S a r a h

What can I say? Amarillo gets a bad rap, and deservedly so. It’s dry, it’s kind of ugly at first glance, and it reeks of cow shit and ignorance. It’s a vacuum that manages to suck you back everytime you leave home, no matter how long you’re gone or how far you travel. It’s a source of shame for a majority of residents. I don’t blame any of ’em.

But I love it. It’s resistance to change, it’s push to conformity, and it’s overall lack of empathy only force me in the opposite direction. And I’ve learned to love it for precisely this reason. Because if you can be a truly unique breed in this town, you qualify as a certified badass anywhere you go.

over 4 years ago

I was seven months pregnant and it was mid-August. We were staying four blocks away from Times Square. I spent the majority of my time winding my way through crowds of tourists or romance writers (there was an awards ceremony near our hotel), waddling behind my now-husband who hadn’t yet considered pregnancy as a handicap, or contemplating shooting myself in the foot. On top of all that, my mother-in-law insisted that the one Broadway show we saw during our visit be “Beauty and the Beast”. What a horrible, wretched two weeks it all was.

This was my first experience, but thank lee lord each subsequent visit improved by leaps and bounds. My husband learned that it was not in his best interest to ever take me to Times Square again, and thus we spent most of our time over the years visiting all the burroughs (especially Brooklyn), or hanging out on the Upper West Side drinking pricey coffee on park benches. We were able, thanks to our generous friends with extra space in their apartment, to submerse ourselves into the real version of New York, where people are helpful but brief, restaurants are intimate, and your soul has just a little more room to expand. over 4 years ago