The Worst News Ever for New York

That don't sound like the New York I lived in for a year and a half. What are they putting in the water these days?

I remember when I first moved to Florida, I went on an airboat. I wanted to get a seat at the front, which was not covered, where you could get the best views. I must have used my "subway shove", because some woman, in a "stage whisper" said, "She must be from New York".

You can take the girl out of New York City, but you can't take the New York City out of the girl!!!

Fifteen years ago I was on a crowded NYC subway and some guy stepped on the back of my shoe. He kept saying "I'm so sorry miss, I'm so sorry". I decided to move 100 miles northwest that day. New York was obviously changing.

The sweet pretty things are in bed now of course
The city fathers they're trying to endorse
The reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse
But the town has no need to be nervous

Howdy.

Have we all forgotted Seinfeld so quickly?

One would hope our cultural consciousness would be a bit more persistent.

Oh thats terrible.

The day that, in Amsterdam, Rotterdam or De Hâg, cabbies are polite and you dont get some flippant remark from one of the people on the barstools when you get your drink in the neighbourhood pub, is the day I aint going back to Holland...

The only other City in the survey must have been London

What can I say, I hope they'll let me in the door at Beppo's next time in I get to NYC. Have saved a NYT article about the chef, forget his name. Why I saved it is the food sounded both very italian and straightforwardly prepared - well, the food descriptions sounded delicious..

Sorry to disappoint, but New Yorkers were flat out nice to me when I visited for a week in 2003. I wasn't on the subway at rush hour though..

Back in '03, some friends met me at an italian place of their choice, Isle of Capri.... Very reader's digest-y, comfortable, good place for a2kers to eat and talk for hours. Food wasn't terrible... but I didn't try the pasta.

Re: The Worst News Ever for New York


I think it musta been the day I arrived in town and helped three people with their maps, and Kicky offered Noddy his arm to help her race Frank across some highway.

I lived in New York for a while there...come to think of it I was even born there and go back every so often. New Yorkers as such are not rude critters, the rude ones seem to be the twits from elsewhere...you know places like Ohio and Iowa and those sort of backwoods barbecue pit mentality locales. They arrive in New York with the belief that all of New York is filled with rude persons who curse and shove and carry around baseball bats and knives. These foreigners from other states (Kansas, Jersey, Wyoming and other places with similarly dimwitted snots) arrive in New York and immediately hook up with a mugger (often times their former neighbor from back in Bumfucck West Dakota or some other gosh forsaken hellhole). After that they start carrying on about how mean New Yorkers are and then they kick an innocent police officer in the shins and get carted away to Bellevue or some other psych ward and after heavy sedation tell their relatives back home how they was done drugged up before being hauled in front of a judge for indecent exposeyure. Figuring it is wise in New York to talk about Yoots or Yates or whatever (see My Cousin Vinny) they insult the judge and soon thereafter are embittered new residents of the city as they move into their new 8th floor walkup (elevator is out for the 3rd year straight) and then...well you get the idea. The bottom line here is the only rude "New Yorkers" arrived as adults (check out that nasty N.Y.U. crowd hanging around in Washington Square Park) they feel the world owes them and when the world as a whole does not give them everything they get snippy and snappy and snuppy and snoppy (possibly even sneppy) and so, a terrible and undeserved reputation about New Yorkers is created.

It's terrible I tell you, absolutely terrible. New Yorkers are the nicest folks in the world...the real New Yorkers that is, not the scrawny gals with over sized nose who are as ugly as sin and want to cavort with an equally pathetic skinny boy from Hicklestown.

Who walks three and four abroad in the streets of The Village? The mindless tourists and newbies form points west, north and occasionally south (the ones from the south seem more timid and scared than rude)

Who do we find getting off tour buses and standing blocking sidewalks and crosswalks as they gawk at windows in tall buildings (guess windows are a rarity in Bumpkinville) and then walk backwards into other pedestrians (and traffic) while pointing at a window-washer? New Yorker-wannabes, that's who.

