This is a short segue away from the Basic Training chronicles to a topic that I've had occasion to think about since I've been living up a dirt road in the boonies instead of New York City.
My daughter, who has lived in Chicago for more or less the last decade, brought the topic up the other night when she commented that when people in the midwest ask her where she is from, and she tells them, accurately, that she spent her first 12 years in New York City and then moved to Connecticut, they look at her like she has a communicable disease. A very unpleasant communicable disease, in fact. One might almost say a loathsome communicable disease!
A few years ago, up here in Northwest Connecticut, there was considerable hue and cry about how the New Yorkers were ruining the place. How they talk loud, how they aren't polite, how they are willing to spend too much money for a house (as well as for almost anything else), how they try to get ahead in line, how they, well, fail to show proper deference to people who have lived here for years and years.
That talk largely died out -- perhaps as more and more people around here benefitted financially from the influx of New Yorker second homes -- but came to life again a few years ago on the topic of cellphones (which, by the way, don't work in most of our area because there are very, very few cell towers) and how New Yorkers talk too loud on them. At least where they can use them at all.
For many years I had thought of the anti-New Yorker sentiment as anti-semitism. However, having heard the same kinds of antipathy expressed toward newcomers from New York City by locals of all ethnic and religious persuasions, and having seen my co-religionists (Episcopalian, for the information of any who are curious) exhibiting all the same behaviors "locals" have historically considered distasteful, I decided a while ago that anti-semitism was a simplistic explanation and have been reflecting further on it. (In fact, some of the most obnoxious people I have ever met have been, like me, Episcopalian, and some of the most obnoxious of this group have NOT been New Yorkers at all. But I won't go there right now.)
First of all, I do think that there are a set of behaviors that tend to characterize many people who have lived in New York City for much of their life -- or at least for the most recent few years. They don't stand out in New York City, but up here, where there still are occasional dirt roads, they do seem noticeable.
I think that what makes a New Yorker a New Yorker is cultural. Yes, there is a heavy component of self-selection involved (I think that when the few people from the red states who decide to live in New York City make that decision it must be about as earth-shattering as if they were to come out of the closet -- and it does take a certain amount of guts coupled with the feeling that the present situation is intolerable to make either decision, I suspect.) but when you move to New York City you move into an environment that I have not seen elsewhere.
Most places the overwhelming social pressure is to conform to local norms. Social success most places in this great nation comes to those who are beautiful, athletic, and have the ability to parrot the local social, political, religious, and economic viewpoints so inoffensively that, were they not beautiful and athletic, they would be totally invisible.
In New York City, as long you are not striving to be a model or a prostitute or be picked up in bars without wasting time trolling around, nobody much cares if you are beautiful or athletic at all. In fact, nobody really cares at all about what you think unless it directly threatens them.
But what everyone in New York City does care about is what you want from them, or what you have that they want.
In what is fundamentally a rather small and crowded place, there is no time that one lives in New York City that someone else does not want what you have.
If you have a job in a large corporation and sit at a desk in the middle of a sea of desks, there are people who do not have jobs at all, or who do not have jobs that are as well-paid as yours who actively covet your job. If you sit in a cubicle, there are people out there in the bullpen who want more than anything else in the world to sit in a cubicle -- in YOUR cubicle.
If you have an office with walls that reach the ceiling and a door that opens and closes, there are people sitting in cubicles who want your office. If your office has a window, there are people with inside offices who want your office. If your office has a window and is on a high floor, there are myriad people who have offices on lower floors who want to move up.
If you have industrial carpeting on your office floor, there are people with linoleum tile or raised floors who want to sit where you sit. If your office flooring is a cut above industrial carpet, there are many, many people who want what you have.
If you are standing on the subway at rush hour and the door opens, there are people on the platform who want the 48 square inches of floor you are occupying. If you are sitting on the bus, there are people standing right in front of you who want your seat. If you are riding in a taxi, there are the people on the curb who want your cab. If you are in a limo, there are people in all the other modes of transportation who want to be sitting right where you are sitting, even if it is motionless in traffic.
If you live in a 12 room duplex coop on Park Avenue, there are many, many people who want your living place. If you have a rent stabilized two bedroom, ditto. If you have a studio that you can afford, ditto. Furthermore, your landlord is among the population that wants your apartment, and is apt to be among the more vicious of those trying to get it.
