about crime in the United States, consult the Uniform Crime Reports on the FBI Web site at www.fbi.gov/ucr/00cius.htm.

The Brilliantly Colored, Constantly Changing Lifetimes in New York

David Hays grew up poor in the South. He came north to college from Florida on a Greyhound bus. After riding all night, or maybe two nights, he woke up on a highway in New Jersey to see the sun rising over the Manhattan skyline. On the spot, he decided Thats where I want to live.