While working in a Manhattan yoga studio several years ago, I got into a conversation with an instructor about 'Sex and the City.' At the first mention of the program, his gaze travelled from my face to a statue of Pantanjali ensconced within a sheet-rock tabernacle by the dressing room, as if he was trying to marshal some inner strength from the thing before passing judgement.
“That show ruined this city” he said mordantly.
At that point, I hadn’t lived in New York long enough to offer an opinion either way. But as of this writing, I have been here six years, which, when balanced against the fact that I have seen every episode of Sex and the City at least three times, and both movies (The first in the theater. Only straight guy, right here!), does offer an opportunity for comparison.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the show, it involves four attractive, professional women tailored to epitomize the pre-millennial conception of empowered urban womanhood. There is the crass, intemperate MILF, Samantha Jones, who, to her credit, manages to run a ‘fabulous’ PR firm when not doing everything you wish you could do if you were as mannerless as her. There is the insufferable ginger bore, Miranda Hobbes, the ugly/educated one who practices both law and the moderation obviated by Samantha (Because someone has to do it!). There is the pinched Connecticut tennis brat, Charlotte York, an apparent curator of objets d’art and perennial shrew whose nuptial longings are continually undone by their resemblance to the evaluation and purchase of a race horse (Until she lands herself an impotent doctor with a penthouse! Swing and a miss!). Of course, this roster would be incomplete without its centerpiece, Carrie Bradshaw, an advice columnist who makes a criminally small amount of sense, and dates a woodcutter, until she trades up for a broker, who one can only assume must comp a certain portion of the rent on her regal maze of uptown rooms (One can’t help but wonder how you pay for those on a columnist’s salary, Carrie).
That’s really all you need to know to grasp the program. It’s television designed by gay men to inspire straight women without educating them. Aside from occupying hyper-modern seating arrangements in lurid nightclubs, the characters have no hobbies. Their vocations are tertiary. If we were to dilute the content of all six seasons into just scenes of the woman at work, you could watch the entire compendium in fifteen minutes. A little more screen time is inflicted on the male characters (the ‘sex’ in the city), though not much, since they are only distinguishable in terms of their flaws (penis/bank account too small, penis too big, no penis/bank account). So, if Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte, and Carrie have no substantial activities, work-related or otherwise, to portray them as anything other than clockwork trollops living the dream, what exactly is the show about?
Feel free to supply your own answer. Mine is pretty simple. Sex and the City is about sitting in restaurants and having brunch. Or being on your way to or from a restaurant or a brunch. Sometimes, it’s about taking a taxi to an artless opening. Occasionally, it’s also about getting drunk in a room which looks like it should contain a swimming pool (but doesn’t), while saccharine music ejaculates from a hidden stereo, people wear black, and gay men dance. And every so often, the producers will throw us a curve ball and startle the viewer by having the show be about one of the girls (Carrie most often) having a good old think in front some totemic New York City landmark. This is my summary, and I pray that those who have seen the show will find it unimpeachable even if it doesn’t answer the larger question: Why did Carrie and her BFFs ruin New York?
Well, let’s see. The show is responsible for the popularity of the Magnolia Bakery in the West Village. That’s a problem. If your as intemperate as Samantha, those goddamn cupcakes will send you into insulin shock. And we have to take the guided tours into account. Yes, they run Sex and the City tours now. Dress like your favorite upwardly mobile female and get on the bus. The copy from All New York Tours reads “Drink where they drink, shop where they shop & gossip where they gossip on this 3-hour tour,” which sounds like absolute hell to me, but definitely captures the essence of the program.
You could also posit that the show is a manifestation of the ‘roaring nineties’ and that offering entertainment which glorifies the unbridled excess and misplaced sense of well-being cauterized by Blowjob Bill is not only anachronistic, but harmful. Does New York really need more transplanted adult children who arrive convinced that the city is a place where you don’t do your own laundry or cook for yourself? Or better, that it is essentially a fortified grown-up playground, meant to be ‘taken by storm,’ a place where pedigree is measured in ‘strappy’ footwear, trouser tightness, and a fashionable resemblance to someone who died of AIDS?
Perhaps I’m being too academic, but it’s possible Sex in the City fomented certain expectations about New York City in the cultural conscience, the way The Wire has done for Baltimore, even among people who don’t watch the show. Foremost among these is the belief that New York is a place in which you come to ‘make it,’ to stand in the tenuous footsteps of all those who have failed before you and stake your own unique claim. The belief persists that the city still maintains some vestige of that candle in the wind we call the American Dream. If you have an actual career, there is the possibility that this expectation may be met. But it takes actual work, most of which I am unwilling to do, which is why the majority of my time here has been spent waiting to leave. On the other hand, my wife has done very well. She studied and interned for years in New York, and now holds a well-appointed position at an academic library. She buys me things, and I am grateful.
However, I would encourage the parents of artistic types to dissuade their children from moving here to become folk-singers or actors. I’m speaking to the parents because they will likely be the artist’s only means of support three months in. The last thing anyone wants to hear on a Monday afternoon is another underage paleface with dreadlocks belting out a rendition of ‘Redemption Song’ beside the 16th street exit in Union Square station. New Yorkers might disagree over whether or not the city needs more actors, but only because it would be a shame if residents had to fix their own coffee.
Confusing New York City with a sort of artistic conduit, a little Bohemia where people are interested in ‘your work,’ only proves the insidious efficacy of advertising, and embedded cultural narratives. Unlike most trends, The Move to New York, Be an Artist! thing has never really gone out of style, perhaps because people see it as a sort of geographic shortcut which may serve as a substitute for actual talent. But great art can emerge from anywhere. The best crop of nugrass musicians in Williamsburg, even though their studied twangs and ‘Ahm jus’ a coal miner’ lyrics are very good, do not approach the acumen of your average ensemble in Southwestern Ohio. The whole woodsy philosopher look has become quite popular recently among people who have never read Thoreau, and only put pen to paper when signing a credit receipt for ax-handles at Hog Mountain. As far as visual artists, my wife is fond of saying that art died with the Spanish Influenza, and for the most part, I agree. So what are we left with? That’s right. A generation of bearded mountain men who have never so much as chased a snake out of a woodpile, celluloid slatterns in Manolo Blahniks, and conceptual painters in Levi’s 511 (TM, apparently) jeans assured in the knowledge that mediocrity is easily eclipsed by the right zip code. Is this my generation? I’m afraid so.
Surely there is a perverse pleasure for residents who have lived here longer than me (how do you do it?) in seeing the city slowly leech hope and expectation from the newly arrived. I imagine it’s similar to watching a python devour an animal slightly too large for eating. I’ve lived here too short a time to be considered a New Yorker (Thank Jesus!) but long enough to see many people come and go from the city. It’s interesting to note the attitude of those freshly emigrated. They are perky, excited, and on their first day are ready to seek out the twelve-dollar, but otherwise perfect cup of coffee at Cafe Grumpy in Greenpoint (AKA Cancer Creek), and the best slice of pizza on Bleecker street before taking in some live music at McCarren Park and drinks at the BT. Even if they don’t know it, they arrive ready to traipse in the footsteps of Carrie Bradshaw, and do this shit every day.
I’m not sure at what point realty sets in. Perhaps around a week later, when you return home blind drunk to a room in a fringe neighborhood filled with unpacked boxes, one of your seven roommates is taking his or her ‘hour shower’ and another has eaten the cake of goat cheese you spent forty minutes selecting at the weekend market in Union Square, you still have not purchased a mattress but have ended up with bed bugs anyway, and you realize that after spending the past week celebrating your ability to schlep your shit from Indiana to New York, you are functionally broke and need to get a job tomorrow. You made it. Good for you.
