If you’ve lived in Southern California for any length of time, you’ve probably encountered what I consider one of our most dangerous perils. I am talking, of course, about transplanted New Yorkers.
If you’re forced to be in close contact with the aforementioned humans, I’m sure you’ve heard them, because they’re invariably loud and 90% of their comments generally involve complaining about how everything is better in New York.
Apparently, New York has better deep dish pizza, better public transit (OK, that’s true but only because they don’t have cars), better sports teams, well, I could go on and on, right?
The only thing they don’t claim is better in New York is the price of housing, because no one could make that one stick. The average price of a Manhattan apartment that’s so small that the bathtub is covered with a board so it can function as a table is $121.2 billion, or $1 million per square foot. And in order to get it, you have to read the obituaries every day and rush over to the apartment as soon as someone dies, tipping the super a vast sum of money to make sure you get it.
Obviously, I’m not claiming that real estate is cheap around here. My kids are unlikely to ever be able to buy a house here unless they win the lottery. Enough on that subject because I’m supposed to keep my blood pressure down.
But it goes up whenever I see an “I (heart) New York” bumper sticker. Don’t you have a deeply held yearning to drive up to the front of the car, lean over and yell at the driver, “Then go back there!” Or maybe that’s just me. Let me know.
I have sound reasons for my anti-bullish-New-Yorker attitude.
- New Yorkers have the snide belief that they unquestionably live in the greatest city in the world and everyone everywhere else is just a rural peasant. This is pure bull pucky.
- Every other city in America is provincial in comparison with the Big Apple, or so they think. After all, if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere, or so the song claims. But if what they make is a hamburger? Sorry, but White Castle can’t hold a candle to In-N-Out.
- The “city that never sleeps” is an apt nickname, because it’s so noisy and hot in the summer, no one is able to sleep. Might as well go get a bagel at 3 a.m. Or go to the laundromat, because most affordable apartments don’t have washers, dryers or central air conditioning. Envy-inducing, right?
- Getting around. I’m all in favor of public transportation, but when you’ve stood at a bus stop for 90 minutes in the frigid cold trying to get back to your hotel, with your arms full of packages, unaware that a demonstration has delayed your bus indefinitely, hypothermia sets in and you start hallucinating about getting into your nice warm personal automobile, putting your packages in back, and driving it anywhere you darn want to go. Trust me on this.
- Funny how no former New Yorkers ever complain about how much cleaner it is around here than their grimy city, nor about how there’s greenery and flowers all year round. Yeah, it’s like living in hell to have to prune the rosebushes.
- Few things annoy me more than see a New York Yankees baseball cap around town, because I’m an Angels fan. Yes, I know that it’s often a masochistic choice, but I don’t care. The Yankees remain the most valuable MLB franchise, but last year the Los Angeles Dodgers overtook it as earning the most revenue. I will root for the Dodgers if the Angels are out of it. You’re welcome.
- According to my admittedly unscientific survey, 98.4% of all the men wearing fur coats and walking around in Stetson hats in Santa Fe, New Mexico, are New Yorkers. In my humble-yet-informed opinion as a cattle rancher’s daughter, they look like jerks.
- New Yorkers like to sneer at Californians for our ways, but it’s just because they don’t understand our culture. When I was hired by the Orange County Register in 1994, the New York Times had just written a story about the paper, subtly mocking it for having news beats including, for example, shopping malls. That just showed their lack of understanding of what life here is like. So, yeah, and who’s provincial?
I want to make it clear that I don’t dislike New Yorkers in general. Some of my best friends, yadda yadda yadda. And they did popularize bagels to the world. I just dislike their hubris in announcing publicly, on their bumper stickers, their hats, their t-shirts that they looooove the city. Can you imagine seeing that in Manhattan? Hell no. We have more respect.
Want to complain about this column? Or anything else? Hit me up at mfisher@scng.com. And check out my Facebook page. We have fun on there.