John Birdsall in Taste: My New York Kitchen Residency

excerpt:

Maybe something always reminds you how temporary your time is in New York, how much you exist in space you’re occupying for a while, before you have to give it up. There’s always someone who wants your seat on the subway, the palm space you command on the pole. Even James Beard, who lived in this city almost 50 years, dreamed often of leaving New York to take up his real home on the West Coast again.