First, a quick update on the tree-killing. Yesterday, we ran 115 copies of the script. By the end of the day, we used 9,869 pages. Or, 1.18 trees.
If it was a cherry tree, I’d feel like George Washington.
Moving on.
I was perusing the LA Metblog, and came across this article, which in turn linked to a poll from Travel & Leisure. Go ahead and take a look at those rankings.
I can accept a lot of them. Our public transit sucks. The cost of living is high. Our skyline is a joke (though with some extenuating circumstances).
Some of the other categories are a mystery. We’re the largest enclave of celebrities, yet we’re number nine in people-watching? We’re number six in attractiveness? I’m sorry, but every pretty girl in Charleston has already moved to LA to become an actress. And we’re the least friendly city?
Bullshit.
No one is less friendly than New Yorkers. No one. I’m not just playing to the stereotype, either.
A couple years ago, I called a luxury restaurant to make reservations for my boss. The concierge simply said, “No,” in this angry tone that implied she couldn’t believe I had the nerve to call for reservations. At a restaurant.
She went on, after a pause long enough to make me wonder if she was going to explain why I couldn’t make reservations: “FIRST of all, we don’t take reservations, and even if we did, we aren’t OPEN on Sunday mornings.” She left the “DUuuuUUH” understood. (Sorry for all the formatting, but it’s hard to express typographically the many degrees of disgust and condescension in her voice.)
I got lost in New York, once, when I was a teenager. I saw a cop standing on the corner, so I asked if he could tell me how to get toDO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING TOUR GUIDE TO YOU?
Somewhere in between those two, some friends and I visited New York. We arrived in Brooklyn around three in the morning. The streets were empty, with about six lanes in either direction. We were going slow, looking for the address, when this guy comes out of nowhere, drives up our butts, and honks. At 3:00am. In a residential neighborhood.
My friend says, “He can’t be honking at me. He must be honking at his own stupid driving.”
We stayed at a friend-of-a-friend’s place. He offered to be our “tour guide,” though he didn’t get up until noon. He showed us the Statue of Liberty… from the Staten Island Ferry.
At one point, while we were in the subway, I idly asked this six-year New Yorker how often they make new subway tunnels. (You know, since the redline has been under construction here for, like, decades.) Very indignantly, he said, “What?! They don’t make new tunnels!”
I stared at him a moment, then asked, “Are you saying they just found them like this?”
New Yorkers move out here and they bitch and moan about how you can’t get good pizza or good bagels, or the water doesn’t taste good outside of New York, and on and on.
If you hate it so much, why don’t you move back to New York? Because we have hot chicks and the beach and movies stars and sunshine nine months out of the year.
More importantly, we have fewer goddamn New Yorkers.
