Jun 032011
I feel relatively certain that some people will get all snippy about this book.
Meh and the City: A Book on New York’s Mediocrity
Mostly it’s just the attitude of self-importance that rubs us the wrong way. There are plenty of things that are legitimately great about New York. Our point is that there are plenty of good things about a lot of places.
Heretic!
12 Responses to ““I Feel Relatively Neutral About New York””
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I bet the author visited NY at least once. And that looks like a good book. Can you see the contrasts between this and your post? 🙂
He got paid more.
Have you ever visited an active deathcamp? How about a live minefield? An ongoing race riot? A high-security hospital for the criminally insane? A nuclear powerplant with a breached reactor? If not… don’t make any judgements about ’em on whether or not you’d like to visit them. A wise, tolerant, diverse person should never use reason or past experience to influence any decisions regarding future actions. *Especially* if their time and resources are limited and a visit to a place that holds no appeal to them would interfere with a scheduled visit to someplace they need to go for an ongoing project.
“Attitude of self importance.” It’s something I see every time any aspect of New York City – or LA, or Chicago, or D.C. – makes its presense felt.
A city is a bit more complex and nuanced than a deathcamp or a minefield. It has many good and bad things contained within it.
“A wise, tolerant, diverse person should never use reason or past experience to influence any decisions regarding future actions. ”
But a wise person SHOULD use past experience if they are going to make sweeping conclusions about a very complex system (say a city of 8 million people.) And you have none, regarding NYC. You go on news, mostly Fox news I would guess. If you only learn about a city from the news, obviously you are going to know the crime and corruption stories.
I think I found out why you have a hard time even considering different ideas:
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,2687256.story
> A city is a bit more complex and nuanced than a deathcamp or a minefield. It has many good and bad things contained within it.
So does a *non* city. Who are *you* to judge that someone else who might see the negatives of a city outweighing the postivies is somehow wrong?
> But a wise person SHOULD use past experience if they are going to make sweeping conclusions about a very complex system (say a city of 8 million people.)
Indeed so. As has been pointed out to you in the past – and which by now you really should have picked up on – past expereince has shown some people, such as myself, that high population densities are simply not appealing. If high population densities of San Jose, Salt Lake City, Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, Des Moines, D.C, San Diego, friggen Davenport are uncomfortably high… is that not sufficient experience to suggest that New York City will not be magically superior?
> And you have none… you have a hard time even considering different ideas
And now you’re slipping into standard lib-speak: lying. It’s difficult to tell with many who lie so often whether they lie intentionally, or if they lie because they just can’t grasp the truth, even when repeatedly presented with it. Such as those who constantly call Tea Partiers/Republican/conservatives/anyone to the right of Obama a “racist” even though most of ’em would’ve been glad to see Condi run, or who think highly of Cain. Constantly decrying someones lack of interest in one particular city, when satisfactory reasons for disinterest have been *repeatedly* presented and a satisfactory contradictory reason has not, puts you well within the same category. At the very least, it points you out as having an unhealthy obsession with New York City.
New York is a great town to live in… if you’ve got money. A lot of money. Enough money to insulate yourself from the, hmmm, how shall I say this… the darker aspects of the city.
It can also be a lot of fun if you are young, ambitious, and have no one dependent upon you. There are few places better for a starving artist to starve than NYC.
But if you can’t afford Manhattan, stay home. Manhattan is where it’s at. Living in Brooklyn, Yonkers, the Bronx is just not the same. You might as well live in Jersey.
I am a city person. Although I was born in a big city and spent my earliest years there, I grew up at the end of a gravel road in Bowie County, Texas, and spent the best years of my life trying desperately to survive and to get away from that place and the uncultured, illiterate, bug-eating savages that live there.
No, give me smog and noise and dangerous minorities. I can handle them. I can’t handle living in a place where people handle snakes for Jesus and where the nearest non-pornographic bookstore is thirty miles away. Those of you who like living in Deliverance country are welcome to my share.
> No, give me smog and noise and dangerous minorities. I can handle them
More power to you. “Smog” nearly killed me (it kept me amazingly ill for *years*… if y’all remember my whining and moaning about having “communal bronchitis” some months back, that was pretty much my whole tour of duty on California). Noise grates on my nerves. As for “dangerous minorities,” it’s not ethnicity that bugs me so much as whackadoodle subcultures. Yes, the “black urban gangsta thug” subculture unnerves me. But then, so would the British “yob” and/or “chav” subculture, and unless I’ve greatly misunderstood… them’s whiteys.
Currently surrounded by a whole buncha Mormons. They pose a serious threat if’n you have a phobia regarding Jello molds, but beyond that… they and I share precisely *zero* theologically, and we all get along just fine.
I’m glad you find your environment suitable. I have no problem with the country per se. It is country people I find objectionable. We may have gangbangers here, but they rarely venture into my street, and if they should, Mister Mossberg can handle them. But in the country one is surrounded by the Children of the Corn. Nein, danke. Ich habe Stadtleben gern.
I have no beef with Mormons despite their crazy, science-fantasy religion. They definitely have there fair share of the honeys, that’s for sure. (You ought to get you one of those.) Be careful of them, though. If you die, they’ll baptize the shit out of you.
> It is country people I find objectionable. We may have gangbangers here, but they rarely venture into my street, and if they should, Mister Mossberg can handle them. But in the country one is surrounded by the Children of the Corn.
That’s been almost my exact opposite experience. The worst people I’ve known have been Urban Scum. The worst Country Scum I’ve ever encountered have been really quite tame in comparison.
I do know that in the rural areas, Mister Mossberg is among freinds… but in many urban areas, the governemnt will actually prosecute you just for having a few of Mister Mossberg’s buddies. Hell, I couldn’t even take my Thompson with me when I went to California! That’s what happens when country folk allow cityfolk to dominate state governments.
> Be careful of them, though. If you die, they’ll baptize the shit out of you.
Let ’em. Dead Is Done. They can baptize me, try to reanimate my zombie bones, or try to raise my ghost from the grave. It will all amount to the same wasted effort.
“Children of the corn”? Wow, who’s the bigoted scumbag now?
Now, now. Perhaps I should introduce a new blog rule/law: “Only a nincompoop would get upset or offended at having his preferred locale referred to using lighthearted references to sci-fi, horror or fantasy movies.”
Wow, who’s the bigoted scumbag now?
Me.
Some of my friends grew up in big industrial cities, and they complain that air is no good unless it has a “texture” to it, and that tap water needs to have a distinctive bouquet in order to be drinkable. I’m not sure if they’re joking…