Territorial
Proudly from New York City; shamefully living someplace else.
New Yorkers have an almost universal, outspoken hatred of tourists. The complaints can be petty or personal: if someone walks too slow on a busy sidewalk it may just add a hiccup on our way to work, but when a favorite spot or neighborhood becomes “the next hot thing” it feels as though our special something is suddenly commonplace. Anyone who has lived in New York City for a decade or two can relate to this.
For me the feelings are a little stronger. Not only do I hate tourists, but I hate people who just recently have moved to New York.
I’m not-so-secretly annoyed by neighborhoods like the Lower East Side, Williamsburg, Park Slope, and just about any place that has an apparent majority of non-native New Yorkers. And I especially hate people who live just outside the city (affectionately called “bridge and tunnel” people) but claim to be New Yorkers.
Here I am, though, the exact person I hate. I live in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, work in River North, and hang out in Wicker Park or Lincoln Park. Sometimes I’ll go to Old Town, the Gold Coast, or the Loop. (And never the residential parts). All six of these neighborhoods are mainly populated by people who aren’t originally from Chicago proper. There are few times, if any, that I will be elsewhere.
So that makes me, well… conflicted.
Nice to meet you, puberty.
My time to be confused and annoying was in high school. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, but in eighth grade I luckily got into a great school in Manhattan called Stuyvesant. That’s when I started taking subway regularly and, more importantly, when I started getting to know the city.
I’d spent so much time just exploring. My family spent most of their time within a few neighborhoods among Brooklyn and Queens, so I had no idea what the rest of New York was like. In those first couple of years I would just take the train somewhere — anywhere — just to go. See what buildings are there, what stores, what kind of people, what mood. I took absurdly long train trips to visit my friends because I was genuinely curious what their New York was compared to mine.
Of course not all of my peers were as adventurous as me, but we all grew up learning about New York while we learned about ourselves. There are parts of the city that mean more to us than just the place where Taxi Driver was filmed. They’re the places where we had our first kiss, where friendships were sealed or broken, where we dreamed our dreams, where we did that stupid thing one time, where we distinguished right vs. wrong…
New York City is where we became who we are.
Oh, ok, fine.
It took a year, but living in Chicago taught me to temper my expectations. The way I felt about New York is probably akin to how anyone feels about their hometown: a nostalgic sanctuary. It takes time to have those memories and experiences. Feeling grounded in a big city is no easy task.
Besides, no one has an easy time moving into a brand new town — no one. There are so many things that you just don’t know or expect, and half the time you feel like a baby crawling around until you learn how to walk. You’re going to do dumb things, you’re going to look like an asshole, or whatever. It’s inevitable!
But if you still want be a Scrooge about it, look at it this way: if tourists don’t have the same feelings about your hometown like you do…
…
Well, sucks for them.