My point in this extended preamble has been that, though it responsible for the embedded narrative of modern life, we should not allow ourselves to be punished by television. Allowing TV to manufacture behavior only serves to make us vulnerable to the worst elements of our culture (And no, I’m not talking about violent criminals) and prevent us from drawing individual conclusions about what it is to be alive. We must disengage from the feedbag. This is why I have constructed the following list for those newly arrived to New York City. Even those who intend to just visit may find it has currency. So, without further explanation, I present The Top Five Things You Think You Should Do While in New York That Actually Suck and Will Cause Regret. Enjoy.
5. Live Music
When we first moved here, Kate got a job working at a frame shop on the Upper East Side. Directly after the interview, she heard a noise from basement and noticed a tall, quivering figure lurch through the door. This wobbling forty year old in Converse hightops who resembled Keith Richards on the nod was her new coworker. In lieu of formal introduction, he simply asked a question.
“Do you go to shows?”
There is culture of live music here which possibly rivals all others in quantity. Any musician of any reputation will likely end up playing their tunes in the city. On the surface, this would seem an excellent opportunity for the culture vulture to add a roster of artists both large small to his or her resume of artistic things done with pocket money. A cursory glance at the concert calendar in the Village Voice yields the possibility of seeing Aloe Blacc, Les Savy Fav, and Miami Horror all in the same business week. If that doesn’t do it for you, there’s also a Beatles Brunch(!) every Saturday at the B.B. King Blues Club and Grill. Wow! So much to look forward to!
But live music in New York is a logistical nightmare. My first experience is a good example. I bought tickets to see Joanna Newsom (Shame on me!) who was playing at Webster Hall, though, for some reason, I had to pick them up in person at the Mercury Lounge. After wandering lost around the Lower East Side for several hours in pursuit of the box office, I finally met an androgynous but otherwise tame clerk at the elusive, ambitionless watering hole, who dispensed the tickets as though it was paying me some grand favor.
“Okay” I thought. “That sucked, but surely it was only an unpleasant stepping stone on an otherwise even path.”
Not so. The night of the performance we arrived to a windowless room full of people dressed like scarecrows, and lit as though they were about to participate in a black mass. The only way to get through it was to drink, so I spent twenty dollars on a watery Heineken and syrupy Cosmopolitan. As the opening performer began to trudge through his act, the wraith-like crowd swarmed around the stage, not dancing or singing, but swaying like reeds in a fetid pond. When the main performance began, the crowding got worse. It pressed from all sides, and the smell was a noxious pabulum of beer, body odor, and raspberry hand lotion (for the girls, I assume). There was not enough alcohol in the city to get through this, but who would that stop? Kate, who is short, could not see a damn thing, so I asked the bartender to lend us a milk crate for her to stand on. This helped remotely.
In Vermont, I was accustomed to plush community theaters with cozy seats, or spreading a blanket on a bed of grass while Dave Grisman plunked away on outdoor stage in the middle distance. My father worked for a radio station as a hobby, and got me plenty of free tickets to concerts across the state. I was not always keen on the performances, but they were free, and a nice experience. Yet here, in New York City, the supposed artistic center of the country, I had paid over a hundred dollars (with drinks) to see an artist I genuinely enjoyed, yet I could not wait for it to be over. To closet great art in a dank sub-room and fill it with drunk people cheapens the exercise of meaningful expression. The live music industry in the city can attract popular artists, so why bother trying to make the experience pleasant? People will pay whatever you ask to spend the evening half drunk in an armpit, listening to music they now like less.
If all this sounds good to you, give it a shot. If it doesn’t, but you’re thinking maybe an outdoor concert during summer is a better option, you might be right. They are better. A little bit. You can smoke, so that’s a plus. There are probably more, but it’s beyond me to recall them. And in any case, the cons vastly outnumber the pros. For one, you’re much more likely to see children at outdoor events in New York City, which, if you’re one of those people who enjoys offspring which you did not commit, might be a plus. Also, the entire principle of the outdoor concert relies on the concert being outdoor, the marketable difference being that you are not surrounded by four walls. But remember, unless it’s free (Freedom? At what cost? Consider.), you’re going to be put in paddock. In terms of the concerts held in Prospect Park, expect to be hemmed in by a ten foot high chain link fence, the perimeter of which is patrolled by police. The interior contains the stage (of course), beer tent, nacho wagon, and three chemical toilets. Imagine an internment camp with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. And if the act is especially famous, the police augment the death camp atmosphere by throwing their horse blankets or whatever over the fence, which lends the space the appearance of a four-sided canyon, or hole (in other words).
And really, if we’re going to be honest, no one is making good music anymore, so why bother? Your friend’s band is not good, and neither is the mincing pratt whispering his inscrutable songs to audience spellbound by its own unlocalized profundity. Maybe you agree. Maybe you’re tired of the same boring shit. Maybe you even keep a Bukka White record in the back of a milk crate just in case, come a lonely Sunday, you’re in need of some old-timey catharsis a la Thora Birch and the birth of the ironic t-shirt. Or maybe you’re already saying ‘But what about Radiohead?’ In either case, unless you’re an incorrigible glutton for overpriced punishment, avoid concert going.
4. Bars and Restaurants
Aside from a workplace, the only location your less likely to find Carrie and co. is in the kitchen. Since the show treats anything remotely self-sufficient with a glib, bourgeios dismissal, it’s no surprise that the gals use the kitchen cabinets as closet space. Because why would you prepare a meal for yourself when the best food in the world is quite literally a sashay away? Cooking is for peasants!
Well, there are couple reasons. The first is that dining out is fuck-off expensive. Since New York is place where you can be a career waiter, expect to tip heavily for shitty service. Expect to pay $10 for a grilled cheese you could make yourself, and extra for the vivisected pickle decaying on your plate’s meridian. If you can’t get two eggs, toast, and coffee for less than $5 it’s not diner food. It’s a corrupt, culinary retrofitting meant to squeeze wallets in allegiance to a deceased staple of the American Disease. “What do you want for dinner tonight, honey? How about pauper food?” The only affordable meal in the city is the one made yourself on a Precambrian stove top in your apartment.
Though the ersatz diner experience is preferable to that of eating in a ‘nice’ restaurant. In New York, the ‘nice’ restaurant formula is simple. The dining room is lit like a mine shaft. Bring a cigarette lighter if you wish to read your menu. Ambient, unfree jazz is piped in from a clandestine speaker. Maybe on the weekends, they’ll get sporty and play some Edith Piaf, but generally, don’t expect anything with a beat. And there is seating for fifty to one hundred, yet only one unisex restroom because every component of the New York dining experience is designed to be unsettling. Eat, and get the fuck out. That table could seat many who are not you. The fare is usually a tired, vaguely Francophilic interpretation of American food. That is, Slab of Meat on Plate with Veggies for Decoration. Steak Monotony. Boring Beef. Sham Ham. Call it what you like. If you want to mix it up, you can have The Whitefish, or, if you’re vegetarian, try the stewed vegetables in a cream sauce that will give you diarrhea on the subway. Bon Appetit!
But wait! There are plenty of ‘ethnic’ restaurants too! Sure there are. From the perspective of the sensualist gourmet, Manhattan must seem like the biggest food court on the planet. So many choices! What shall we have this evening? Chinese? Greek? Swahili? Whatever your taste, a trough awaits. But of quality? I’ve been to India. They don’t serve chicken tikka masala, unless white people are expected for dinner. I’ve never been to China, but I suspect fried chicken and french fries are not staples in Hebei. No matter how ‘off the map’ you are in your culinary excursion, know that everything you eat in New York is designed to cater to the soft, corn-fed American pallet. Just because your meal is shit hot, and you sat on the floor to eat it, does not mean you have developed even a remote taste for the exotic. You have instead developed a taste for plate-side burlesque. Good for you, masticating dilettante. If you want authentic food, buy a plane ticket.