A real New Yorker has no energy or time for being rude or even a desire to be rude.

Perhaps, then, "We can kick your city's ass (if you dont mind us doing so)"?

Re: The Worst News Ever for New York


I KNEW IT!! I hope you at least gave them the wrong directions.

Sturgis: all your comments are correct, especially about the ones who just arrived here ten years ago from East Jesus, Oklahoma -hey, wait a minute, that's me--but it's also true that we New Yorkers have to maintain that certain air of in-your-face-toughness in order to be able to walk down those sidewalks blocked by blockheads without exploding into armwaving shrieking psychopaths.

It gives our real psychopaths a bad name and takes away from their job of creating a constant sense of menace in the air. We normal ones (I have the papers to prove it.) have to remind ourselves as we dodge yet one more set of looky-there-ma-s overloaded with Bloomingdale's bags that we are tough enough to take this. That soon enough we will be back in our over-heated, under-air-conditioned, cramped apartments trying to get the guy on the phone at the Hunan Balcony to repeat our take-out order without making it sound like we are getting one of everything.

And see? How can our psychopaths to create that regular sense of menace, how can we create that feeling of wildness and danger that is after all our best attraction with the Reader's Digest coming in to say that we are the politest city in the world??? I mean who wants to come visit the nicest place in the world?

Do you really want to see Law and Order filmed in the frigging politest city in the world??

Two minutes into the program the prep spills his guts in heartwrenching confession of selfishness and unintended consequences and then what?

The two detectives smile and tell stories about growing up in Flatbush.

Joe(we had a little hebe kid could swat a spaldine three sewers)Nation


mmmmm. Beppo's Osso, yes...yes..

Suppressed New York rudeness? Sounds like a meltdown waiting to happen.

What if they all freak out at once and start moving west in a giant rude ass kicking mob.

Sounds good. Send em to Indiana.

Their blisters get painful after 30 miles and they run out of drive.

What if they all decide to take cabs in their delirium.

A million cabs with six crazy New yorkers apiece speeding across America with brass knuckles and black jacks.

Have to agree with Sturgis about New Yorkers.

It's the only place that a sidewalk vendor yelled out to a friend of mine to come back because he didn't give her enough change.

Where they are actually pleased to give directions because they are so proud of their city and love to show off their knowledge.

Where the man at the counter scowls and asks whaddaya want? and then teases you for getting the kind of bubble bath that doesn't bubble worth a damn.

Where else can you go and have the waiter spend 15 minutes telling you where to go for the best African food in town?

Everytime I've been there has been a wonderful experience. Yes, it can be gritty, dirty, crowded and overwhelming, but there is no other place on earth that can compare.

New Yorker rudness can be the very best kind of humor if you take the time to listen.

Poor Joe, I understand your frustration. New Yorkers like to think they're rough and tough, and they are in many ways. It's just that they have an innate sense of helpfulness and a quirky sense of humor that is like no other.

So go ahead and complain, but there are some of us who know you New Yorkers and recognize that under that "fuggedaboudit" exterior is a very nice softie.

Sorry to spoil your tough guy image, but I have a feeling that most of us here have had you figured out for a looooonnnngggg time.

You sweet thing.

We could go East across the Bronx and Brooklyn, kinda the reverse of the redcoated Brits back a few years, then onward across Long Island to the Hamptons where we'd crack a few heads and a bottle or two of Champagne just because those pricks seem to deserve it, then a ferry ride across the Sound to Connecticut and North to Fenway and those idiots. Yeah. Then we'll talk about frigging Indiana. What do they have?

Oo, wait. Are they nice?? Maybe they could volunteer to be the nicest city in the world.

(I live in the politest city... .That just creeps me out.)

And hey, we don't get blisters, buster, we walk everywhere. If there's a subway strike, we walk the miles home, even in December. If there's a blackout, and there is every goddamned summer, we walk the hundred blocks home and enjoy the park on the way. Blisters? The only time we might get a blister is when we dash through traffic to try to snag a cab before it rains.

Joe(there are NO cabs when it rains)Nation