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 5th 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 11th 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 8th 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.
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