As with music, New York has many restaurants. There are probably more restaurants here than in other places. But, as discussed, this is the substitute of volume for quality. This is not to discount the indulgent aspect of the dining experience in general. Being served feeds our little inner sultan, and makes us feel important. How could we not be important? A peon has just brought us a plate of meat! I am the lord of this table until my check arrives! What we forget is that food is fuel. That’s all. Leave it to the vacuous to turn a necessity into a perverse dalliance and exercise in alienation. We no longer wish to prepare our food. It’s much easier to have it brought to us. And we don’t care where it comes from, provided it arrives hot and on time. It’s no wonder we spend 168 billion dollars annually treating obesity, when all you have to do to satisfy hunger is park your ass in a chair and point.
I’ll spend less time on bars, because the case against them combines the problems of both the live music venue and the restaurant. And I don’t wish to bore any of those good enough to have arrived with me at this point. I will say that I have had nice experiences in certain public houses. In the town of Brecon in Wales, when I was eighteen, I used to walk down from my boarding house to a small, well-lit pub, frequented by locals. I would put a song on the jukebox, order a pint, and sit at a corner table, writing. I was greeted and dismissed with the same casual indifference. This was a pleasant experience.
However, bars in New York fall into one of two categories. They are either ‘white cushion’ establishments, with twenty dollar cocktails, a eurotrash dress code (popped collars, gelled hair, large sunglasses worn inside), and music you would expect to hear during an off-season coupon night on Ibiza. If I had a crowd, they would not gather here. Or they are a sort of neighborhood pastiche of the rough and tumble, likely rustic in theme, shit-kicking joint in which Pabst is auctioned for four dollars a can, a palsied pool table lurks in a corner too narrow to wrack, and NYU students mumbled to each other about whatever esoteric nonsense momentarily pleases their retinue, between mouthfuls of tepid Brooklyn Lager and smoke from an American Spirit blue pack.
Was it Aristotle who said that man is a social animal? My experience of philosophy is limited to a few terms worth of classes, so, unless I do a google, it shall remain a mystery. In any case, my question is whether or not this is correct. Both dining and drinking out assume a tenure amid the masses which seems conducive to neither. Who wants to watch other people eat? Or get wasted? I would rather cook myself a meal and read a book in my apartment, where I can smoke and not listen to other people talk. It must be a difficult life for the extrovert. But I believe, if he or she forsakes the practice of consuming food and liquor in the company of strangers, it will become easier.
3. Public Transportation
Though Carrie and her sisters in indulgence rarely use it, New York City’s public transportation network is a feature of which those newly arrived or visiting become rapidly enamored. America never really recovered from Henry Ford’s campaign to destroy public transportation, and New York never really recovered from Robert Moses’ campaign to turn the city into a highway. Still, New York has managed, and now sports one of the largest transit networks in the world. Huzzah!
If you’re visiting from Wyoming, or even New Jersey, the trains must seem like a miracle. Here is a city in which not only is everything offered, but it is also accessible. Good gravy! Living with it, however, is another story, best illustrated by the following rhetorical (I pray.) question: How would you like to ride a turd to work?
Don’t mistake me here. It’s not your turd. You have to share it with other people. And sometimes . . . well, pretty often actually, there is not enough space for everyone who needs to ride this turd. So, you have the choice of either squeezing in with everyone else and scampering for space on the floater, or waiting for the next turd cruising down the pipe, which could arrive soon or never. Now, just one more rhetorical question: How would you like to do this every day?
The reason I compare a train car to a turd is not entirely due to shape and mode of arrival (through a pipe). It has to do with the distinct fecal odor either deployed by MTA staff, or generally localized, in every subway terminal in the metropolitan area. It’s an odor which inscrutably arrives even in winter, when temperatures dip below the point at which anything should fester. And after a week of commuting by rail, it is an odor which follows you home like a rude guest. Perhaps you don’t mind the feces. Perhaps you see foul odors as just one of those trades you make as part of life in the Big Crapple. Oddly, these are usually the very same people who bitch and complain about second-hand smoke, flapping their pink little rodent hands in front of their narrow heads while passing autos belch particulates, before descending below the streets to breath air that is two thirds landfill, one third anus. If you don’t smoke in New York, you’re missing out for no reason.
I’ve heard many excuses for the sub-par state of New York’s transit, the most common being that ‘it’s better than nothing.’ Maybe. But poor performance breeds poor expectations. And once again, we find ourselves praising mediocrity simple because it is comprehensive. Does anyone notice a theme emerging? Yes, things here could be worse. But they could also be a whole lot better. You know who has a better train system than us? Hungary. You know what doesn’t smell like shit? The subway in Budapest. Guess where you won’t find litter? In a Magyar train terminal. And you can even smoke in them.
Another common excuse, justification, or reason for liking the subway is what I like to call the Dickensian Railroad Complex. This is the belief that the poop train is great because it requires people from all walks of life to mingle in a neutral, egalitarian environment, as though the Metropolitan Transit Authority is some kind of mobile community center, or institutional Burning Man. Sure, the train car is definitely a place where you see folks you wouldn’t normally. I mean, I don’t often invite homeless people to sit in my apartment and fill it with the scent of a burning athletic shoe filled with vomit. Nor do I commonly allow people with eight mewling children to picnic in my living room. And when at home, I rarely stand around waiting for a chance to sit down. So sure, absolutely, the subway is great place to rub elbows with the Not Yous of the city. I suppose it’s a question of why in the world you would want to do such a thing. The acute gnawing of liberal guilt bedrock, perhaps? I’ll agree that carrying around your BA in Oppression Studies is impractical. But in a city of eight million, do you actually believe riding a train with poor people has any remote civic significance? I don’t see the social justice, I’m sorry. And remember that the truly rich never set foot on the subway. All we see is the hopeless soup of the other ninety-eight percent getting in each other’s way. At least we all hate it together, I guess.
I’m speaking primarily of the trains, because the buses are a non-starter. The entire point of public transportation should be to get around traffic rather than participate in it. If I wanted to sit in a snarl of honking cars, I would move someplace cheaper. And though I’m trying to avoid getting on my emerald high horse, I will point out that regardless of how ‘green’ those buses are supposed to be, anyone that has ever been stuck behind one on a bicycle when it’s August and ninety degrees in the shade knows that whatever is coming out the back of those things is not remotely sustainable. What the fuck do they run on? ‘Clean coal’?
My wife stopped riding turds to work back in 2007, and I followed shortly in 2008. We both invested separatly in bicycles, and have not gone back. I purchased mine after much hounding on her part, but she, and it, saved my life. Before this, I would spend hours each day on the train. My back hurt from sitting. My feet hurt from standing. And since all I did each day was shuffle between seats, my stamina was greatly reduced. I was essentially an ambulatory carcass. I can’t imagine how people do this for years without killing themselves. I’m not joking. A bicycle is the only important purchase you will ever make in New York City. It is your only means of maintaining agency in a wildly regulated locale. I urge anyone who has not done so to acquire a bike. Within a week, your life will be better. You will remember was it is like to be free, to use your body, to be something other than a collection of bone and gristle whisked between stockades. And it’s not unthinkable that if enough people ride bikes rather than driving, or taking public transport, the city will be forced to accommodate them. Be part of something better.
2. Manhattan
I’m not sure at what point this island named by the Lenape from which it was stolen by the Dutch and then stolen by the English, and finally inhabited by pompous wealthy assholes who invented Santa Claus ran short on lateral space. But at a certain juncture, it just began going up, rather than out. And now we have an iconic collection of unlivable buildings scrabbling at the heavens they wish recreate. There is very little uglier than a skyscraper. And Manhattan has many. This is “despotic” architecture, as Kunstler has said, built to “make us feel like termites’”in the shadow of our own ingenuity. How odd. To build a castle only to stand cringing at its gates.
