Category Archives: NYC

NYC

Open Letter to the M Train Media Baron

Dear person,

mtrain.jpgYou don’t know me, nor should you, but we ride the same train to work in the morning. I get on in a grubby section of Queens, while you get on in Williamsburg. I’d never had the pleasure of meeting you until this morning, when the the train reached Lorimer Street, and I heard your braying voice the moment the doors opened. You were talking on your cell phone, to your mother, apparently, and very loudly.

I don’t like to listen to other people’s phone conversations, but since you stood right in front of me and decided to talk in a ludicrously loud tone of voice, it was impossible to ignore you. I could tell you were Someone Important, because right off the bat you mentioned two extremely popular cable TV shows, and made it clear that you worked for the network airing those shows (even though you were talking to your mother, who presumably knew this already).

Apparently, one of these shows, which just debuted to rave reviews, was experiencing an inordinate amount of traffic on its Web site. Or rather, the person in charge of said Web site had not prepared for such traffic and was getting slammed. But rather than tax his/her staff or outsource the issue, this person was trying to handle the issue him/herself.

I don’t know why I’m obscuring the gender of this person, since you mentioned his/her name many, many times, at top volume, like everything else you said. You also made sure to mention that you knew all this because you received an email you weren’t supposed to, which you then proceeded to forward to other folks, just for laughs.

This surprised me. I have friends who work in various media. Sometimes they work on Very Important Things and they can’t tell me the exact details. And I accept this because, hey, who knows who might be sitting in that next booth or in the bus seat next to me? You, clearly, are not limited by such discretion.

But the thing that really set me off, really brought it all together for me, and made me write this letter, is when you said to your mother, “I don’t have time for this! I’m a 32-year-old girl!”

Yes, you are. You are a child. Your job, which is evidently very important (though not important enough for you to wear anything nicer than sneakers) is just a toy to you. If I had a job like yours, first of all, I’d be thrilled. But I’d also be very careful about bitching about any aspect of it in public.

As you yakked away, I wrote several tweets about your phone call. I could just as easily fired off an email to a certain Web site that likes to trade in media gossip like this (hint: it rhymes with Mawker). And thanks to your detailed descriptions, it wouldn’t take too much googling to find out who you are or the full names and titles of all the other principals you complained about at length.

And that might get you fired, but what the hell! You’d just flit to some other joke-job, or you’d couch surf for a while, or maybe finally go to India or something, you know, really learn about yourself. Your life has zero stakes, and based on the fact that you were having this conversation with your mother, you were clearly raised with zero stakes, too. I’m 100 percent positive you come from money and privilege, and the reason you’re yapping at top volume on the train is because this job is just to keep you in beer and coke money. You could lose it tomorrow and not feel a thing.

My life has nothing but stakes. I come from no one. I grew up with very little. I was able to go to college only because I earned a scholarship (and took out some oppressive loans), and I went to every goddamn class because I was terrified of losing that scholarship. I’ve spent every day of my adult life working or hustling to get work.

I have a wife and a child. I can’t bitch about anything I do for pay because if I do and I get fired, I have zero safety net. I can’t pull up stakes and crash at a friend’s place or live in my mom’s basement for a while or move to a commune.

That’s because I’m an adult, and I pity you. I have more obligations than you can possibly imagine, and yet I write every god damn day. I have more things to do that I don’t want to do than ever before, and yet I’m working on more projects of my own than I ever have ever before.

But you, you will do nothing of value with your life, because you don’t have to. You will create nothing and bring joy to noone, because you don’t have to. You will never do anything you don’t have to, because you’re a “32-year-old girl”, and children don’t do things they don’t want to do.

I meet people like you a lot. They’re my age or thereabouts, and when I tell them I have a kid, a look of abject terror flits across their faces for a split second. It’s not the idea of being a parent that scares them. It’s the idea of having any sort of responsibility, of having to live in a world in which their id isn’t constantly satisfied. “You mean I can’t just sick out for a few days and go to Bonaroo?”

