Taylor Swift is so, so, so excited about moving to New York. She's so excited that she doesn't mind paying $4 for a cookie, or experiencing the horse smell that pervades Central Park, or having to hoard all her nice cookware her mom gave her for her first grown-up apartment from her crazy Craigslist roommate.
Taylor Swift is in that phase of moving to New York, experienced each year by tens of thousands of incoming NYU students and dewy millennials, where everything is just peachy. It's fall, so the sidewalks and subways don't reek of stewing garbage juice and the tangy sweat of eight million other people. The leaves are turning amber, and it's chilly enough at night to put aside childish sundresses and wear chunky sweaters from Urban Outfitters, or, you know, Prada. It's not yet winter, so Taylor Swift hasn't yet experienced the nine-degree days where every single person in Manhattan looks homeless because they're wearing all the clothes they ever had to keep themselves alive. In the twilight, the village is aglow, yes, and maybe it's possible to hear a kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats under coats. There certainly seem to be people in Washington Square Park at any given time who're experiencing that particular phenomenon.
Remember that impossibly hopeful phase where New York still seemed vast and full of opportunity, like a postmodern frontier waiting to be conquered? Before that weirdo rubbed up against you on the interminably long express-train ride between Grand Central and Union Square, and before you learned from personal experience how to scour every inch of your laundry for bedbugs, and before the homeless woman outside Duane Reade called you names so filthy they'd get her permanently barred from 4chan? It was lovely. Back when every time you went for cocktails with your friends, it felt like an episode of Sex and the City, and you'd walk through Times Square feeling awed by the lights that were so bright instead of infuriated by the fact that it takes 15 minutes to cross a single city block thanks to all the bus tour touts and the German tourists in enormous coats, and the anti-Semitic Elmo impersonators.