I haven’t enjoyed Manhattan since I was ten years old, and my father would take me to the American Museum of Natural History or the Met. We went to the MOMA once or twice as well, but it was like being in a condo filled with trash. We also went to Central Park, which is basically a meadow with an express way. The performance cyclists here are much worse than Prospect Park, these broker by day, jock by night types cruising on a bike you could trade for ten wooded acres sans freeway in Vermont. Both parks were designed by Frederick Olmsted, the same guy who designed the grounds at Harvard and Yale, an irascible idealist who I imagine has not stopped rotating in his coffin since they paved his brainchildren. But it makes sense. In order to build the perfect city, the small amount of green space apportioned for residents must be manacled and regulated until the essence of its ecologic significance has been raped stupid. In other words, It must be comfortable for idiots. Thus, we get those who still find it amazing that a city as bustling as New York would preserve such valuable real estate in the name of beauty and peace. It’s a statement that explains how extremely our expectations can be lowered by our environment, and once more, we have mediocrity and girth standing in for actual substance. Those fellows never quit.
Many people like the energy in Manhattan, which I have never felt, so it must be an extrovert thing. Evelyn Waugh has an excellent quote about this very idea: “For in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.” Yes, that might be the side with which I identify. There is a rush of electricity that feels on the verge of surge at any moment. As though, all residents of the island, heading in their particular directions, at their particular pace, in their particular mood, are only inches from killing each other. I would add to Waugh’s idea with my own: What we mistake for energy is actually an undercurrent of homicide. You obviously can’t expect a population of eight million to behave as neighbors. But there is something else here, a dangerous extra, not just an indifference, but a willful, violent exuberance. The city is so huge, so oppressive and so alienating, that we all, at one point or another, want to be heard, we want to be right, we want the support of the crowds which pass us silently each day. In short, we do not wish to be isolated. Knock shoulders with some on the street. See how long it takes for one of them to start a fight. It’s not even about you. It’s an emotional, animal response. We are chimpanzees in t-shirts. We want to cause the pain we feel.
You can slough me off, and say it’s not true, you don’t feel any of what I’m talking about and I’m projecting. I would suggest that all it takes is the right situation, in which, if you stay here for long enough, you will eventually find yourself. Enjoy your day.
Whenever my wife and I are unlucky enough to have company from out of town, they inevitably want to go to Manhattan. They want to shop in Soho, get purses on Canal street, and gawk in the West Village. They want their own Sex and the City tour, guided by you. But having guests in New York is like having a second job. There is no time here. You are not welcome. My apartment is perfectly calibrated to accommodate my peculiar needs, and nothing further. And since everything in Manhattan looks exactly like it does on television, I would wager that any guest darkening my doorstep likely knows their way around better than I do.
There is nothing to love in a city that has become a amusement park. The subway is the roller coaster. The buses are the log ride. The cabs are bumper cars. The halal carts and hot dog stands are the concessions. I suppose marathon shopping and a quick traipse along the razor blade of insanity that is a vacation in Manhattan is reasonably equivalent to a carnival game. And long time residents are quite similar to carnies in their jaded ‘if I can’t fuck it, I’ll eat it’ grizzled mode of existence. They’ve spent twenty-five years excavating their niche and who the fuck are you to visit it?
My solution to this problem has been living in Brooklyn, which is like Manhattan, but spread out. Rather than having my arm up to the elbow in my neighbors ass, I’m content in terminating it at the wrist in Kings county. I’ve read in many an article that this is the place where people want to live. Move here! It is a mecca for your dumb art and opinions! Maybe so, but the best thing Brooklyn has to recommend it is that it is not any of the other boroughs. And as soon as they build a J. Crew here, I will have absolutely no reason to ever go to Manhattan.
1. The Brooklyn Bridge
Enough has been written in praise of this iconic structure to move it easily into slot number one. I should admit at the outset that I have never walked across it. Yes, during my six years in New York City I have not once thought, “What a delightful sunny day! Perhaps I shall live it fully by standing athwart the burroughs and snapping photographs of myself jumping up and down in the bike lane. What fun!” I suppose I have not felt the need to complete the pilgrimage between two similarly alienating locations by foot because why on earth would I do that, when I can ride a bike across it?
Yes, though I have not hoofed it between here and there, I sure as shit have crossed it on a bicycle. When I worked in Manhattan, I did it twice a day, five days a week, for three years. I’m willing to admit that since I was usually on my way somewhere, work or home, that I may have not fully experienced this attraction at its best. Rarely did I pause to consider the opposing cityscapes which, for all their distinction, could be just one placed before a smoke-yellowed mirror. Never did I dismount, and glance beneath my feet at the churning broth of the East River and marvel at the sheer human force required to construct something within it. And not once have I aspirated the bigness of it all, and felt much as I am, that is, a drone within the hive, no different or more important than any other. Become humble before a creation of man is about the longest solitary back pat you can give yourself.
Carrie Bradshaw and her bevy have certainly visited the bridge on more than one occasion, though it is now beyond me to recall which episode, and which season, though doubtless some of her salty, homespun wisdom was included in the overdub. Similarly, I have trouble recalling in exactly which volume of Vogue’s fashion edition S.J. Parker appeared laughing or whinnying (who can tell?) in the very spot that I would later bypass on my way home. Small city.
When I asked my wife what she thought people were thinking as they stood on the observation platforms, snapping photos and staring at nothing, she suggested that they are probably asking themselves, “Why am I doing this?” She is a trained existentialist, so crediting the great unwashed with that sort of awareness and doubt is both generous and likely correct. My only question is what sort of answer they have, if any. What could possibly be fun about walking up a concrete gangway, transferring to a slatted wooden catwalk, while cyclists scream for you to move your kids out the way, and sweat drips onto your camera lens? Is it just ‘one of those things you do,’ like supporting the troops, shaving your armpits, or having a funeral?
Kate did add that it’s possible that most who participate are not even able to question their motives for doing something completely unpleasant, because even asking would be an admission, and thus, the death of fun. And once fun dies, what do you have left? In that way, it might actually be an indispensable part of the New York holiday. A little souvenir acquaintance with the void. So maybe the bridge doesn’t belong on this list at all . . . Never mind. Go, definitely. Bring your whole family and no food, water, or clean diapers.
But the one thing you should absolutely not do is ride a bike across it. I’ve found that people fall into one of two categories. They either assist you in accomplishing your goals, or impede them. Whatever the latter designation does in the time when I do not see them is a mystery. But you can guarantee that as soon as you begin the ponderous pedal at the base of Adams street, these folks will decamp upon the attraction to quite literally impede your goal of reaching the opposite shore. They will stand in the bike lane snapping photographs. Their unattended children will wander into your path. The will walk side by side up and down the bridge, apparently deaf to both bells and polite imprecations. The only way to clear a path is to act aberrant, and be one of those ‘crazy bikers.’ But even when screaming ‘You! Melissa Midwest! Get the fuck out of the way!,’ you’re still likely to clip the rogue beer gut of a prison guard from Joliet, Illinois with your handlebar.
The problem is both one of infrastructure and awareness. Unless you count a white line painted on the ground at which no one looks (because there is a view), there is nothing to physically denote the space for either cyclists and foot traffic. But also, there is a failure in the understanding of your own body in space, moving in real time, and how your girth contributes to the general misery of all who must go thither. Congratulations, you’re an overfed nuisance.
Negotiating this snarl twice each day is an exercise in flagellation. As a result, each time I look at the Brooklyn Bridge, in person or media, the only impression I have is one of my bicycle slamming into a suspension cable to avoid a milk-fed, wayward adolescent with pink hair, or the click of a telephoto lens colliding with my headset, or the guy who crashed his BMX into me on Halloween, whipped off his shirt and challenged me to a fist fight on the northernmost observation deck. I suppose the question as to why I would do such a thing every day is as relevant to me as the guy setting up his camera tripod in my path. The difference is that I’m commuting. He’s on vacation.
*
So, there you have it. The top five things to completely avoid if you wish for peace in the big city. I must caution the reader who has endured me thus far that this list is by no means complete. There are many other activities, places, and people you should avoid, but a comprehensive list would rival ‘A Remembrance of Things Past’ in scope. But I do actually have one tool which may serve as a reasonable guide in determining what to avoid. Simply ask yourself: WWCBD? What would Carrie Bradshaw do? As long as you do the opposite of whatever answer this little query produces, you will remain a sane and possibly content, but certainly never happy, resident of New York City.
