Building in New York City

For the past year Somya and I have been based out of New York City, living in Gramercy. Ironically our apartment is exactly 1 block up from my freshman year dorm at NYU called U-Hall. I love living in this part of town, right in the middle of Uptown, Downtown, East Side and West Side. It somehow feels like the major personalities of New York all coagulate and comingle on the steps of Union Square.

Back when I was a freshman I would stare longingly at the Chrysler Building, which is easily among the most beautiful buildings in New York. It speaks of a kind of charm and elegance to New York City which is renowned the world over.

This quality comes into a special contrast given that we moved here from Santa Cruz, a scruffy, gorgeous beach town on the edge of the Monterey Bay. While living there, I had a couple months where I went swimming in the Pacific Ocean nearly every day which was just down the street from our house. If I was lucky I’d have a Sea Lion pop up its head next to me. In the evenings I’d go on long runs, and sigh at the heartbreaking poetry of Santa Cruz lighthouse shining its beacon through the foggy night, as powerful waves crashed nearby.

A few months ago, while road tripping through the US, the wife of my friend commented how boring Santa Cruz was, and I just shook my head in sadness that she would never know what she was missing. She had grown up in Silicon Valley, and sure Santa Cruz definitely was laid back compared to Palo Alto, but as somebody who has grown up all over the world, there is no place quite like the whimsical charm, raw nature, and deep California cool of Santa Cruz.

And so moving to New York City was a big loss and a big heartbreak, and yet at the same time, the most exciting step for us because it took my many years of deep historical research and placed us plonk right in the heart of the capital of the world.

To be in New York City now is to be living and breathing right next to the hearts and minds driving the worlds of global finance and fashion—two industries and fields of study we hold dear to our hearts as we explore archetypal cycles in history. Every inch of this part of Manhattan we frequent — from our home in Gramarcy to our office in SoHo — is just bursting with the kind of elegance, restraint, and edgy optimism that has made New York a world famous city. Slowly and surely it has seeped into our building, and now is emerging across all our properties at Numinous Realm.

I remarked with a start a few weeks ago that it has been about a year since I moved from California to New York. I was in California for I’d say 12 years — so there is a lot of the West Coast in me. And yet here I am, one block up from my freshman year dorm — remembering the city where I cut my teeth in business school, and turned my back on the world of commerce during the great recession. And yet now I have a deeper appreciation for what commerce means, and continue to deepen my relationship with it to bring our revolution in cosmology from the West Coast into the hearts and minds of more people around the world.