Tag Archives: New York City

The “I Hate New York” Blog Post

Wow. New York City. I hate it. Just kidding, I love it. But seriously, it’s terrible. Haha, that’s my way of telling the Internet how much I love it. Do you get it? Did you read that Onion article? No, you don’t get it. Unless you do get it, in which case, congratulations, you live in New York. If you don’t get it well, you’ll still read this, you’ll think, man people from New York really don’t like living in New York. Ha. You don’t get it.

One of the best things about living in New York is getting to complain about New York. You get to say things like, “Only in New York!” but only to non-New Yorkers. If you ever said, “Only in New York!” to a New Yorker, they would immediately call you out as a tourist, as a non-New Yorker.

Like if I’m visiting my friend in some other city, I don’t know, somewhere else, Baltimore, or, yuck, Cleveland, and it’s three in the morning and we’re in the suburbs somewhere and it’s dark outside and there’s no noise anywhere, I might say something like, “Hey, lets go run to the corner store and get some more beer,” and they’d be like, “What are you talking about, it’s three in the morning, nothing’s open, and everything’s too far away to walk,” and then you’d say, “Oh yeah, right, it’s just that, where I live, you can get anything, any time, and it’s all right down the block. Only in New York!” and your friend would be like, “Listen, I want you out of my house before breakfast tomorrow.”

But if you’re all the way downtown waiting for the one train going up, and the train rounds that corner, and it should be empty because it’s the first stop, but it’s not empty, there’s a homeless guy sitting there, and he’s got his pants all the way down, and he’s masturbating, if you look to the person waiting next to you and you say, “Only in New York!” that person – haha – is going to know right away that you’re not from New York, that you’re not a real New Yorker.

No, real New Yorkers embrace that man. They sit next to him like it’s no big deal. They drop trou and join in on the fun. Because don’t you tell me what the real New York is. You’re not entitled to tell me or anybody else anything about New York. Once you start talking about New York, it’s gone, it’s out of your grasp, and just like that, you’re not a real New Yorker anymore. Maybe someday years from now when you’re visiting those same friends out of town you can look back fondly upon the incident, watching their disgusted reactions as you matter-of-factly explain what went down that one time on the one train. Maybe. Probably not. We’ll see.

But let me break my own cardinal rule for a second here and say that the current real New York thing to do is to write blog posts about how much you hate New York. Do you really hate it? Not really. But you can’t write about how much you love it, because what are you, from Long Island? Everybody knows that doesn’t count. Sorry pal, get back on that 5:37 Long Island Railroad train to Hicksville, I’ll see you next week at the Nassau Coliseum. “I hate New York” is the new cool way of saying, “I love New York.” But whereas the old love slogan was too universal, too easily shared by everybody in the world willing to pay ten bucks for ten “I heart NY” t-shirts, “I hate New York” brings just the right amount of New York exclusivity.

Oh my God my apartment is so small! Holy-moley, could this train be any more crowded? Jesus Louisus, these people in front of me are walking so slow! Seriously, do those cars really need to be honking their horns that loudly? Let me tell you something, you just have to go check out this new gastro-barber shop I found in YahBrah. What neighborhood is YahBrah? Don’t ask, just nod in agreement, tell your friend that you’ve already been there, that the Blendingtown Heights location is much truer to what they’re going for, what they were trying to speak when they jumped on the gastro-barber shop bandwagon.

Because really, New York’s such a terrible place to live, right? Haha. But seriously, I leave New York and I’m like, “Oh my God, New York is making me crazy!” but then you realize, wait a second, it’s a part of me now, I’m a part of it, and so I love it, and I love hating New York, and I love telling everybody that I hate New York, and when somebody says to me, “Well, if you really hate it that much, why don’t you just get out?” and then you can go, “Ha!” because you did it, you nailed it, them, whoever it is you’re talking to, talking about. They don’t get it. They’re not a real New Yorker. Ha.