“That show ruined this city” he said mordantly.
At that point, I hadn’t lived in New York long enough to offer an opinion either way. But as of this writing, I have been here six years, which, when balanced against the fact that I have seen every episode of Sex and the City at least three times, and both movies (The first in the theater. Only straight guy, right here!), does offer an opportunity for comparison.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the show, it involves four attractive, professional women tailored to epitomize the pre-millennial conception of empowered urban womanhood. There is the crass, intemperate MILF, Samantha Jones, who, to her credit, manages to run a ‘fabulous’ PR firm when not doing everything you wish you could do if you were as mannerless as her. There is the insufferable ginger bore, Miranda Hobbes, the ugly/educated one who practices both law and the moderation obviated by Samantha (Because someone has to do it!). There is the pinched Connecticut tennis brat, Charlotte York, an apparent curator of objets d’art and perennial shrew whose nuptial longings are continually undone by their resemblance to the evaluation and purchase of a race horse (Until she lands herself an impotent doctor with a penthouse! Swing and a miss!). Of course, this roster would be incomplete without its centerpiece, Carrie Bradshaw, an advice columnist who makes a criminally small amount of sense, and dates a woodcutter, until she trades up for a broker, who one can only assume must comp a certain portion of the rent on her regal maze of uptown rooms (One can’t help but wonder how you pay for those on a columnist’s salary, Carrie).
That’s really all you need to know to grasp the program. It’s television designed by gay men to inspire straight women without educating them. Aside from occupying hyper-modern seating arrangements in lurid nightclubs, the characters have no hobbies. Their vocations are tertiary. If we were to dilute the content of all six seasons into just scenes of the woman at work, you could watch the entire compendium in fifteen minutes. A little more screen time is inflicted on the male characters (the ‘sex’ in the city), though not much, since they are only distinguishable in terms of their flaws (penis/bank account too small, penis too big, no penis/bank account). So, if Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte, and Carrie have no substantial activities, work-related or otherwise, to portray them as anything other than clockwork trollops living the dream, what exactly is the show about?
Feel free to supply your own answer. Mine is pretty simple. Sex and the City is about sitting in restaurants and having brunch. Or being on your way to or from a restaurant or a brunch. Sometimes, it’s about taking a taxi to an artless opening. Occasionally, it’s also about getting drunk in a room which looks like it should contain a swimming pool (but doesn’t), while saccharine music ejaculates from a hidden stereo, people wear black, and gay men dance. And every so often, the producers will throw us a curve ball and startle the viewer by having the show be about one of the girls (Carrie most often) having a good old think in front some totemic New York City landmark. This is my summary, and I pray that those who have seen the show will find it unimpeachable even if it doesn’t answer the larger question: Why did Carrie and her BFFs ruin New York?
Well, let’s see. The show is responsible for the popularity of the Magnolia Bakery in the West Village. That’s a problem. If your as intemperate as Samantha, those goddamn cupcakes will send you into insulin shock. And we have to take the guided tours into account. Yes, they run Sex and the City tours now. Dress like your favorite upwardly mobile female and get on the bus. The copy from All New York Tours reads “Drink where they drink, shop where they shop & gossip where they gossip on this 3-hour tour,” which sounds like absolute hell to me, but definitely captures the essence of the program.
You could also posit that the show is a manifestation of the ‘roaring nineties’ and that offering entertainment which glorifies the unbridled excess and misplaced sense of well-being cauterized by Blowjob Bill is not only anachronistic, but harmful. Does New York really need more transplanted adult children who arrive convinced that the city is a place where you don’t do your own laundry or cook for yourself? Or better, that it is essentially a fortified grown-up playground, meant to be ‘taken by storm,’ a place where pedigree is measured in ‘strappy’ footwear, trouser tightness, and a fashionable resemblance to someone who died of AIDS?
Perhaps I’m being too academic, but it’s possible Sex in the City fomented certain expectations about New York City in the cultural conscience, the way The Wire has done for Baltimore, even among people who don’t watch the show. Foremost among these is the belief that New York is a place in which you come to ‘make it,’ to stand in the tenuous footsteps of all those who have failed before you and stake your own unique claim. The belief persists that the city still maintains some vestige of that candle in the wind we call the American Dream. If you have an actual career, there is the possibility that this expectation may be met. But it takes actual work, most of which I am unwilling to do, which is why the majority of my time here has been spent waiting to leave. On the other hand, my wife has done very well. She studied and interned for years in New York, and now holds a well-appointed position at an academic library. She buys me things, and I am grateful.
However, I would encourage the parents of artistic types to dissuade their children from moving here to become folk-singers or actors. I’m speaking to the parents because they will likely be the artist’s only means of support three months in. The last thing anyone wants to hear on a Monday afternoon is another underage paleface with dreadlocks belting out a rendition of ‘Redemption Song’ beside the 16th street exit in Union Square station. New Yorkers might disagree over whether or not the city needs more actors, but only because it would be a shame if residents had to fix their own coffee.
Confusing New York City with a sort of artistic conduit, a little Bohemia where people are interested in ‘your work,’ only proves the insidious efficacy of advertising, and embedded cultural narratives. Unlike most trends, The Move to New York, Be an Artist! thing has never really gone out of style, perhaps because people see it as a sort of geographic shortcut which may serve as a substitute for actual talent. But great art can emerge from anywhere. The best crop of nugrass musicians in Williamsburg, even though their studied twangs and ‘Ahm jus’ a coal miner’ lyrics are very good, do not approach the acumen of your average ensemble in Southwestern Ohio. The whole woodsy philosopher look has become quite popular recently among people who have never read Thoreau, and only put pen to paper when signing a credit receipt for ax-handles at Hog Mountain. As far as visual artists, my wife is fond of saying that art died with the Spanish Influenza, and for the most part, I agree. So what are we left with? That’s right. A generation of bearded mountain men who have never so much as chased a snake out of a woodpile, celluloid slatterns in Manolo Blahniks, and conceptual painters in Levi’s 511 (TM, apparently) jeans assured in the knowledge that mediocrity is easily eclipsed by the right zip code. Is this my generation? I’m afraid so.
Surely there is a perverse pleasure for residents who have lived here longer than me (how do you do it?) in seeing the city slowly leech hope and expectation from the newly arrived. I imagine it’s similar to watching a python devour an animal slightly too large for eating. I’ve lived here too short a time to be considered a New Yorker (Thank Jesus!) but long enough to see many people come and go from the city. It’s interesting to note the attitude of those freshly emigrated. They are perky, excited, and on their first day are ready to seek out the twelve-dollar, but otherwise perfect cup of coffee at Cafe Grumpy in Greenpoint (AKA Cancer Creek), and the best slice of pizza on Bleecker street before taking in some live music at McCarren Park and drinks at the BT. Even if they don’t know it, they arrive ready to traipse in the footsteps of Carrie Bradshaw, and do this shit every day.
I’m not sure at what point realty sets in. Perhaps around a week later, when you return home blind drunk to a room in a fringe neighborhood filled with unpacked boxes, one of your seven roommates is taking his or her ‘hour shower’ and another has eaten the cake of goat cheese you spent forty minutes selecting at the weekend market in Union Square, you still have not purchased a mattress but have ended up with bed bugs anyway, and you realize that after spending the past week celebrating your ability to schlep your shit from Indiana to New York, you are functionally broke and need to get a job tomorrow. You made it. Good for you.
My point in this extended preamble has been that, though it responsible for the embedded narrative of modern life, we should not allow ourselves to be punished by television. Allowing TV to manufacture behavior only serves to make us vulnerable to the worst elements of our culture (And no, I’m not talking about violent criminals) and prevent us from drawing individual conclusions about what it is to be alive. We must disengage from the feedbag. This is why I have constructed the following list for those newly arrived to New York City. Even those who intend to just visit may find it has currency. So, without further explanation, I present The Top Five Things You Think You Should Do While in New York That Actually Suck and Will Cause Regret. Enjoy.
