What’s your historical San Francisco and New York connection?
I grew up in the Bay Area in the East Bay, but was always more connected to New York as a city growing up than San Francisco because my parents took me there frequently to visit. I first moved to NY for a summer in college to work in fashion PR and eventually landed a job at a startup environmental magazine called Plenty. After 6 years in NY, I headed to Ann Arbor, MI for my MBA and am now finally back in SF.

Describe your experiences in SF and NYC.
My SF life has always been as a visitor until now, stopping in for a month here, a few days there, but many friends found it hard to believe that I didn’t always live here. Today, I am reconnecting with the city so my days are full of sunny walks around town, coffee and lunch dates and the obligatory costume parties.  In NY, I lived in Fort Greene, Brooklyn with my fiancé and worked in DUMBO at a boutique branding firm called BBMG. Fort Greene is the best neighborhood in the world and I miss it all the time – from the cinema club at BAM to the Brooklyn Flea and Habana Outpost everything I loved was just two blocks away.

What is the biggest challenge of moving from SF to NYC to SF again?
For me, NY is a more independent, spontaneous city. Everything changes so rapidly and everyone participates in so many divergent events that its easy to move fluidly from art openings to concerts to hole in the wall restaurants without ever making a plan. SF is a more socially connected city, but because everything is more far flung across town it feels like I have to have a strategy every time I go out.

How can NYC and SF best engage with each other?
By inventing cheap, carbon neutral air travel? For friends I have that are bi-coastal, engaging with both cities is like breathing – you really can’t have one city without the other. For everyone else, each town is more of a mythical place to be visited on occasion for a wild time. It’s hard to imagine moving beyond the surface without spending some serious time in each place to get into the locals mindset.

Favorite SF secret spot
The new Exploratorium on Pier 17 has an incredible room called the Bay Observatory. Its full of data visualized maps of SF and has beautiful views of the Bay during the day and the Bay Lights at night.

Favorite NYC secret spot
For seclusion in broad daylight, the big lawn at Governor’s Island is often totally empty. For off the wall events, House of Yes never fails to disappoint.

If you were not in the midst of the job search post-MBA, what would you be doing?
If I wasn’t seeking gainful employment, I would be perpetually lost in interior design dreams. From Apartment Therapy to Tumblr, I am have a full mental catalogue of all the projects I am going to start once my partner and I are living in our own place again.

Inflight Entertainment: tell us what song/album, TV show, podcast, or web videos you’ve been watching lately.
St. Lucia All Eyes on You, Wanderlust Impressions on Tumblr, and the teenage girl in me is obsessed with ABC’s Once Upon a Time.

From the 2905 Miles newsletter: connecting NEW YORK CITY + SAN FRANCISCO