Welcome to NYC

It has been said that Toronto is like New York run by the Swiss. That is, Toronto is a like a cleaner, neater, better run, safer and more polite version of New York. And this is not entirely wrong, because otherwise Toronto wouldn’t play the part of New York so often in movies.

But mostly, Toronto is not like New York. In fact I think that the best line I’ve heard on this subject is something Alec Baldwin’s character on 30 Rock says: “Yeah Toronto! It’s just like New York. Except without all the stuff.”

The reason that this is funny, at least to me, is that ‘all the stuff’ is precisely what makes New York the way it is. Manhattan especially is crammed full of everything imaginable, and, as Huey Lewis notes, where else can you do half a million things, all at a quarter to three?

Anyway, this is a long-winded way of explaining that whenever I come back to New York, especially after a long time away, I have to mentally prepare myself for coming back to all the stuff: people crammed into subways especially during rush hour such that one has about half a millimeter of personal space, the crowds on the streets, especially in my area of town, the noise, the pace, people yelling, things crashing, neighbours playing loud music etc. Beyond all of this though, there is almost always a moment, an encounter or an observation where it finally really hits me: aha! Yes, yes I am back in New York now, aren’t I?

To give some past examples, there was a beautiful day in September when I was walking up 5^th Avenue and thinking to myself how beautiful New York is in the fall. I was still in Toronto-mode, so I was politely waiting for the light to change at 11^th street, daydreaming a bit, when all of a sudden some lady jumps into the cab in front of me and it starts pulling away. Two seconds later another lady runs up to the same cab, waving her arms around and screaming: “THAT’S MY FUCKIN CAB, BITCH! MY FUCKIN CAB!!!”

Another time, I had been on the subway when a drunken old man approached me, saying crude things and following me through a couple of subway cars. Now, in this case, he was short and ‘pissed out of his box’, as the Irish would say, and so if it had come down to it I could have pushed him over with my pinkie. And I managed to lose him eventually. Nevertheless, it was a bit unsettling, and as I was going to catch the train later that day I saw a cop standing around looking bored. So I decided to ask him what he recommended that I do in that situation, should it come up again. The scene went something as follows:

Cop: (looking me up and down - slowly) You sure he just wasn’t hitting on you now?

Me: Pardon?

Cop: Cause you know (hitches up belt) you’re a beautiful lady, and sometimes shy gentlemen such as myself don’t always know what to say to beautiful ladies like you.

Me: …

He then proceeded to offer to buy me pepper spray, and then tried to get my number so that he could ‘deliver it’ to me. Welcome to NYC.

This time I haven’t obviously had one of those moments, and I’m not sure why, but I think it might also be because I am more and more used to the craziness of New York. But I was having drinks with a friend last night, and he told me something that led me, vicariously, to have an ‘aha! I’m back in NYC’ moment, but this time it had slightly more positive overtones. Background: we were talking about what it takes for a New Yorker to help someone. There’s a checklist that you go through in your mind whenever you see someone in need of help, about if the person is crazy, how much they need, how much time will this take me, etc. New Yorkers aren’t as cold as their reputation would indicate, but they also don’t have a lot of time. (By contrast I find Torontonians much colder.) Anyway my friend was walking north on 8^th Ave, and saw a father and daughter trying to hail a cab, and failing badly. The father was only half-heartedly holding out his arm, and as any good New Yorker knows, you need to be a little more

assertive than that. After all, everyone is trying to hail a cab - you’ve got to hail with conviction. So he took pity on them, and without missing a beat, or losing a step, my friend lets out a loud whistle, and gestures assertively across the street to the cabbie, who pulls over immediately and the father and daughter get in. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t realize what I’d done,” he says to me. “But it was my good deed of the day.”

Welcome to NYC.

Pride and Prejudices

I don't think it's news that North Americans have a certain romantic conception of 'Britishness.' Even as someone who went to an Anglican girls school, where about 30% of my teachers were British of some description, and even though I have loads of cousins in the UK, the accent still always had a sort of romantic ring to it. I'm not sure what it is but anything said in a (particular sort of) British accent always sounds prettier, cleverer. Or at least it did until I lived there for three years. And I sort of regret that loss, even though I am happy to be disabused of certain fancies of what it means to be British.