Do you have to have a kid to be an adult? Of course not. I would say all of my friends are adults, and very few of them have children. To be an adult, you have to have a sense of the world outside yourself. You clearly have none of that, or else you wouldn’t be yelling about your job (which many people would kill for) at top volume on the subway.

I know you are highly unlikely to read this, and even if you did, my words would be unlikely to change you in any appreciable way. I just want you to know that your life is completely and utterly meaningless, without a single redeeming feature, and one day you’re gonna die alone and afraid, just like the rest of us. Cheers!

— Me

NYC

Never Forget (The Condiments)

In my brief time working in the Wall Street area, I’ve discovered that the shortest route between two points is not always a straight line. Certain streets are completely choked with tourists and narrowed by incessant construction, and should be avoided at all costs unless you want some homicidal inspiration.

Broadway is particularly awful, so if I need to get somewhere on that street, I will often double back on a parallel avenue, walk as far up- or downtown as I need to go, then cut back to the main drag. Though this might seem unnecessarily complicated, it’s actually much faster than trying to wade through acres of gawking Midwesterners (no offense, Midwesterners).

On Tuesday, I ventured away from the office to grab some lunch, and on the way back, I walked uptown on Trinity Place. While not completely crowd free, you can actually move along this street faster than a snail’s pace. It runs behind Trinity Church, at a lower elevation than Broadway. A majestic stone wall marks the church’s western extremity, and a beautiful walkway connects it, mysteriously, to a much more modern office building across the street.

As I walked past the stone wall, I noticed one entrance–called Cherub’s Gate–was wide open. I realized that I’d never been to Trinity Church, somehow, and that nothing was stopping me from going now. So I climbed the stairs and found myself on a tiny little green island of the 18th century in the middle of downtown Manhattan, filled with crumbling headstones, most of which are more than 200 years old.

It was bizarre to walk among the dilapidated tombstones and read their somber, weirdly spelled inscriptions. (“Here lyes Goodye Price, ded of Consumption aged thirty-fyve yearf.”) It was even weirder to see people spending their lunch there, yapping on cell phones, chowing down on deli buffet food in clamshell trays. Though odd, this didn’t seem disrespectful, really. It was a surprisingly quiet, calm oasis in a very noisy part of the city, and one of the few spots in that neighborhood where a person could truly get away from it all for a little while.

I should also add that as I strolled between the graves, I was listening to a Jean Shepherd show from 1960 on my iPod. During that period, Shep’s shows were particularly philosophical and dark. The setting plus the soundtrack combined to give me an eerie, melancholy feeling.

And then I felt something else. Actually, I smelled something else. Something acrid and pungent. Such smells are not unusual in New York, of course, but this smell was not bad per se, just unwelcome. And yet also strongly familiar.

And then I remembered: There was a Subway franchise right next to Trinity on Broadway. I was smelling the unmistakable reek of pickled Subway vegetables wafting through the churchyard. I have smelled that smell many times, coming from my own hands, several hours after eating a six-inch Veggie Delight. I don’t know what they use to preserve those vegetables for longhaul truck travel, but you need auto mechanic-grade abrasive soap to remove that stench from your fingers.

This smell was not faint. The churchyard was drenched in it. The final resting place of Alexander Hamilton and Robert Fulton, overshadowed by the olfactory shadow of five-dollar foot-longs. If such great men can be overtaken by the thorny talons of Jared, what hope is there for a rest of us?

NYC

New York to GOP: Drop Dead

In the current political landscape, the Republican party is like a really bad prop comic. They reach into a trunk full of hut-button issues, pull one out, and rattle it in front of the crowd for laughs, because it’s a lot easier than having ideas.

The latest prop being used by the Blueberry Heads in the GOP is the Ground Zero Mosque. A more accurate name would be The Couple of Blocks from Ground Zero Muslim Cultural Center, but no good comedian lets the truth get in the way of a good punchline.

