After 18 years, countless videos, and 11 million YouTube subscribers, Casey Neistat is leaving New York City.
“I’m making this video because I’m trying to convince myself,” he said in a video uploaded today titled “This is the end”.
“I’m making this video because I am not sure. But if Tarzan never let go of the vine he was swinging from to grab onto the next one he would have never gotten to the other side of the jungle.”
Neistat first announced his decision to leave the city he called home for almost two decades in May.
“I think when you get older, your priorities are no longer about you. They become about your kids,” he said in the May 10 vlog.
The YouTuber told his millions of followers that while he and his family would be moving to Los Angeles and giving up their NYC apartment, he would be keeping part of his famous studio space, as well as the collaborative workspace Neistat also set up at 368 Broadway will also stay up and running.
On social media, Neistat’s fans – who have come to think of the vlogger as having an almost symbiotic relationship with NYC – expressed their sadness that he was leaving the Big Apple.
Casey Neistat moving out of New York is so crazy
— drea (@andrea_sarn) July 19, 2019
casey neistat leaving new york makes me wanna cry
— Tyler Dougan (@DouganTyler) July 19, 2019
The only YouTube breakup video that will ever matter to me is @Casey Neistat breaking up with New York City 🙁
— David Ocampo (@ocamp_bro) July 18, 2019
On Friday, Neistat uploaded what can only be described as a love letter to New York, going further into detail about why he would be moving on.
“If I had to pinpoint the promises that I’m currently working to realise, it’s to be a person who operates not out of ego but out of a priority to connect with and be kind to and be better to the people around me,” he said.
“A painful reality of that ambition is that I cannot realise it in New York City.”
Neistat drove himself across the country, from East coast to West, and has already planted his feet in California.
“I will miss the friends and the sounds and the buildings and boosted board rides and traffic,” reads a final message.
“But more than anything I will miss being a New Yorker.”
