Dear New York
It’s mostly you.
I’ve written about coming back to New York from abroad — or from anywhere, really — and being smacked in the face, harassed and assaulted, by the noise, rushing rudeness and TOO MANY PEOPLE.
Every time I come back, it’s considerably worse. Much less bearable, all of it … so I flee again, seeking escape from it all: all the noise, all the rudeness and too. Many. People. No longer married, divorced from the notion, “There’s no place I’d rather live than New York.
“At least in the States,” I would always qualify.
But this no longer applies as I age and compare the Big Apple (… does anyone even still call New York that?? I’m completely removed now, from the place I “belonged” once!) to other great, “in the States” places I’ve been.
There’s Miami … Its smiling warmth shining through not only climate … the left coast, Lady L.A. in particular … babylon sisterly jazz invocations …
Wisconsin, where I lived and breathed … green air in crisp night and clean, white winter days … “Mini Apple”: old Hennepin, seedy as Times Square once.
And maybe, just maybe, the white cliffs of Vail. Oh, and Hoboken / Newport in northern New Jersey — “excape” without fleeing too far from the shitty.
These are some places I’d feel good coming HOME to. Not just caught up in/searching for sleepless night streets … nor cyclically (sickly) feeling turned on/repelled by … but conducive to kids; to raising a family, one’s station in life.
New York is for tourists …
It’s become this sad mecca of lost and excited types trouping about in, as one trenchant trip advisor put it, “what seems to be an aimless consumer driven direction”.
Let’s take Spider-Man, for example …
Last week, one of the unofficial costumed “mascots” shoving and shuffling and grifting around the newly improved, new ‘clean’ Times Square — filthy though it is with Tourist — started punching a cop because he was told to move on. As hilariously reported in the New York Post, this “not-so-Marvel-ous” comic “superzero” (LOL!) was demanding large sums, for demanding that people take photos with him … and when a cop intervened, the “angered arachnid” (ha ha ha!!) started swearing and swinging.
This latest outburst from a mentally unstable street denizen comes just weeks after two Statues of Liberty started fist-fighting, and about a year after a Cookie Monster got aggro with a two-year old because the child’s mother would not pony up a demanded “tip” … which was around the same time, in summer 2013, that the epic Weed Man vs. Beer Man smackdown happened …
Every bit as, if not more, disturbingly, there is the demented, decidedly unfuzzy legend of ‘evil Elmo’.
Now generally, with current affairs, comprising politics, religion and public opinion, I prefer to stay coiled: perceived as a bit dumb, perhaps, but ready to strike.
Happily acknowledging and now putting that forth … I will say that there are specific problems created by specific people, which either never get addressed, complacently settling into the ‘new black’ for most … Or, if they do get noticed at all, it’s too late.
Much of New York’s new ‘friendliness’ mess was created by ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose blind eye envisioned some sort of European or 19th century Argentinian boulevard thing for visiting pedestrians to stroll after-theater — unimpeded by such modern, metropolitan inconveniences as traffic — while licking their ice cream cones in peace … but instead, has become this nightmarish, night shift Disney world: a seedy carnival to which yokels are drawn, for street smart locals to prey upon.
In fact then, there is nothing changed about Times Square!
So let’s move on, shall we, to noise? The (unnecessary) sirens, construction everywhere … squealing train rails, hissing bus brakes (screaming brakes and “kneeling” buses) … rumbling trains, trucks backing up … a pernicious cacophony, 24/7!
The other day I was literally running down a side street, trying to avoid simultaneously a garbage truck and a street sweeping vehicle. Caught between avenues, in the middle of a long Manhattan cross block, I’m holding my breath to avoid breathing the swirling dust from the approaching street sweeper … while also jamming a forefinger in both ears as the garbage truck, beeping because it’s actually backing up down the block, thunders toward me (in reverse!) from the other direction.
I was like a chicken, spinning in circles!
I had nowhere left to run on that Manhattan cross block! So I finally just sat down on a stoop and tried to let it all pass: the street sweeper, the garbage truck … the smells, dust and yelling … the beeping and honking, the clanking of trash cans …
“Excuse me?” a woman with a baby stroller stands petulantly … demandingly, from the doorway of her building, looking down, waiting for me to get up off her stoop. As I’m doing that, a bicyclist — using the very sidewalk in front me, at that very moment — rings his little bell and says something unpretty.
I’ve decided, New York, that we’re no longer meant to be with each other. Our situation has become untenable … You must feel this too, no?
You’re causing it!
Look, I’m not getting any younger … You, on the other hand: you’ll always have new fans and followers. What can I say? We’ve outgrown each other. Really, I’ve outgrown you, I think.
I’ll always love you, but I’m not in love with you. Not anymore, New York.
Not like this …