5. Live Music
When we first moved here, Kate got a job working at a frame shop on the Upper East Side. Directly after the interview, she heard a noise from basement and noticed a tall, quivering figure lurch through the door. This wobbling forty year old in Converse hightops who resembled Keith Richards on the nod was her new coworker. In lieu of formal introduction, he simply asked a question.
“Do you go to shows?”
There is culture of live music here which possibly rivals all others in quantity. Any musician of any reputation will likely end up playing their tunes in the city. On the surface, this would seem an excellent opportunity for the culture vulture to add a roster of artists both large small to his or her resume of artistic things done with pocket money. A cursory glance at the concert calendar in the Village Voice yields the possibility of seeing Aloe Blacc, Les Savy Fav, and Miami Horror all in the same business week. If that doesn’t do it for you, there’s also a Beatles Brunch(!) every Saturday at the B.B. King Blues Club and Grill. Wow! So much to look forward to!
But live music in New York is a logistical nightmare. My first experience is a good example. I bought tickets to see Joanna Newsom (Shame on me!) who was playing at Webster Hall, though, for some reason, I had to pick them up in person at the Mercury Lounge. After wandering lost around the Lower East Side for several hours in pursuit of the box office, I finally met an androgynous but otherwise tame clerk at the elusive, ambitionless watering hole, who dispensed the tickets as though it was paying me some grand favor.
“Okay” I thought. “That sucked, but surely it was only an unpleasant stepping stone on an otherwise even path.”
Not so. The night of the performance we arrived to a windowless room full of people dressed like scarecrows, and lit as though they were about to participate in a black mass. The only way to get through it was to drink, so I spent twenty dollars on a watery Heineken and syrupy Cosmopolitan. As the opening performer began to trudge through his act, the wraith-like crowd swarmed around the stage, not dancing or singing, but swaying like reeds in a fetid pond. When the main performance began, the crowding got worse. It pressed from all sides, and the smell was a noxious pabulum of beer, body odor, and raspberry hand lotion (for the girls, I assume). There was not enough alcohol in the city to get through this, but who would that stop? Kate, who is short, could not see a damn thing, so I asked the bartender to lend us a milk crate for her to stand on. This helped remotely.
In Vermont, I was accustomed to plush community theaters with cozy seats, or spreading a blanket on a bed of grass while Dave Grisman plunked away on outdoor stage in the middle distance. My father worked for a radio station as a hobby, and got me plenty of free tickets to concerts across the state. I was not always keen on the performances, but they were free, and a nice experience. Yet here, in New York City, the supposed artistic center of the country, I had paid over a hundred dollars (with drinks) to see an artist I genuinely enjoyed, yet I could not wait for it to be over. To closet great art in a dank sub-room and fill it with drunk people cheapens the exercise of meaningful expression. The live music industry in the city can attract popular artists, so why bother trying to make the experience pleasant? People will pay whatever you ask to spend the evening half drunk in an armpit, listening to music they now like less.
If all this sounds good to you, give it a shot. If it doesn’t, but you’re thinking maybe an outdoor concert during summer is a better option, you might be right. They are better. A little bit. You can smoke, so that’s a plus. There are probably more, but it’s beyond me to recall them. And in any case, the cons vastly outnumber the pros. For one, you’re much more likely to see children at outdoor events in New York City, which, if you’re one of those people who enjoys offspring which you did not commit, might be a plus. Also, the entire principle of the outdoor concert relies on the concert being outdoor, the marketable difference being that you are not surrounded by four walls. But remember, unless it’s free (Freedom? At what cost? Consider.), you’re going to be put in paddock. In terms of the concerts held in Prospect Park, expect to be hemmed in by a ten foot high chain link fence, the perimeter of which is patrolled by police. The interior contains the stage (of course), beer tent, nacho wagon, and three chemical toilets. Imagine an internment camp with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. And if the act is especially famous, the police augment the death camp atmosphere by throwing their horse blankets or whatever over the fence, which lends the space the appearance of a four-sided canyon, or hole (in other words).
And really, if we’re going to be honest, no one is making good music anymore, so why bother? Your friend’s band is not good, and neither is the mincing pratt whispering his inscrutable songs to audience spellbound by its own unlocalized profundity. Maybe you agree. Maybe you’re tired of the same boring shit. Maybe you even keep a Bukka White record in the back of a milk crate just in case, come a lonely Sunday, you’re in need of some old-timey catharsis a la Thora Birch and the birth of the ironic t-shirt. Or maybe you’re already saying ‘But what about Radiohead?’ In either case, unless you’re an incorrigible glutton for overpriced punishment, avoid concert going.
4. Bars and Restaurants
Aside from a workplace, the only location your less likely to find Carrie and co. is in the kitchen. Since the show treats anything remotely self-sufficient with a glib, bourgeios dismissal, it’s no surprise that the gals use the kitchen cabinets as closet space. Because why would you prepare a meal for yourself when the best food in the world is quite literally a sashay away? Cooking is for peasants!
Well, there are couple reasons. The first is that dining out is fuck-off expensive. Since New York is place where you can be a career waiter, expect to tip heavily for shitty service. Expect to pay $10 for a grilled cheese you could make yourself, and extra for the vivisected pickle decaying on your plate’s meridian. If you can’t get two eggs, toast, and coffee for less than $5 it’s not diner food. It’s a corrupt, culinary retrofitting meant to squeeze wallets in allegiance to a deceased staple of the American Disease. “What do you want for dinner tonight, honey? How about pauper food?” The only affordable meal in the city is the one made yourself on a Precambrian stove top in your apartment.
Though the ersatz diner experience is preferable to that of eating in a ‘nice’ restaurant. In New York, the ‘nice’ restaurant formula is simple. The dining room is lit like a mine shaft. Bring a cigarette lighter if you wish to read your menu. Ambient, unfree jazz is piped in from a clandestine speaker. Maybe on the weekends, they’ll get sporty and play some Edith Piaf, but generally, don’t expect anything with a beat. And there is seating for fifty to one hundred, yet only one unisex restroom because every component of the New York dining experience is designed to be unsettling. Eat, and get the fuck out. That table could seat many who are not you. The fare is usually a tired, vaguely Francophilic interpretation of American food. That is, Slab of Meat on Plate with Veggies for Decoration. Steak Monotony. Boring Beef. Sham Ham. Call it what you like. If you want to mix it up, you can have The Whitefish, or, if you’re vegetarian, try the stewed vegetables in a cream sauce that will give you diarrhea on the subway. Bon Appetit!
But wait! There are plenty of ‘ethnic’ restaurants too! Sure there are. From the perspective of the sensualist gourmet, Manhattan must seem like the biggest food court on the planet. So many choices! What shall we have this evening? Chinese? Greek? Swahili? Whatever your taste, a trough awaits. But of quality? I’ve been to India. They don’t serve chicken tikka masala, unless white people are expected for dinner. I’ve never been to China, but I suspect fried chicken and french fries are not staples in Hebei. No matter how ‘off the map’ you are in your culinary excursion, know that everything you eat in New York is designed to cater to the soft, corn-fed American pallet. Just because your meal is shit hot, and you sat on the floor to eat it, does not mean you have developed even a remote taste for the exotic. You have instead developed a taste for plate-side burlesque. Good for you, masticating dilettante. If you want authentic food, buy a plane ticket.
As with music, New York has many restaurants. There are probably more restaurants here than in other places. But, as discussed, this is the substitute of volume for quality. This is not to discount the indulgent aspect of the dining experience in general. Being served feeds our little inner sultan, and makes us feel important. How could we not be important? A peon has just brought us a plate of meat! I am the lord of this table until my check arrives! What we forget is that food is fuel. That’s all. Leave it to the vacuous to turn a necessity into a perverse dalliance and exercise in alienation. We no longer wish to prepare our food. It’s much easier to have it brought to us. And we don’t care where it comes from, provided it arrives hot and on time. It’s no wonder we spend 168 billion dollars annually treating obesity, when all you have to do to satisfy hunger is park your ass in a chair and point.
