New York City- classic or dud?

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expensive black ass-pants

haha, I am wearing the expensive black ass-pants in this family.

― felicity (felicity), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 16:51 (twenty-one years ago) link

I'm sure NYC is a great city, but since I hate cities I'm gonna have to say DUD

― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 16:52 (twenty-one years ago) link

Classic. I miss it.

― mike a (mike a), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 16:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

i only planned to live here for a year, and it's now been almost three and i can't really imagine leaving. there are many things i hate (mainly cuz i grew up on a farm -- i'm a country boy at heart), but i'll be here until it's time to raise a family... it's definitely a classic.

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 16:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

"I want my ashes flung into the Gowanus Canal from a great height."

From the G train!

― Benjamin (benjamin), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 16:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

over the Smith-9th station.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 16:54 (twenty-one years ago) link

Jimmy the Mod's "Classic center of the impending apocalypse" dated 30 Aug 01 is spine-chilling.

Yes, but in spite of 9/11, it's wrong -- Los Angeles is the CCOTIA cf. Nathanael West, Steve Erickson, the end of Gravity's Rainbow, the Doors, Charles Manson, Miracle Mile, Lew Archer's "There's nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure," and Phil Ochs'/St. Etienne's "The World Began In Eden And Ended in Los Angeles." Either that or Tokyo, cf. Godzilla.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 16:56 (twenty-one years ago) link

I have been in NYC exactly once -- when I was about 11, I insisted my father drive through it while we were on our way to Pennsylvania, so that I could see where the Marvel Comics offices were. We drove down Park Avenue at about 2 a.m. on a Sunday night, in the middle of a late-spring garbage strike, and I missed the Marvel offices because I was looking on the wrong side of the street. It took us several tries to get out of the city because someone had switched the signs so that every time we tried to head towards Jersey, we ended up right back where we'd started.

And yet I'm still going to say Classic.

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 16:57 (twenty-one years ago) link

hstencil in NYC mk. 2 scorecard (first six months):

- Job gets crappier
- Go out with girl only to get dumped
- Hate roommates/apartment

Yep, still love it here.

― hstencil, Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

I agree with Daddino. LA really does ooze the simultaneously wistful and wonderful, fin-d'existence feeling of slow decay captured so well by that 1970's Elektra sound and in particular our pal Warren Zevon:

And if California slides into the ocean
like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this hotel will be standing
until I pay my bill.

― felicity (felicity), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:05 (twenty-one years ago) link

Yay NYC. I can't imagine any place better.

― teeny (teeny), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:06 (twenty-one years ago) link

Teeny, how come you never come out with us? I know you have the expensive black ass-pants for it.

― felicity (felicity), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:15 (twenty-one years ago) link

I love NY and have only had one encounter that threatened to make real the "angry/stressed" stereotype, when I was yelled at by a carny on Coney Island in 1993. The West Village all the way by the river is glorious, it's my favorite place to wake up and go out walking. I'm so sad I haven't been to NY for such a long time. I used to spend every other weekend there, not to mention an entire summer about 10 years ago. For me NY is inseparable from a sense of heightened reality and the euphoria that comes when you're young and on holiday (even if it's just the weekend, or spring break) and have nothing to do but wander about and meet friends. Also NY has always seemed to hold out all kinds of romantic possibilities, not that many of them have been realized in my case. Anyways for these reasons and more my idea of NYC is sort of antithetical to actually living there. But it's an idea I've pondered often enough. Sigh.

I've never met a city I didn't like, really. There's too much stuff to get bored, even if it's just looking at the architecture and determining from it, from people's gait, from demographics, etc., something of the city's history and culture. The only city that's become even slightly mundane to me is Chicago--which is stupid, since it's such a huge place that even after 25 years of living here (with a significant 5-year interruption) I haven't seen even a small fraction of it.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:27 (twenty-one years ago) link

I figure ragging on a city means you are (a) too self-absorbed to hold your head up and look around; (b) stuck on some pedantic point about city vs. city; (c) had some overwhelmingly negative experience which has clouded your ability to make a fair judgment. City are huge agglomerations of people and are bound to be interesting.

Or maybe that's just me in Polyanna mode.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:43 (twenty-one years ago) link

What if you just rag on cities in general?

― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:45 (twenty-one years ago) link

That's more acceptable in my book; I do it myself sometimes.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:45 (twenty-one years ago) link

The only thing I hate about New York is all the bicyclists, esp. the delivery guys who refuse to follow even the most basic traffic safety laws (they run red lights, they ride five times faster than any car on the road, they ride on the sidewalks, and they give me no signal that they're about to turn a sharp corner and run me over while I'm using my "right of way" to cross the street).

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:47 (twenty-one years ago) link

watch out in two years or so cuz i'm comin gunnin for you toots

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:48 (twenty-one years ago) link

What if you just rag on cities in general?

I am uncollected and unrecycled city Trash.

The only thing I hate about New York is all the bicyclists

You're lucky that the Dutch didn't really make it New Amsterdam then.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:48 (twenty-one years ago) link

The only thing I hate about New York is all the bicyclists

and I hate yappy little rat-dogs too. other than that i love new york.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:51 (twenty-one years ago) link

What if you rag on cities, suburbs, and small towns in general? I don't think there's any place I'd be where I wouldn't miss something about some other place. *sigh*

― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:51 (twenty-one years ago) link

I'd move to rural Michigan in a flash if I had any hope of finding a good job there.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

Ditto me and New Mexico

― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:55 (twenty-one years ago) link

and I hate yappy little rat-dogs too.

but what about Dorothy?

