New York City is not dead because it’s an idea that can’t be killed

NYC is not five boroughs, it is a way of thinking and living.

Thoughts from comedian/writer Matt Ruby. Want more? Sign up here to get my newsletter.

Occasionally, someone who is curious about doing standup comedy will ask me if I have any advice. I invariably reply that if you can do anything else, you should. There’s no reason to subject yourself to years of hell gigs, dingy motels, and a gauntlet of indifference in exchange for meager pay and occasional spikes of transcendence unless you simply have no choice. It is a calling, I explain, something you do not because you want to do it but because you have to.

This is also how I feel about living in New York City. If you can live somewhere else, you should. Why else would you put up with the surly attitudes, psychotic subways, and pocket-sized apartments? This place is resting bitch face if it could be a city. Decide to live here and you accept a role in the geographical version of an S&M relationship. Submit to this city’s fickle will and, like the as-New-York-as-it-gets Lou Reed once sang, kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather. You came here for more and more is what you will get. More what? That’s the thing, it doesn’t even matter. Just more.

And that’s why I’ve been so befuddled by the recent “Is NYC dead forever?” debate. To my mind, it’s based on a false foundation: It treats NYC as a place when it is actually an idea. This…