For those of you who know me, you know that I have done a good deal of living, working, and studying abroad. In fact, I’ve spent almost two years of my life outside of the States. But every time I travel domestically, it becomes painfully obvious that New York has ruined the every other city in America for me. It’s not hard to see why Paris or West Africa or South India cannot be realistically compared to New York – those cities are different worlds, and as the old saying goes, “I want a damn apple, why did you give me an orange?” Well, it’s something like that. It is also not hard to separate New York from American suburbia, where the vast majority of people think it’s bizarre to use one’s own feet as a means of transportation. What is hard, I’ve discovered, is figuring out how to not apply the New York standard to any other urban metropolis in the 50 US states (and maybe Canada).
My first sinking suspicion of this inability to separate reality from New York was during my second trip to San Francisco in March 2009. By this point, I had been living in New York for eight months, but as I was a delirious grad student living well above my means, I had used this time in almost constant New York exploration, and was thus aware of many of the grandiose choices the city has to offer. But after this past week, which featured a 4-day exploration through the mid-west (Pittsburgh, Chicago, Madison) to help my little brother move up to Wisconsin for his new job, I can confirm that my brain has been solidly set in New York standard mode. Let me break it down into a few categories.
Food: I have a tendency to get food cravings so strange that they would normally be reserved for pregnant women. In both San Francisco and Chicago, I was hit by the same craving: Bubble Tea (or “Boba” for you Californians), spanakopita, a Turkish meat pie, and kheer. I’ve successfully satisfied this craving several times quickly, cheaply, and with little effort in New York, often in neighborhoods I didn’t know very well. So I figured the same would be true in other major cities. About that…
San Francisco yielded a fantastic bubble tea in less than five minutes, but cashier in the Chinese bakery, the cop on the street, and the hipster and his fancy bike just sighed when I asked where in the neighborhood I could buy the rest of my pregnant-like craving fixings. Chicago produced similar results with a scrumptious spanakopita, but it seemed my craving could only be satisfied in both cities by committing ample commute time and being willing to sit down at several overpriced restaurants. Pittsburgh and Madison…yeah, I didn’t even try. In conclusion, it seems it is not normal to expect an East Asian drink, a Greek savory pastry, a Turkish dietary staple, and a common Indian dessert to instantly produce itself in either San Francisco or Chicago. Who knew? Not I.
Public Transportation: I hate MTA. Anyone who has ever lived in New York hates MTA. Even the people who work for MTA hate MTA. In fact, I have only seen two MTA workers smile…ever. The first was a woman who just started working for MTA two days prior (give it time for the hatred to brew), and the second was a man who laughed uncontrollably after a fat tourist from Charleston, SC got stuck in a turnstile.
Still, regardless of the hatred, loving and/or hating to use public transportation in New York is a rite of passage. All New Yorkers complain about the system, but most would be mortified if they were forced to function as the rest of the country seems to. I got a message from a lifelong New Yorker through Metafilter, and this is what he said about dealing with the other 99 percent of American cities:
“Ok, I’ve lived in New York my entire life, I’ve spend a couple months here and there outside New York all told.
I’ve never learned to drive, so whenever I leave town I am at the mercy of somebody who drives. I don’t like this either, so I tend to try to walk as much as possible. This leads to problems. There was the time I had a business meeting in a small town upstate, I was young and didn’t want to be a hassle so I decided to take the train up and wing it from the station. I dressed in my one suit and my expensive dress shoes (I figured people would judge me by my shoes) When I got there I called the company I was visiting to ask directions. The receptionist told me “no problem, head down X street a few blocks and it is right there” well I walked and walked, I don’t know what they considered blocks out there but I must have walked several miles. After a while the sidewalk ended and I was walking on the shoulder of what I would consider a highway. Halfway there it started to rain. I showed up late, my expensive shoes caked with mud and they all looked at me like I was the biggest moron ever.
Oddly, I did the same thing in Las Vegas. I called a bar to get directions, you guessed it, they told me a few blocks, and this time I was drunk. I walked through vacant lots full of garbage, past feral dogs, through neighborhoods I didn’t know existed outside New York. I finally got to the bar, the bartender said ” you the guy that called? That was two hours ago.” I had to get him to call me a cab to get back to my hotel.”
– sent by Ad hominem
The Gays: I have been to gay bars in Switzerland, France, Germany, Spain, and Senegal (yeah, they exist). But no gay scene can compare to Manhattan. In order to be inducted into the Manhattan gay scene, one must adhere to ungodly standards of physical perfection. As these standards of perfection have dominated my point of reference of the gays these past three years, my trip to Chicago served as weird awakening of disappointment.
The house I stayed in was in the middle of Boystown. Upon entering my first Chicago gay bar, I was shocked to find out that there, the gays drink beer. And not fluffy, lite beer, REAL BEER. And not dainty portions. 40s. I dare anyone to find a Manhattan gay openly drinking 40 ounces of any beer in public. Sure, at Pride last week, I drank margaritas the size of my head with the rest of the queer scene of New York, but we all know half of the people in that bar spent at least two hours in the gym the next afternoon desperately working off the calories contained in the liquor and low calorie juice used to make those very margaritas.
Crazily, my friend in Chicago told me their gays are vastly different. Chicago gays drink beer without shame or regret. They eat hamburgers and hot dogs in bars without any sense of irony. They find the XL graphic t-shirts hidden in the back bins of Barneys and Men’s Express. Often, Chicago gays are out of shape.
What!?
And so the list of things I find strange about every other city in America goes. Don’t get me wrong, I recognize that the Chicagos and San Franciscos, even the Madisons and Pittsburghs of America are unique in their own ways, and have rich histories and perspectives. But if I return to any of those cities before being completely burnt out of New York, I will probably recognize these facts for all of 20 minutes before slipping into a state of constant comparison while silently cursing myself about how New York has ruined every other city in America.