I’ll spend less time on bars, because the case against them combines the problems of both the live music venue and the restaurant. And I don’t wish to bore any of those good enough to have arrived with me at this point. I will say that I have had nice experiences in certain public houses. In the town of Brecon in Wales, when I was eighteen, I used to walk down from my boarding house to a small, well-lit pub, frequented by locals. I would put a song on the jukebox, order a pint, and sit at a corner table, writing. I was greeted and dismissed with the same casual indifference. This was a pleasant experience.
However, bars in New York fall into one of two categories. They are either ‘white cushion’ establishments, with twenty dollar cocktails, a eurotrash dress code (popped collars, gelled hair, large sunglasses worn inside), and music you would expect to hear during an off-season coupon night on Ibiza. If I had a crowd, they would not gather here. Or they are a sort of neighborhood pastiche of the rough and tumble, likely rustic in theme, shit-kicking joint in which Pabst is auctioned for four dollars a can, a palsied pool table lurks in a corner too narrow to wrack, and NYU students mumbled to each other about whatever esoteric nonsense momentarily pleases their retinue, between mouthfuls of tepid Brooklyn Lager and smoke from an American Spirit blue pack.
Was it Aristotle who said that man is a social animal? My experience of philosophy is limited to a few terms worth of classes, so, unless I do a google, it shall remain a mystery. In any case, my question is whether or not this is correct. Both dining and drinking out assume a tenure amid the masses which seems conducive to neither. Who wants to watch other people eat? Or get wasted? I would rather cook myself a meal and read a book in my apartment, where I can smoke and not listen to other people talk. It must be a difficult life for the extrovert. But I believe, if he or she forsakes the practice of consuming food and liquor in the company of strangers, it will become easier.
3. Public Transportation
Though Carrie and her sisters in indulgence rarely use it, New York City’s public transportation network is a feature of which those newly arrived or visiting become rapidly enamored. America never really recovered from Henry Ford’s campaign to destroy public transportation, and New York never really recovered from Robert Moses’ campaign to turn the city into a highway. Still, New York has managed, and now sports one of the largest transit networks in the world. Huzzah!
If you’re visiting from Wyoming, or even New Jersey, the trains must seem like a miracle. Here is a city in which not only is everything offered, but it is also accessible. Good gravy! Living with it, however, is another story, best illustrated by the following rhetorical (I pray.) question: How would you like to ride a turd to work?
Don’t mistake me here. It’s not your turd. You have to share it with other people. And sometimes . . . well, pretty often actually, there is not enough space for everyone who needs to ride this turd. So, you have the choice of either squeezing in with everyone else and scampering for space on the floater, or waiting for the next turd cruising down the pipe, which could arrive soon or never. Now, just one more rhetorical question: How would you like to do this every day?
The reason I compare a train car to a turd is not entirely due to shape and mode of arrival (through a pipe). It has to do with the distinct fecal odor either deployed by MTA staff, or generally localized, in every subway terminal in the metropolitan area. It’s an odor which inscrutably arrives even in winter, when temperatures dip below the point at which anything should fester. And after a week of commuting by rail, it is an odor which follows you home like a rude guest. Perhaps you don’t mind the feces. Perhaps you see foul odors as just one of those trades you make as part of life in the Big Crapple. Oddly, these are usually the very same people who bitch and complain about second-hand smoke, flapping their pink little rodent hands in front of their narrow heads while passing autos belch particulates, before descending below the streets to breath air that is two thirds landfill, one third anus. If you don’t smoke in New York, you’re missing out for no reason.
I’ve heard many excuses for the sub-par state of New York’s transit, the most common being that ‘it’s better than nothing.’ Maybe. But poor performance breeds poor expectations. And once again, we find ourselves praising mediocrity simple because it is comprehensive. Does anyone notice a theme emerging? Yes, things here could be worse. But they could also be a whole lot better. You know who has a better train system than us? Hungary. You know what doesn’t smell like shit? The subway in Budapest. Guess where you won’t find litter? In a Magyar train terminal. And you can even smoke in them.
Another common excuse, justification, or reason for liking the subway is what I like to call the Dickensian Railroad Complex. This is the belief that the poop train is great because it requires people from all walks of life to mingle in a neutral, egalitarian environment, as though the Metropolitan Transit Authority is some kind of mobile community center, or institutional Burning Man. Sure, the train car is definitely a place where you see folks you wouldn’t normally. I mean, I don’t often invite homeless people to sit in my apartment and fill it with the scent of a burning athletic shoe filled with vomit. Nor do I commonly allow people with eight mewling children to picnic in my living room. And when at home, I rarely stand around waiting for a chance to sit down. So sure, absolutely, the subway is great place to rub elbows with the Not Yous of the city. I suppose it’s a question of why in the world you would want to do such a thing. The acute gnawing of liberal guilt bedrock, perhaps? I’ll agree that carrying around your BA in Oppression Studies is impractical. But in a city of eight million, do you actually believe riding a train with poor people has any remote civic significance? I don’t see the social justice, I’m sorry. And remember that the truly rich never set foot on the subway. All we see is the hopeless soup of the other ninety-eight percent getting in each other’s way. At least we all hate it together, I guess.
I’m speaking primarily of the trains, because the buses are a non-starter. The entire point of public transportation should be to get around traffic rather than participate in it. If I wanted to sit in a snarl of honking cars, I would move someplace cheaper. And though I’m trying to avoid getting on my emerald high horse, I will point out that regardless of how ‘green’ those buses are supposed to be, anyone that has ever been stuck behind one on a bicycle when it’s August and ninety degrees in the shade knows that whatever is coming out the back of those things is not remotely sustainable. What the fuck do they run on? ‘Clean coal’?
My wife stopped riding turds to work back in 2007, and I followed shortly in 2008. We both invested separatly in bicycles, and have not gone back. I purchased mine after much hounding on her part, but she, and it, saved my life. Before this, I would spend hours each day on the train. My back hurt from sitting. My feet hurt from standing. And since all I did each day was shuffle between seats, my stamina was greatly reduced. I was essentially an ambulatory carcass. I can’t imagine how people do this for years without killing themselves. I’m not joking. A bicycle is the only important purchase you will ever make in New York City. It is your only means of maintaining agency in a wildly regulated locale. I urge anyone who has not done so to acquire a bike. Within a week, your life will be better. You will remember was it is like to be free, to use your body, to be something other than a collection of bone and gristle whisked between stockades. And it’s not unthinkable that if enough people ride bikes rather than driving, or taking public transport, the city will be forced to accommodate them. Be part of something better.
2. Manhattan
I’m not sure at what point this island named by the Lenape from which it was stolen by the Dutch and then stolen by the English, and finally inhabited by pompous wealthy assholes who invented Santa Claus ran short on lateral space. But at a certain juncture, it just began going up, rather than out. And now we have an iconic collection of unlivable buildings scrabbling at the heavens they wish recreate. There is very little uglier than a skyscraper. And Manhattan has many. This is “despotic” architecture, as Kunstler has said, built to “make us feel like termites’”in the shadow of our own ingenuity. How odd. To build a castle only to stand cringing at its gates.
I haven’t enjoyed Manhattan since I was ten years old, and my father would take me to the American Museum of Natural History or the Met. We went to the MOMA once or twice as well, but it was like being in a condo filled with trash. We also went to Central Park, which is basically a meadow with an express way. The performance cyclists here are much worse than Prospect Park, these broker by day, jock by night types cruising on a bike you could trade for ten wooded acres sans freeway in Vermont. Both parks were designed by Frederick Olmsted, the same guy who designed the grounds at Harvard and Yale, an irascible idealist who I imagine has not stopped rotating in his coffin since they paved his brainchildren. But it makes sense. In order to build the perfect city, the small amount of green space apportioned for residents must be manacled and regulated until the essence of its ecologic significance has been raped stupid. In other words, It must be comfortable for idiots. Thus, we get those who still find it amazing that a city as bustling as New York would preserve such valuable real estate in the name of beauty and peace. It’s a statement that explains how extremely our expectations can be lowered by our environment, and once more, we have mediocrity and girth standing in for actual substance. Those fellows never quit.