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:55 (twenty-one years ago) link

I hate the smug dog owners; they're worse then smug marrieds really. (Do not read if you own a dog and live in NYC.)

― Mary (Mary), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:55 (twenty-one years ago) link

Really, Amateurist? Why?

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:56 (twenty-one years ago) link

Umm, because http://a4.cpimg.com/image/96/91/8551574-d667-027801E3-.jpg

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

Amateurist = a "Yooper" SHOCKAH!!!!!

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:01 (twenty-one years ago) link

"Yooper"?

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:04 (twenty-one years ago) link

Yeah, I mean, I grew up in rural Michigan and it is really nice in the fall. I guess I was thinking along the lines of why there, as opposed to somewhere more topographically interesting like New England or something.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:04 (twenty-one years ago) link

"yooper" = U.P.er

I was a lowper myself.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:05 (twenty-one years ago) link

Huh uh no I've never been to the Upper Peninsula. (Ha, in my world "UP" means something else entirely so you had be alarmed for a minute--I'm guessing only Nabsico would understand that particular reaction, though.)

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:06 (twenty-one years ago) link

If this were RL, I could hold up my hand and point to exactly where I lived!

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:06 (twenty-one years ago) link

had be = had me

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:06 (twenty-one years ago) link

Ooh that's a nice picture. Riverside Park?

― felicity (felicity), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:07 (twenty-one years ago) link

"UP"

That's what you do when you go to the men's room!

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:07 (twenty-one years ago) link

except for those other times

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:08 (twenty-one years ago) link

Mary, which dogs do you think are the smuggest? Personally, those French )of "Freedon" IYW) Bulldogs are the ones who really get my goat, always looking down their smushed-in snouts at me, qui do they think they are ??!

― felicity (felicity), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:09 (twenty-one years ago) link

It's really just the fact that I don't have room for myself in my apartment, so I can't understand those who are able to house dogs...and the fact that there are so many of them always walking around the streets with their dogs gives me pause.

― Mary (Mary), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:12 (twenty-one years ago) link

I don't quite get the the dogs who are so small that they don't get walked, they get carried. I mean, get a cat.

― rosemary (rosemary), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:15 (twenty-one years ago) link

There are apparently a lot of smug married dog owners who look like me here in Jersey City. My landlord is always telling his wife "I just saw rosemary! Kissing her boyfriend! (I like that my landlords think that I have one.)

― rosemary (rosemary), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

I don't quite get the the dogs who are so small that they don't get walked, they get carried.

In Brooklyn they walk 'em. So there are always yappy little rat-dogs underfoot wherever I go, making me nervous.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:19 (twenty-one years ago) link

are you an elephant?

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

i'm a white blood cell.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:21 (twenty-one years ago) link

i think we're extending the city-as-organism metaphor a little too far

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:23 (twenty-one years ago) link

Amateurist, I spent two years of the weirdest years of my life in rural Michigan, and as such I must say that no, I have no idea what you're thinking here. For one thing, that picture includes sunlight, which as it turns out does not exist in northern Michigan. Also it does not include people, which are rare in rural Michigan but let me tell you, most of the time they're not rare enough. Your chosen social life will consist of spending hours watching people smoke in the sorts of places that high school kids colonize -- cafes, parking lots, maybe even benches next to a bank -- with a bunch of guys who've had too much acid and 10,000 girls who look exactly like Meg White, not to mention all the other odd people from their mid-twenties to their forties or even fifties who've been forced to turn to high school kids for social interaction. Some of them will have the excuse that they're professors, and as such can be expected to have comfortable social relations with young people, but some of the others will just be oddball rednecks who sell everyone weed, and if you ever wind up drinking beer at their freaky little houses with fourteen year old girls wandering around you will get more than a passing vibe of the guys Laura Palmer was hanging out with before she died. Oh, rural Michigan is great, don't get me wrong, it's wonderful and all of the kids believe really passionately in just the dumbest stuff, and they think moving to Chicago is the good-luck equivalent of becoming a movie star or something, and they are loads and loads of fun if you think it's funny to, like, run down the street in the middle of the night singing "Who Killed Bambi" or break into the guitar store and sit around playing Stones songs on their best amps until the police show up and take you to jail for the night. But watch the hell out.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:37 (twenty-one years ago) link

NB: my earlier responses to this thread may have been colored by the fact that at the time, New York was stealing my girlfriend. I've forgiven it now, and knowing such lovely people there has helped. I still stand by all the expense-and-annoyance stuff: I wouldn't be headed there if I didn't have a great big academic free pass on a lot of that stuff!

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:42 (twenty-one years ago) link

I stand by my assessment. ;-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:43 (twenty-one years ago) link

B-b-but I spent every summer for 10 years in rural Michigan (not in the north, rather somewhere between Hastings and Kalamazoo) and liked it a lot. I remember lots of sunshine (also mosquitos)!

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:46 (twenty-one years ago) link

Bah, total lower-Michigan pansy action! I have to admit that despite my ranting I have a really fond place in my heart for northern Michigan, up where it's like a dirtier more incestuous Dunedin where everyone is like the White Stripes if they were working at Big Boy or in telemarketing instead of being rock stars. I admit it, I'm nostalgic.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:54 (twenty-one years ago) link

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