My Favorite Year

I grew up in a small town in North Carolina, with dreams of one day living in New York City. My older sister had a Bob Dylan album with a cover of him walking on a snowy street in NYC, and I often imagined myself there.

After college, while vacationing in Los Angeles, I visited a nightclub in Hollywood. At the time, I was working for a small record label in NC. While there, I struck up a conversation with a man who owned a record label in NYC and was promoting the band that was performing. We exchanged business cards, and he casually said, “If you ever want to move to New York and need a job, give me a call.” I didn’t think much of it at the time, assuming he was just being polite.

Weeks later, back in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I was having lunch in a restaurant when a college friend approached me. She told me her sister was leaving NYC and needed someone to sublet her apartment. I jokingly replied, “I’ve just been offered a job and an apartment in NYC. I have to go, right?”

I called the man I had met in LA a week earlier and, to my surprise, he made good on his offer. I moved to New York and started working for Select Records in downtown Manhattan.

One snowy night, while walking with a friend in the West Village, I remembered that Bob Dylan album cover. It was as if magic had aligned to bring me to that moment. That was 1984, and I think of it as my favorite year.