Run To The Hills, Run For Your Butt

I live in the state of New York and have for approaching 4 years now. I have never been to New York City. When I mention this fact around people in this area they are routinely amazed. Before I even get into the legitimacy/illegitimacy questions in this arena, let me just say that even people generally from the Northeast, not even NYC residents, are ridiculously arrogant about visiting NYC, to an extent that no one in any other area has ever been in my opinion.

First, let’s note that New York is about 400 miles from Buffalo. That’s the outskirts of NYC by the way, not Times Square. You gotta figure that to be at least 7 hours, if you make amazing time, more likely its 9 to really get into the city. That doesn’t make me particularly close, just because I’m in the arbitrary boundaries of the state of New York doesn’t make visiting the city any more likely. We’re far closer to Philly and Pittsburgh, and no one is surprised that we haven’t made those journeys. Montreal is prolly right in the same range and infinitely more likely to get my, admittedly limited, tourist dollars. Are you in Minneapolis? Have you been to Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Iowa City, Kansas City, Omaha, Lincoln, and St. Louis? All within about that same distance and I really can’t imagine being harassed if I hadn’t been to the University of Nebraska campus.

My guess is that the answer to this would be: yeah, but those places aren’t New York. Well, my guess is that some of them are way better places to spend one’s time than New York. The thing that solves back for all these reasons, of course, is money. If you are rich like a bastard, I’m sure New York is awesome. If you are rich like a bastard my guess is that anywhere is awesome. In fact, places that are awesome when you are not rich are probably way more awesome when you are rich, versus places like New York, which would swallow llamas if you aren’t wealthy.

What’s so awesome about New York? The food? Yeah, I bet the food is really good. Notably though, every decent size city has great food. Even Buffalo and Rochester have good food. I suppose there is some stuff you can only get in NYC, but that stuff tends to be outlandishly expensive. Again, if you’re rich, cool. I’m not.

The people? This is a disad btw, not a good thing. I don’t like throngs, for the most part. I like a spattering of people well dispersed over a large area. I don’t like it when the mall is crowded. One of the few good things about watching Twins games at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome is that you never feel packed in. Don’t get me wrong, I go to crowded places and it pretty much never bothers me. Sometimes it’s even productive, Lambeau Field comes to mind. But for your everyday going to work--getting milk--coming home routine, crowds are annoying, end of story. I’m sure the people are all very cool and everything, but I’m not real worried about finding cool people. I only need like 20 friends, who cares if there are a million or 12 million left over.

I realize that the things I have the best arguments for are actually reasons not to live in New York City. In fact, I have the argument “living in New York City good” pretty much destroyed. I’m sure there are plenty of cool things about visiting, lots of stuff to see, at least once, and I’m sure I will do that at some point. But to do it well takes cash. I haven’t been to NYC yet cuz I can’t imagine I will be able to handle it many times, and when I get there I want to do it right.

I don’t want to be in a city where I can’t drive around reasonably, where everything costs three times as much as it should, and I have to fight with a billion residents and another billion tourists just to get a hot dog.

I think I got off on this question, btw, because one of the blogs I read mentioned that on her most recent visit, she was amazed by the literal bags of garbage along the streets. I’m not a clean freak, but that admittedly sounds annoying and nasty. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but this makes two Minnesota bloggers who have mentioned this fact in the past 6 months or so.

Hippo sez that all the negativity on this blog sux. She is always right.

Peace,

MB-K