The pizza place close to my house

I went over my brother’s place to hang out and watch some basketball. We drank some beers and ordered some pizzas, we played some cards and I then I got tired and called it a night. “Take the rest of the pizza with you,” my brother told me. “You sure? You don’t want any?” I always feel bad going over somebody else’s apartment and taking anything home, but I really did want that pizza, so I didn’t put up much more of a fight when my brother told me he didn’t want it.

I love pizza so much. It’s been a constant in my life and, as I’ve grown up, as my love for pizza has grown up, so has my appetite for pizza. It’s one of those foods that I could eat continuously without having to stop because I’m too full. If I’m eating pizza for dinner, I need a minimum of four slices just to be satisfied. But I could easily throw back a full pie. And I’m not talking any of those weenie personal pizzas. I’m talking eight real slices.

It was just my brother and me, but it’s always better to get more pizza than less pizza, and so we ordered two whole pies, knowing that there would be a few slices left over. I headed back to my place, only like five blocks away, but when I got to where I was maybe one block away, I saw my pizza place, right on the corner. I didn’t think about this. I’ve never had to think about this, because I’ve never walked back from my brother’s place holding a pizza box.

And so I thought to myself, what if my pizza guy sees me walking past his pizza place and I’m holding a different pizza box? You might think this a little egocentric of me, just assuming that these guys have nothing better to do than stare out the window all night and watching what I’m up to. But that’s exactly how it is.

This pizza place has been there forever. It’s one of these restaurants that changes owners like once every six months. And so something’s not right, not with the business, I mean, the pizza’s good, that’s where I always buy my pizza when I’m home, but maybe the location? I really don’t know what it could be. They have an A rating stamped on the door. They’re all really nice. Like I said, yeah, the pizza’s good.

But there’s never a line. They’re never too busy so as not to notice people walking by. I thought to myself, I’m being crazy, they’re not going to see me, I’ll just hold the box to my side and walk by as fast as possible without …

“Hey! You!” the pizza guy came outside, “Yeah, I see you. I can see the pizza box behind you. What the hell man?”

So I was like, “Hey! Oh, sorry, yeah I didn’t see you. Listen, I’m coming back from my brother’s. We ordered way too much pizza so I’m bringing back the extras. I love your pizza, we were just …”

“Well, why didn’t get pizza from us? Come on man!”

“No, it’s just that, you know, he lives a little that way, so we just …”

“So you what? Why didn’t you just give us a call? We’ll deliver! We deliver anywhere. Or on the Internet. You could have ordered on the Internet.”

And I didn’t know what to say. I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t owe this guy anything. Look, I get it, you thought, I’ll buy this pizza place, I’ll turn it around. Where five or six owners before me couldn’t get the business right, I’ll somehow make it right. But whatever, maybe the oven’s cursed or something. Like the pizza comes out all right, but nobody ever walks by. I don’t know. I have no idea. But I couldn’t let it go and I kept running my mouth.

“No, it’s just, the pizza place by my brother’s, they do the brick oven style, and it was closer, so you know, we just …”

“Brick oven? Come on man. We have a great oven. Look, just next time, call us up, all right?”

“Yeah, definitely, you got it.”

And I went home and felt like shit, like man, do I have to have pizza again tomorrow? The next day? Like do I have to show up at this guy’s pizza place, like a penance? I didn’t go the next day, or the next day. I had so much leftover pizza that I didn’t need to, and the day after that I wanted Chinese food. And then I worked a couple of night shifts and all of the sudden it was the next week.

That’s when I was like, yeah, maybe I can go for some pizza. So I walked down the block and there was this big sign, “New! Brick Oven Pizza!” and I was like, fuck, I should have just kept my mouth shut. I walked in and the guy was like, “Where’ve you been? Look, I got one of those brick ovens.”

I had to order brick oven pizza. I didn’t even want brick oven pizza. I made the whole thing up about brick oven pizza. Nobody in New York wants brick over pizza, we all just eat regular pizza. It’s the best. And I felt bad, like the guy made me buy a whole pie, like he didn’t make me, but that’s what I always get, a whole pie, and so right away he was like, “A whole pie, right?” all smiling, and I was like, “Yeah! All right! A whole pie!”

