About a year ago, I up and moved to New York City (or as Japan jokingly refers to it, the "Capital of the World") from a sleepy little border town called Tucson, Arizona. In Tucson, the bars close at 5pm and lawless bands of Mexican drug dealers roam the National Arizona Saguaro Forest in search of innocent patriots to kidnap and ransom for American jobs. One half of Tucson's population lounges on a myriad of dilapidated porches, "freeballing" in cutoff shorts and gorging on plate after plate of tepid gringo food. The remaining two quarters consist of severely impoverished folks, and Unbearable Californians. As I am descended from a long line of impoverished Unbearable Californians, and often wear the same pair of pants until the legs fall off at the knees, Tucson instantly felt like home to me upon my very first visit, and I made fast friends with many of the local students. I was happy, but I was riding the crest of a social wave that would soon break on the shores of change.
All of Tucson's young eventually grow to embark on leisurely Volvo rides to Portland, an age-old custom which is outlined in the Tucsonan books of law. As an Unbearable Californian, I was expressly forbidden from participating in this ritualistic exodus, and was forced to watch my friends pack up their dusty Southwestern lives to reinvent themselves as organic tea baristas, or artisanal doughnut makers, or whatever else people make careers out of in Portland - so with a tear on my collar and a tiny, shiny shred of my own red heart left buried behind in the Sonoran desert, I headed east instead.
You might imagine that as a child of America's Great Vapid West, I could easily elect to dismiss -or even resent- the Eastern coast of the country. What's living in the Big Apple to mountain men? Tiny one-way streets, abusive public odors, entire neighborhoods composed of burglars, Loud Fucking Trains, and people who possess the fashion sense of Karl Lagerfeld, but the social graces of Oscar the Grouch. Sure, it sounds like a bummer, but somehow the end justifies the means, and some wafting, beckoning swath of cartoon pie steam dragged me by the nose all the way out to my bug-ridden bed in the City That Never Sleeps.
"New Yorker" is a loose term, as anybody you meet here is as likely to have lived here for 20 years as they are to be visiting a cousin for two weeks before they go back to Boston, but New Yorkers all share one similar characteristic, regardless of tenure - they sure have alot of silly ideas about where I came from. I'm not a New Yorker, and though I do love this great city of opportunity, I figured I'd go ahead and give a little back. I'm gonna review New York City. Objectively, of course.
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