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Plus, the pandemic was very much still playing out.

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Plus, the Trump presidency would have affected the story line too much.

Plus, I could not bear it.

But still, despite all this planning, there were challenges.

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We had to remove them in special effects.

Masked people zinged like bogeys across the camera no matter how meticulous our locations department was.

We angled cameras away from Biden 2020 bumper stickers.

E.J.’s Luncheonette: Third Avenue at 73rd Street. We couldn’t shoot certain angles at E.J.’s because it’s surrounded by outdoor dining sheds, and we pulled out the Plexiglas panels between the tables. A fun fact about our day at E.J.’s is that our locations manager, Ryan Hammer, wasn’t there because his wife was giving birth to a baby named Emilia Jane (E.J.!).

It was tedious and exhausting.

Thats when I met my husband and moved to Los Angeles.

Something about shooting a TV show on my return felt like making up for lost time.

East 91st Street: Next to the 92nd Street Y. We set up a Clinton/Kaine canvassing station that Toby would encounter as he leaves the Y en route to work, a nod to that summer of the most fraught election of my (any) lifetime. There was no way to set this in 2016 without acknowledging the end of what is, in retrospect, a naïve time.

Baby, I missed you.

Baby, I never wanted to leave.

Baby, she didnt mean a thing.

Father Demo Square: Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street. A pivotal scene took place on Carmine Street, but there are too many new storefronts and eating huts there. We settled for Father Demo Square, a very short walk away, unchanged in decades. We had to angle our shots up rather than down Sixth Avenue, to avoid the changing array of World Trade Center towers.

But, baby, I dont know how to tell you this, but youve changed.

Some of them were just gone.

I was young when I left.

Toby’s apartment: “866 East 91st Street.” Toby’s building isn’t at a real address. We shot at 201 East 66th Street. Across Third Avenue was a yoga-clothing store called Alo, and it didn’t open this location until 2020, so we had to scrub it out in postproduction.

A few days ago, I turned 47.

My parents used to do this to me.

I was born in NYU faculty housing.

American Museum of Natural History: Central Park West at 77th Street. We had Toby enter and exit the American Museum of Natural History on the fountain side because we figured that he’d be a member, and that’s the members’ entrance. But the real reason we did it, even though we very much wanted the front of the museum, was that the statue of Teddy Roosevelt on the Central Park West side was being removed even as we were arranging the shoot.

My father would walk me past the Angelika, which was right across from where wed once lived.

He would reminisce about the playground, gone by then, where hed bring my sister Tracy and me.

To him, it was a 1980s blight on what was once a beautiful block.

East 15th Street: Between Second and Third Avenues. We couldn’t do anything on major avenues, for the most part, because of the pandemic shutdown of storefronts (and turnover), COVID signage, and testing tents on every corner. There were far fewer Citi Bike docks in 2016, too. We dodged masked people, throngs of late-model Teslas. It’s a shame, because the Upper East Side should have been an easy place to shoot for another time, thanks to the comparative lack of bike lanes and complete streets.

Wed pass the Limelight, which had been a church and was now a dance club.

Dont get him started on the Lower East Side.

It comforted my father, how that hadnt changed.

Central Park: Wollman Rink. Toby proposes at Wollman Rink in an early-aughts flashback, forcing the production to remove Ukraine blue-and-gold illumination from the tops of buildings in the nighttime shot.

I rolled my eyes through all of it then.

We did okay on the show.

We shot, totally coincidentally, at Temple Shaaray Tefila, where I taught Hebrew school during college.

To the tune of Wonderwall, we sang, Immma … Im singing to you from the biiiiimah.

After aaallllll, youre so wonderful!

I looked at one of the production assistants and said, This was my life!

She nodded politely and gave another production assistant big eyes and then asked me if I wanted a water.

I finally understand my fathers wistfulness.

It wasnt nostalgia that he was feeling; it was panic.

God, what a beast nostalgia is.

He wasnt even my podiatrist.

But here is the secret of New York: The goldenness of its age is constant.

The New York you live in now is the best version of New York.

But I cant convince you of that.

That day, you will make a shrine of that not-real H&H.

And they will roll their eyes.

You will be right of course, but so will they.

It was, I did not yet realize, made of gold.

Like I said, I had a birthday the other day.

My friend Reyhan took me to the Angelika to seeTar.

It is a floor wax and a dessert topping.

It is a glossy blight on my old block.

That was where I used to play tennis with my college boyfriend, I told her as we passed.

She nodded politely but she didnt really care.

By now shes used to the tedium of people who grew up here.

She got here in 2014, from Pennsylvania by way of San Francisco and the Hudson Valley.

We ended up eating at Jacks Wife Freda.

I love it there.

I am so happy to be home.

kindly call my agent if this interests you.

The establishing shot shows the banner out front with the soon-to-be-retired logo.

We settled for Father Demo Square, a very short walk away, unchanged in decades.

Tobys building isnt at a real address.

We shot at 201 East 66th Street.

Eternal bars make for easy time-shifting, because theyre iconic and unchanging.

Same for Dorrians Red Hand, a stalwart of the budding finance bro on the Upper East Side.

There were far fewer Citi Bike docks in 2016, too.

We dodged masked people, throngs of late-model Teslas.

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