The joke, I mean, argument goes something like this: Ground Zero is hallowed ground and therefore can not abide the presence of a Muslim-y thing in its vicinity. My counterargument is this: Go fuck yourselves, you hypocritical human garbage.

The real prop here isn’t the mosque itself. It’s New York City. Neocons have used New York as a prop for the last nine years, and will doubtless continue to use it for as long as they can. The terrorist attacks were the rationale for everything on the Republican agenda during that entire time. Flash pictures of Twin Towers collapsing, then tell everyone we need to invade Iraq. We need to curtail civil liberties. We need to waterboard suspects. We need to shoot elderly men in the face. Why? Because LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO NEW YORK IS WHY!

Of course, this concern over the fate of New York doesn’t extend to making sure the state gets its fair share of federal money, particularly when it comes to Homeland Security funds. Hey, why would we want to protect the city that’s already been attacked and will surely be the number one target for future attacks? And it certainly doesn’t extend to ensuring the health and well-being of first 9/11 responders.

The Republicans don’t give a shit about New York. They hate it, because it’s full of dirty foreigners and liberals, the kind of people who don’t really care if there’s a Muslim center two blocks from Ground Zero. They just recognize that this issue can galvanize people and maybe win a close election or two this November. If the GOP could gain one Senate seat by nuking all five boroughs, they’d do it this afternoon.

I was in Manhattan on September 12, while the streets were still filled with eye-stinging smoke as far north as 14th Street and you needed a face mask to breathe and I was more terrified than I’ve ever been since I was a child. And a Muslim community center near Ground Zero doesn’t bother me in any way.

If you lived in New York then and were directly affected by it, I won’t tell you how to feel. But people who don’t live in New York, and weren’t in New York on 9/11 have no right to dictate what happens here. Don’t tell me you have to stop this project from going forward because of some Magic Heroic Dreamspace that Ground Zero occupies in your brain. For most of the people who are upset by this news, downtown New York might as well be Narnia.

You’re like Star Wars nerds arguing over what George Lucas did in the prequels. Actually, you’re worse, because Star Wars nerds had to see the prequels. I don’t give a shit if you don’t like the idea of a mosque near Ground Zero when YOU WILL NEVER HAVE TO SEE IT.

Why don’t I pick a random construction project I don’t like and protest it? Boo, Waffle House being built in Charleston, South Carolina! There’s already a perfectly good Waffle House just up the road! I will probably never go to Charleston but this angers me deeply! My personal feelings trump your ability to decide what’s best for your own town!

And boo to Harry Reid, who’s apparently trying to win his election by kowtowing to these morons. If you’re trying to out-crazy Sharron Angle, don’t bother–it can’t be done.

Not to mention that the area immediately around Ground Zero is about as un-hallowed as New York gets. Fast food restaurants and OTBs and strip clubs, and all the other kind of garbage that litters the touristy areas of Giuliani’s Manhattan. The tourists who flock there are so humbled by the sacred ground that they buy cheap t-shirts and postcards and prints and coloring books about 9/11 sold within in its glowing aura.

I remember going to a printer’s conference in the Midwest. This was at least two years after 9/11. When I told other people on the conference that I worked in New York, they got all quiet and whispery. What was it like? they asked, low and conspiratorial, as if curious about some strange sex act they’d never tried before. It, in this case, was That Day, which they couldn’t even bring themselves to say.

They wanted all the gory details I could provide, just so I could assure them that living in some place safer was the correct way to live. Like I had chosen to live on some terrorist fault line. Oh you know, I could never live in New York, what with the traffic and the noise and the Islamo-fascists flying planes into things…

That’s all this “debate” is. A way to dredge up the Terror Envy that every other city felt in the early 2000s. Scare ourselves with the reflective horror of 9/11 one more time. And then forget that New York still has a huge gaping hole in the ground and thousands of people who died and became ill when that hole was made.