On the morning of May 20, I found myself time traveling in a giant metal tube in the sky. Sharing oxygen over and over again with a few dozen other time travelers, I slowly made my way across the country, finally touching down in New York. It was the second time I'd been there, being that I usually have neither the means nor the desire to leave Tacoma, the place where I was born and raised. I went to New York to escape for a little while and to meet with three people who had escaped a little more permanently.

Upon leaving the airport, I climbed down flights of stairs into the stagnant, sweltering underground tunnel system. Once situated on the platform, I took notice of the green water and scurrying rats that occupy the railroad tracks. The air in the tunnel is thick of trash. Outside, depending on the street, the air may smell slightly chemical, like a public pool. On more than one occasion, the stench reminded me of my time working as a carnie at the Puyallup Fair, surrounded on all sides by dusty barns and vats of torrid oil.

It felt immediately like New York should feel: overwhelming all of the senses, a city teeming with inescapable life. Standing on the subway platform, I am informed by a reader board that it is "chain-snatching season" and that I'd better hold on tight to my jewelry.

I made my way to Spanish Harlem, where I would be staying in a hostel - for $15 a night in a room shared with 11 European bunkers - so that the effects of New York could follow me back to bed. The city is a concentrated mass of everything that makes me intensely uncomfortable.

Clearly, this is not the case for many, many people. In fact, I suspect the difficulty of living in New York is part of the allure - a badge to be worn proudly as if to say, "I am strong enough to survive this place."

On my trip, I would speak with three individuals who had felt compelled to flee Tacoma for the big city: Brad Oberhofer, Colin Reynolds, and Paul Daly. All of them are alumni of the Tacoma School of the Arts; all are musicians; all are trying to make something of themselves in a city famous for making it very clear that you are nothing but a grain of sand.

Brad Oberhofer

I arrived outside of Brad Oberhofer's Brooklyn apartment building as the sun was setting on my second day in the big city. Across the street, a Little League baseball game seemed to be wrapping up. Around the corner was a motel that charged by the hour. This dichotomy exemplifies many neighborhoods in New York.

To anyone who's been paying attention, it's fairly clear that Oberhofer is the most professionally successful of the people I came to speak with. At 19, his success is marked by no small amounts of ambition, talent, and a certain degree of luck.

Though he has yet to sign with a label, his music can be found on two Paste music samplers, a vinyl music compilation from a label in the UK and, most bizarrely, a Sobe television commercial featuring a girl from Twilight. He's being courted by several record labels though he couldn't tell me which ones.

By virtue of Oberhofer putting his music - which he produces by himself - out into the ether, all of these avenues are opening up for him.

"I played a show in May last year," says Oberhofer. "I just put together a band. Actually, Colin Reynolds played in the band for a little while. He later quit, I guess, because he wasn't that into it. We played one show, and that was it. I thought, ‘That was fun.' And then my house (in Tacoma) burned down in October. I just had a panic attack, and so I e-mailed thousands of people my music."

It's easy to understand why Oberhofer's music has received this kind of wide recognition. The songs are huge and bombastic, the vocals cracking and straining at every note. It's music to fill your ears, and in due time it will provide that service for a great number of people.

"I've basically just networked a lot," Oberhofer continues. "Since I interned at Matador for a year and a half, they tend to go to my shows a lot. Some Beggars Group people, too, since Matador and Beggars are in the same office."

Oberhofer shows are fairly infrequent since his band is hard to get together. But what shows he has played, thanks to his many connections, Oberhofer has made count.

When I told him I thought he would blow up any second, Oberhofer responded, "I fucking hope so."

Colin Reynolds

Colin Reynolds and I briefly ducked into a punk bar in the East Village, where I would continue my several-day-long tradition of drinking early and often.

Sitting in a booth, we discuss his name.

"When I first moved here, as silly as it sounds, I decided that I needed to get a fresh start," says Reynolds.

He started going by Clyde Kurtis. New friends in New York knew him as such, and by the time we got together, he was trying to come up with a graceful way to return to his real name.

I find it pretty easy to imagine myself going through such a change. Living in a crush of humanity a million miles from home, what reason would you have for not taking the opportunity to reinvent yourself - to mold yourself into the kind of person who belongs in New York? It's a sign of Reynolds' newfound comfort with the city that he has decided to return to his old self.

Some might remember Reynolds as Tree Roots in the Basement, his project that got off the ground in Tacoma under the Dear Records umbrella. Dear Records was a SOTA collective that featured bands such as Freeze & Fur Coat, Greenfield, and Makeup Monsters. In my mind, Team Unicorn and Dear Records were the Sharks and the Jets in a long-standing musical turf war. Now, many members of Dear Records have relocated to New York. Times were simpler back then.

Reynolds tells me he makes most of his money busking on subway platforms. He plays a precisely selected group of cover songs, surefire stuff that has been proven to rake in the dough. Yet another difference between Tacoma and New York is how panhandlers are dealt with. On the subway, I never once witnessed a beggar leave the train empty-handed. As a street performer, it's absolutely possible to make a living in New York, though admittedly a slightly meager one.

Reynolds has tried for years to make Tree Roots fly, even to this day, his most recent setback involving his entire band abandoning him. Recently he set about recording a new release - a sad, complex opus - which he plans to unveil soon.

Paul Daly

On my last day in New York, I met Paul Daly in a diner about as long and narrow as a grocery aisle. Daly was another prominent member of Dear Records - with two projects, Greenfield and Fashion. He finished his tuna melt, and we went for a walk.

"The first thing that's better about the Tacoma music scene is that there actually is a community," says Daly. "In Tacoma, they come to your shows, and you go to their shows, and the problem becomes that people get worn out. They say, ‘I love you, man, but I'm bored.' That's the downside. The upside is that they were there in the first place. You go through that cycle, and you need to move on. That could mean leaving, or that could mean a lot of different things.

"As a young person, growing up interested in popular music and in creating things, you have to be like a sponge and find as much shit as you can," Daly continues. "Then you go to a place where people are interested in art, and there are lots of venues to do what you want to do, and all of a sudden you have to throw the sponge away and put up a bunch of filters. Now, instead of sucking in as much as you can, you have to block out so much."

Daly found the New York music scene, while not unreceptive, to feel comparatively empty. He still makes music, most recently under the Fashion moniker, but he says he no longer has any desire to release it to anyone other than friends and family. He's content to remain a musician, but any illusions, he says, of making it in the industry have been erased.

Bringing it home

Nothing makes you appreciate home more than leaving. Boarding the plane home was the happiest moment of my trip.

Thousands of feet in the air, looking down at the perfectly formed squares and circles that make up this country's landscape, everything feels at once foreign and recognizable. Safely back in Washington, it's easy to fall back again on that feeling of frustration and disappointment that comes with taking a place for granted.

I won't lie that I've never thought about leaving for good. Perhaps someday I will. In the meantime, it takes nothing more than thinking of the recent Squeak and Squawk Festival for me to remember how special this place can be.

It feels especially good to reflect on Tacoma's lack of a "chain-snatching season."