And it was terrible, way overcooked. The cheese was all squeaky from, I don’t know what from, the oven, the brick? It was terrible. I never went back. The place was out of business in like two weeks. Every time I left my house I’d be looking over my shoulder, expecting to see this guy, the pizza guy, screaming a big, “Thanks a lot for ruining my business, asshole!”

Thinking about Ecuador

I’ve never once run into someone in New York, someone that I know. It never, ever happens to me, not on the subway, not when I’m walking to the deli, never. And I’m out. I go running all the time. I ride my bike everywhere. I’m taking my dog for a walk at least twice a day. I know that I know people in New York. I know that people live by me in Astoria, Queens. My brother lives live five blocks away. My uncle, my sister-in-law, all within walking distance. A lot of my coworkers are really close. Yet I’ve never just happened upon anyone just walking around. How is this possible?

I know, there are like eight million people living in this city. Which is crazy. That’s a lot of people. It’s so many people. It’s enough people so that when I’m walking around, I’m constantly surrounded by lots and lots of people, everywhere. And it’s just insane, that really weird feeling of going about my day, walking around, seeing so many other human beings, everywhere, I can’t walk fast because the sidewalks are just jam packed with bodies, and I’m looking at everybody, at their faces, at what they’re doing, and I don’t know anyone, not even one person.

That’s a feeling that, I think, it has to be antithetical to our nature, as social animals. I walk past two people, three people, four people talking to each other, talking on their cell phones, I think, why am I not talking to anybody? Why isn’t anybody talking to me? I’m having a bad day, I’m stressing out about problems at work, problems at home, imaginary problems that I’m imagining up in my head, and I look up and I just see this wall of human activity, and I don’t have anything to do with it, with any of it. And I’m just like, is it even real? Does that even make sense?

I didn’t grow up a New Yorker; I grew up a Long Islander. But it wasn’t all that different. In fact, it was worse, because instead of walking around everywhere, everybody drives, and so instead of staring out at a world of strangers, I’d just be staring out at a world of cars, all driven by people, yeah, but everybody kind of hidden behind the reflections of their windows. Which is, again, it’s worse, because it takes a special someone to cut you off walking on the sidewalk. But in car? It’s all too common.

The only time I ever walked out of the house and ran into people that I knew was when I spent two years in the Peace Corps. I lived in a really small town called Pucayacu located in the subtropics of Ecuador. It wasn’t even a town really, but I hesitate to call it anything else, because all of the other English words available to describe societies smaller than towns evoke feelings and sentiments that aren’t really appropriate to what Pucayacu is, what it was while I was there.

In Spanish, Pucayacu isn’t a town, it’s a parroquia, which, translated to English is a parish, which is misleading, because a parroquia in Ecuador doesn’t have anything to do with religion. The parroquia itself was broken down into twelve or so recintos, a word that, until now, I’ve never felt the need to translate, but Google Translate is telling me that it means “enclosure.” So imagine smaller than a town, and then even one level smaller than that.

It was the exact opposite of what it’s like here in New York; I’d step out of my house and I’d know absolutely every single person that I ran into. And they’d all say hi to me, “Buenos días Don Roberto! Como le va? Como ha pasado?” every single person, every single time. There was only one road in and out of town, and so imagine what it was like trying to make it to the end of the road to head out for a run. Or just to buy a soda from the señora who sold groceries out of her kitchen. “Hola Roberto!” every time, everybody inviting me in for some snacks, for some coffee, for a second or third lunch, to sit with their families in front of their houses for a while, to ask me questions about the United States or, when those questions got old, to tell me at length about Ecuador, about their lives, about their families, and why don’t you spend the evening over here? Have dinner with us, come on, you can help our kids with their homework, and come out to the farm with us tomorrow, we’ll show you the animals, the plantains, we’ll go swimming in the river and drink beers in the afternoon.

Sometimes it was all too much. I’d just want to be left alone. I didn’t want to have to make up words to “Hotel California,” pretending to sing a convincing American hit every time somebody brought out a guitar. Once in a while I really did just want to walk to the end of the road and go for a really long run, without stopping every time I’d pass somebody on the side of the road waiting for a pickup truck, explaining that I’m not running from anything, that I’m exercising, that I’m working out, declining rides from every car and bus that stopped along the way, “Hey Roberto, what are you doing? Hop in, we’ll take you back!”

