On a Saturday night a few weeks ago, I found myself in a karaoke bar at 3:45 a.m.,
participating in a raucous group rendition of Creed’s “Higher.” Not my choice
of song, but when you’re with your cousin from out-of-town, his friend, and a
bunch of random foreigners you met that evening in another bar nearby, you can’t
be picky. You want to show them a good time. After all, taking country-folk on
a bar crawl to your favorite non-douche-y dives and showing them the time of
their lives is part of the joy of living here. “We don’t have a place like this
in Charlotte,” my cousin yells in-between songs, and Amen to that. When I was
in Charlotte to interview a story subject, the hotel concierge recommended visiting
the finest restaurant in town: the Capital Grille. My take, since about age 18,
has been, "Why would I want to make it anywhere else when I can make it here?"
An insipid, shallow article on
New
York Magazine’s “The Cut” blog, “
Why I’m Glad I Quit New York At Age 24”,
chronicles Ann Friedman’s miserable experience in the city that never sleeps. “I
spent the worst year of my life in New York,” Ann writes.
The worst. What was the city’s crime against, poor, innocent Ann? “Right
after college graduation, I moved from Missouri to join my college boyfriend,
who had landed
my dream job. I ended up here not because I had something
to prove, but because I couldn’t think of where else to go. No job, dreamy or
otherwise.”
Hold up. Ann moved to one of the most expensive places to live on Earth… with
no job? And she did this solely to join her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, who she
clearly secretly despised (“
my dream
job”)? At least tell me she gave living here a chance.
Nope. “When I decamped for the West Coast fifteen months later, I didn’t
feel failure or regret but relief. For me, New York is that guy I went out with
only briefly and then successfully transitioned into friendship. We were always
meant to be platonic.” Is she talking about the college boyfriend? Or the city?
Because if she’s talking about the city, I’ve got news. The city is not a
lover. You can try and jam a fire hydrant up your hoo-hah, but if you’re
looking for romantic intimacy, you may want to try a human being, instead of anthropomorphicizing
an entire city.
Now, maybe I’m biased, because I’ve spent the last 13 years of my life here.
I came here first for college—not a college boyfriend—at age 18. My first
experience in the city was waiting on the sidewalk on Washington Square West for
a big plastic cart so I could move my things into the Hayden dormitory at NYU,
and seeing a man just leave his dog’s shit on the sidewalk without picking it
up. He caught me staring and said, “Welcome to New York.” While I later learned
that was not representative of most New York City dog owners, it’s always stuck
with me that on an island with 8 million other people, chances are you’ll meet
a new character every day. Sometimes it’s a homeless guy who tells jokes for a
slice of pizza. Sometimes it’s a guy who walks around town with a real, live cat
on his head. Sometimes it’s a man in the park, covered head to toe by pigeons.
You just don’t get this in Missouri. More meth-heads there, I’ll grant you.
It’s always struck me as hilarious that people who claim to despise the city
want the world to
know how much they
hate it, so they write things for
New
York Magazine. To use Ann’s analogy, It’s sort of like stalking the prom
king and then tucking little angry notes into his locker. Everyone can see
right through it. It’s not that you hate him, it’s that you want him to ditch the
prom queen and take your teenage dirtbag self to the prom instead. Ann Friedman
writes, “New York is increasingly a city for people who are already on top, not
for those looking to establish themselves.” From a financial standpoint, I can
see her point. Even after 13 years, my savings account resembles that of a
teenager working minimum wage at Burger King. But I vomited a little in my
mouth when I read her description of the ultraviolent Chicago (safer than 8% of
the cities in the U.S.!): “the friendly guy who doesn’t know how hot he really
is.” What does that even mean? Or when she called the spider’s web of roadways
and prostitutes that is Los Angeles—“the surprisingly intelligent, sexy stoner.”
That’s actually Boulder, Colorado, not Los Angeles, Ann.
“Part of that infatuation is a willingness to consider New York from a
cinematic distance, overlooking the city’s many irritants except insofar as
they add grit and drama to your story,” Ann writes. California, Ann’s current state
of bliss, is apparently, all “sunshine and avocados.” Clearly, us vampiric New
Yorkers have never seen the sun, and avocados remain a mysterious green thing
we recognize only from Trader Joe’s pre packaged guacamole. She cites, “a not-insignificant
number of the vehement New York lovers I know — especially the young twentysomethings
— are actually pretty unhappy day to day,” before retreating to her high school
analogy about the prom king again. Her comprehensive study of New Yorkers
aside, I’ve often wondered how happy anyone can be without 24-hour access to
food, entertainment and excitement. There’s a reason people who move to the ‘burbs
instantly pop out kids. There’s simply nothing else to do.
“The entire media industry” is located here because this is where the action
is. This is where you’ll always know what’s going on. The things people re-post on
Facebook and Twitter about… New Yorkers witness these things and learn about
these things on our morning commute. “Your early twenties are going to suck,”
Ann writes, and that’s awful, awful to tell people of that age, because it’s
not true. It’s the time in your life where you find out who you really are. My
twenties most certainly did not suck… but maybe that’s because I didn’t “[break]
up with a college boyfriend and a mindless entry-level job.” Instead, I worked
hard to climb up from my entry level position, spent my weekends and summer
nights taking advantage of what the city had to offer me. Whenever I leave the
city for a weekend, I’m surprised at how slow life seems. Sometimes it’s a nice
break, but I’d die of boredom if I had to live there. How is a 20-something
supposed to meet anyone? Where do you take your dates to, Chili’s? When I visit
my friends in Jersey, and it’s not summer, we go bowling. Fun and all, but when
the alley closes at 11 there’s nothing left to do.
It’s become in vogue, apparently, to hate on New York. You can blame it on
Bloomberg’s elitism, the national anger at Wall Street, the obsession with In
& Out Burger that I just don’t get. But if you can hack more than 15 months
here—I’d suggest getting a job with decent growth potential, first—you’ll
discover a deeper city that the tourists and haters don’t see. A city where the
world comes together in the cramped nooks of busy neighborhood bars, where a rabbi,
an imam, a priest and a guy with an alligator face tattoo really do all ride side-by-side
in a single subway car, where in the wee hours of the morning, somewhere in the
East Village, the front doors of a karaoke bar open wide to the street and let loose
a roar of human beings, sauced and smiling, who aren’t ready to go home, not just yet.