On the other side of things, it is often thought that Brits think that Americans are a bit ignorant. And they do. But there is a less obvious, and more romantic notion of Americans that I think the Brits are less eager to share, because it is slightly more humbling for them. I didn't realize that this sort of romantic stereotyping went both ways until a friend in Edinburgh informed me that her only understanding of America was from television and films, and so she had this skewed yet persistent idea that everyone in New York lived like the characters on

Seinfeld or Friends. (This sort of reminds me of another friend from school who, when she was younger, changed schools three times in the space of three or four years, and somehow it just happened that she had only Canadian history for about three or four years in a row. As a result she entered her teenage years with the strange notion that everyone around the world for the past 500 years had been pioneers who lived in log cabins. She knew it was wrong and yet she couldn't get the image out of her head.)

Anyway, examples of this more romantic stereotype of Americans can be seen in many of Richard Curtis's films, such as Four Weddings and a Funeral. I have seen this movie about a hundred times, but I will never forget the one time I watched it with an American friend. She became increasingly agitated while watching it, until she finally turned to me and said angrily, referring to Andie McDowell's character: "Is that really how the rest of the world views Americans? As complete sluts?" Now, while it's true that there is a scene in which this character, Carrie, confesses that she's slept with something like 34 men (is that even a huge number these days? anyway), until that moment it had never occurred to me that it was a negative depiction. "Er, I don't think that's what Richard Curtis means by that character," I replied. "Honestly I think it's coming more from a sense of quiet admiration for American sexuality." I mean, throughout that scene Hugh Grant looks on with a uncomfortable awe, not disgust. What's interesting about this is that my American friend seemed to disapprove of Carrie much more than the British ever would.

But I'm still trying to figure out what the romantic notion of a Canadian is. So far the most I've gotten is that Canadians are 'nice' and 'tolerant.' Which isn't really romantic. But I think that we can use this to our advantage. Thoughts?

Public Transit

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) recently decided to implement a fare hike, from $2.75 a ride to $3. Now, as someone who lives in the city with the largest metro system in North America, I am somewhat spoiled. NYC has a 30-day metro card, that can be purchased ANY day, not just on the first of the month. It costs $89. Considering how much I use the metro that works out to less than a dollar a ride. So I admit that for me, coming back to Toronto is aggravating when taking the TTC. Not just the (now) higher expense,

but the absolute ridiculousness of how incredibly inefficient it can be sometimes.

The two lines parallel to each other at the southern end of the system, are in reality about an 8 minute walk from each other. So why put all that effort into two lines that are so close? And you might wait for 25 minutes on King St for a streetcar, only to have two or three come along at the same time. Oh, and when they implemented the fare hike, in the weeks leading up to it the TTC stopped selling tokens, to avoid 'token hoarding' (ie everyone buying the tokens at the cheaper price and hoarding them to avoid having to buy them at the elevated price). Instead their solution was to sell paper tickets, which you can't slip into the handy token slots but instead have to line up to place into the little plastic container in front of the TTC dude (who, by the way, is making probably twice as much per year as tenured academics. Ugh.). This created insane lineups in stations, and sometimes ten minute waits JUST TO PLACE YOUR TICKET IN THE BOX. I heard from a friend that as she was waiting in line one day, someone went up and opened the extra gate to the station, because they were so frustrated waiting in line. People flooded in and TTC personnel started going mad, screaming at people to get back in line. What she noticed that was most interesting though was that as this happened, EVERY SINGLE PERSON placed a ticket on top of the box. People weren't trying to gyp the TTC, they just needed to get wherever the hell they needed to go.

Anyway I've noticed that while the NYC system is certainly not perfect, there is a stronger emotional tie to it, more of an unconscious fondness of the NYC metro as compared with the TTC. And I think that maybe if the TTC worked on developing an emotional connection with their ridership, they might not have to hike fares as often. The NYC metro has commercialized their logos - you can buy countless paraphernalia with the different stops on, and in the metro system itself there are subway ads sporting poetry and art.

I was rifling through my wallet the other day and a friend, who used to live in NYC, says, looking into my wallet: "awww... NYC metrocards! I miss those." And I thought: I would never say that about a TTC token.