But here I am, back in New York, I’ve been back from Ecuador now for almost as long as I was there. And I walk out of my house, and I jockey for a spot on the sidewalk, to keep my head down and shuffle along like everybody else, no eye contact, nobody saying hi, nobody knows who I am. And I think about all of this and it’s like, the grass really was greener over there. Everything was greener over there. The butterflies were neon-bluer over there. The sunsets were alive, the stars at night exactly like you’d imagine them to be. Everything was bursting with color, exploding with life; it was a world away from where I’m from yet somehow it was more intimate, intense, familiar.

Look both ways

This morning I went for a run. In an effort to keep things interesting, I have a few routes that I like to take. I was on what I guess would be Route C, and there was this one section, two blocks long, where I had to cross over from one side of the street to the other.

It’s always a challenge going for runs in the city. You want to maintain some sort of a rhythm, but it’s kind of hard with traffic, with lights that don’t always synch up with what you’re doing, your pace, plus the other eight or so million people living in this city, some of them out, some of them on the same street that you are, everybody jockeying for space, trying to just go about life with as few collisions as possible.

I ran by the first corner but the light wasn’t on my side. About halfway down I noticed that the light up ahead was good to go. But I wasn’t going to make it all the way there in time to catch it. So I figured, OK, I’ll just cross right now, right in the middle of the street. I do it all the time. It’s New York. You cross when you have to cross.

Only, and I’ve heard of stuff like this happening to other people, but I ran into the street to find myself directly in the way of a bicycle delivery guy. There was no time to react. I just stepped in the street and found myself exactly in his path. He didn’t even have time to swerve, he just kind of shouted something, I think I shouted something, although I might not have, it’s kind of a blur.

Incredibly, I was able to maneuver my torso, like a matador taunting a charging bull, in such away that I made very minimal contact with the bike as he came at me from my left. I turned to the right to see everything play out. The bike kind of wobbled, and I thought, he’s going to fall, but then he managed to correct the imbalance. For about a quarter of a second, everything looked like it was about to be OK. But then whatever grip he tentatively regained slipped away again and he tumbled off and over the bike.

It wasn’t the worst crash in the world. It was a relatively low-speed affair, but still, I’ve fallen off of my bike plenty. He was probably a little banged up. And what about his bike? What about the delivery? I went up to the guy and started apologizing immediately, “I’m so sorry,” like that’s going to do anything.

I gave him my hand to pull him up but he just kept shouting something in what I’m assuming was Chinese, just a snap judgment based on the Chinese restaurant logo on his delivery vest. Through his gesturing, I figured that he was worried about his bike, it was one of those new electric models with an engine and everything. I pulled it up, steadied everything out, turned off the motor.

Then he just kept saying stuff in that different language. I was asking the basics, “Are you OK?” telling him I was sorry. He kind of looked through his merchandise, everything seemed to be salvageable. He pulled up his pant leg but there wasn’t any noticeable damage. We made eye contact and he just kind of kept muttering something before making a gesture with his arm, like don’t worry about it, get out of here.

And then he got back on his bike and took off. I felt really bad. I felt like I should have done something else. But what? What was to be done? All of these things flashed through my mind. About how I always complain about my job, about how I hate going to work. I tried putting myself in his place, delivering takeout on a bike in the cold in a country where I don’t even speak a single word of the language. And I get hit by a runner. And maybe my leg does hurt. Maybe I have to go back to the restaurant and get new food, and the boss will chew me out for poor bike riding skills. Maybe the restaurant owns the bike, maybe the owner is a real dick and makes me pay for any scratches or superficial damage.

Man, I just try to be a good guy, so it stings especially when I make a stupid careless mistake, one that has actual ramifications on somebody else. And I had no idea what I could have done differently, you know, expect for looking both ways or waiting to cross at a corner, or just having a clue about my surroundings, not stuck in my head, unaware of the rest of the world, all of these eight million people with whom I’m trying to peacefully coexist.