Many people like the energy in Manhattan, which I have never felt, so it must be an extrovert thing. Evelyn Waugh has an excellent quote about this very idea: “For in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.” Yes, that might be the side with which I identify. There is a rush of electricity that feels on the verge of surge at any moment. As though, all residents of the island, heading in their particular directions, at their particular pace, in their particular mood, are only inches from killing each other. I would add to Waugh’s idea with my own: What we mistake for energy is actually an undercurrent of homicide. You obviously can’t expect a population of eight million to behave as neighbors. But there is something else here, a dangerous extra, not just an indifference, but a willful, violent exuberance. The city is so huge, so oppressive and so alienating, that we all, at one point or another, want to be heard, we want to be right, we want the support of the crowds which pass us silently each day. In short, we do not wish to be isolated. Knock shoulders with some on the street. See how long it takes for one of them to start a fight. It’s not even about you. It’s an emotional, animal response. We are chimpanzees in t-shirts. We want to cause the pain we feel.
You can slough me off, and say it’s not true, you don’t feel any of what I’m talking about and I’m projecting. I would suggest that all it takes is the right situation, in which, if you stay here for long enough, you will eventually find yourself. Enjoy your day.
Whenever my wife and I are unlucky enough to have company from out of town, they inevitably want to go to Manhattan. They want to shop in Soho, get purses on Canal street, and gawk in the West Village. They want their own Sex and the City tour, guided by you. But having guests in New York is like having a second job. There is no time here. You are not welcome. My apartment is perfectly calibrated to accommodate my peculiar needs, and nothing further. And since everything in Manhattan looks exactly like it does on television, I would wager that any guest darkening my doorstep likely knows their way around better than I do.
There is nothing to love in a city that has become a amusement park. The subway is the roller coaster. The buses are the log ride. The cabs are bumper cars. The halal carts and hot dog stands are the concessions. I suppose marathon shopping and a quick traipse along the razor blade of insanity that is a vacation in Manhattan is reasonably equivalent to a carnival game. And long time residents are quite similar to carnies in their jaded ‘if I can’t fuck it, I’ll eat it’ grizzled mode of existence. They’ve spent twenty-five years excavating their niche and who the fuck are you to visit it?
My solution to this problem has been living in Brooklyn, which is like Manhattan, but spread out. Rather than having my arm up to the elbow in my neighbors ass, I’m content in terminating it at the wrist in Kings county. I’ve read in many an article that this is the place where people want to live. Move here! It is a mecca for your dumb art and opinions! Maybe so, but the best thing Brooklyn has to recommend it is that it is not any of the other boroughs. And as soon as they build a J. Crew here, I will have absolutely no reason to ever go to Manhattan.
1. The Brooklyn Bridge
Enough has been written in praise of this iconic structure to move it easily into slot number one. I should admit at the outset that I have never walked across it. Yes, during my six years in New York City I have not once thought, “What a delightful sunny day! Perhaps I shall live it fully by standing athwart the burroughs and snapping photographs of myself jumping up and down in the bike lane. What fun!” I suppose I have not felt the need to complete the pilgrimage between two similarly alienating locations by foot because why on earth would I do that, when I can ride a bike across it?
Yes, though I have not hoofed it between here and there, I sure as shit have crossed it on a bicycle. When I worked in Manhattan, I did it twice a day, five days a week, for three years. I’m willing to admit that since I was usually on my way somewhere, work or home, that I may have not fully experienced this attraction at its best. Rarely did I pause to consider the opposing cityscapes which, for all their distinction, could be just one placed before a smoke-yellowed mirror. Never did I dismount, and glance beneath my feet at the churning broth of the East River and marvel at the sheer human force required to construct something within it. And not once have I aspirated the bigness of it all, and felt much as I am, that is, a drone within the hive, no different or more important than any other. Become humble before a creation of man is about the longest solitary back pat you can give yourself.
Carrie Bradshaw and her bevy have certainly visited the bridge on more than one occasion, though it is now beyond me to recall which episode, and which season, though doubtless some of her salty, homespun wisdom was included in the overdub. Similarly, I have trouble recalling in exactly which volume of Vogue’s fashion edition S.J. Parker appeared laughing or whinnying (who can tell?) in the very spot that I would later bypass on my way home. Small city.
When I asked my wife what she thought people were thinking as they stood on the observation platforms, snapping photos and staring at nothing, she suggested that they are probably asking themselves, “Why am I doing this?” She is a trained existentialist, so crediting the great unwashed with that sort of awareness and doubt is both generous and likely correct. My only question is what sort of answer they have, if any. What could possibly be fun about walking up a concrete gangway, transferring to a slatted wooden catwalk, while cyclists scream for you to move your kids out the way, and sweat drips onto your camera lens? Is it just ‘one of those things you do,’ like supporting the troops, shaving your armpits, or having a funeral?
Kate did add that it’s possible that most who participate are not even able to question their motives for doing something completely unpleasant, because even asking would be an admission, and thus, the death of fun. And once fun dies, what do you have left? In that way, it might actually be an indispensable part of the New York holiday. A little souvenir acquaintance with the void. So maybe the bridge doesn’t belong on this list at all . . . Never mind. Go, definitely. Bring your whole family and no food, water, or clean diapers.
But the one thing you should absolutely not do is ride a bike across it. I’ve found that people fall into one of two categories. They either assist you in accomplishing your goals, or impede them. Whatever the latter designation does in the time when I do not see them is a mystery. But you can guarantee that as soon as you begin the ponderous pedal at the base of Adams street, these folks will decamp upon the attraction to quite literally impede your goal of reaching the opposite shore. They will stand in the bike lane snapping photographs. Their unattended children will wander into your path. The will walk side by side up and down the bridge, apparently deaf to both bells and polite imprecations. The only way to clear a path is to act aberrant, and be one of those ‘crazy bikers.’ But even when screaming ‘You! Melissa Midwest! Get the fuck out of the way!,’ you’re still likely to clip the rogue beer gut of a prison guard from Joliet, Illinois with your handlebar.
The problem is both one of infrastructure and awareness. Unless you count a white line painted on the ground at which no one looks (because there is a view), there is nothing to physically denote the space for either cyclists and foot traffic. But also, there is a failure in the understanding of your own body in space, moving in real time, and how your girth contributes to the general misery of all who must go thither. Congratulations, you’re an overfed nuisance.
Negotiating this snarl twice each day is an exercise in flagellation. As a result, each time I look at the Brooklyn Bridge, in person or media, the only impression I have is one of my bicycle slamming into a suspension cable to avoid a milk-fed, wayward adolescent with pink hair, or the click of a telephoto lens colliding with my headset, or the guy who crashed his BMX into me on Halloween, whipped off his shirt and challenged me to a fist fight on the northernmost observation deck. I suppose the question as to why I would do such a thing every day is as relevant to me as the guy setting up his camera tripod in my path. The difference is that I’m commuting. He’s on vacation.
*
So, there you have it. The top five things to completely avoid if you wish for peace in the big city. I must caution the reader who has endured me thus far that this list is by no means complete. There are many other activities, places, and people you should avoid, but a comprehensive list would rival ‘A Remembrance of Things Past’ in scope. But I do actually have one tool which may serve as a reasonable guide in determining what to avoid. Simply ask yourself: WWCBD? What would Carrie Bradshaw do? As long as you do the opposite of whatever answer this little query produces, you will remain a sane and possibly content, but certainly never happy, resident of New York City.