If you are reaching for a quart of milk at the grocery store, there is someone else in that store at that very moment that covets that quart of milk.
It translates to intangibles as well. I won't belabor the obvious in terms of competition for recognition at work or for promotion. The competition for the scarce spaces in most Manhattan nursery schools is legendary, as are the spaces in the ongoing schools, both private and public (remember, please, that New York City has a hierarchy of public schools that parallels the private sector, and in which the competition is just as bloodthirsty.)
It's natural, in an environment where the sharks are continuously circling, that people feel a need to celebrate their survival.
This leads to conversations salted with mentions of what a person has, and frequently what they have gotten most recently. My wife still recalls a woman she met 25 years ago at our daughter's nursery school who introduced herself by telling my wife that she and her husband had a 12 room duplex on Park Avenue. Both of us have long since forgotten her name, but we both can still refer to her as "12 room duplex" and know exactly who we are referring to.
"My girl will call your girl" to set up a meeting is such an egregious boast (not only that you actually have a secretary or admin assistant -- a rarity anymore -- but also that you are so important that you do not need to abide by conventions -- and laws -- about sex roles) that one almost never hears it anymore. (If fact, the legal ramifications are such that someone who says it is weakening himself competitively. Thus, it isn't much said.)
It's dangerous for people who work for you to know powerful people, even if the powerful people your people know could actually help you. As it turns out, I met and had lunch one Sunday with Archbiship Desmond Tutu at a time when my employer was having problems not only with opening branches in South Africa, but also was attempting to deal with redlining issues in its New York City business. I was certainly in a position where I could have reached him on the telephone, and possibly have gotten an appointment with him for someone higher up in the corporation. When I mentioned this to the guy I was working for at the time, he reacted with visible horror. He immediately realized that I appeared to have a resource that emphatically trumped any resource he could muster, and he very quickly shifted me to projects where Archbishop Tutu could not be even remotely relevant. He was simply defending what he had.
People in New York City routinely work mind-numbing hours. The reason is not that they have more work to do than people in Peoria, but that any time they are not at their desk, or visibly incurring expenses on behalf of their employer, someone else could be cutting into their game.
Do you currently have a parking space that will permit your car to remain in situ through the next alternate side parking day? Well, don't move it, even for a moment. Someone else wants your parking place, and will take it in a heartbeat.
Got a subscription for a couple of really good seats at the opera or the ballet? Going to be away for the next season? Don't be a fool and let your subscription lapse even if you cannot attend a single performance. You will never, ever get seats as good again.
Got someone to clean your apartment who is honest, a hard worker, and shows up like clockwork? Have a friend who needs someone to clean their apartment? You're a fool if you even let your friend know you have such a resource -- they will find a way to hire that resource away from you.
Eternal vigilance is the price of holding on to what you have in New York City.
Honestly, anyone who can live for an extended period in New York City and not adapt to the cultural mores is either an insensitive fool or a saint -- and actually, most insensitive fools are able to catch on rather quickly.
From here, up a dirt road, I can't really take a particularly critical view of New Yorkers. They have earned their sharp elbows.
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2 comments:
I'd like to add however, that this lust for things better than what one has already is not unique to New Yorkers. EVERYONE has this problem, and the revulsion that you get from non-New Yorkers, I've concluded at least, stems from jealousy. You have the Lexus SUV that they want. You send your children to fancy schmancy private schools while they can't. You have political power because you know "important" people, but they don't. They say they don't want these things because these things are frivolous. But they hate you because they are not in a position to take these things away from you to have them themselves, and they know it. You're not rubbing these things in their face, you merely exist with them. That is enough to be perceived as rubbing to them.
I once had a conversation with a girl from downstate IL. I believe this was the one in which she found out I was a New Yorker, and that I was 1-degree from Paris Hilton. She told me that people from downstate hate Chicagoans because we think we can get all the state tax funds because we are bigger and richer, and thus more entitled. Well I'll tell you something. New Yorkers are bigger and richer than everyone else combined. And they can walk all over everyone else because they are bigger and richer. The fact that they don't most of the time is a testament to their good will.
Enough of my tirade. I'm frankly tired of people taking a big shit on me because they think bad things about New Yorkers in general. Whenever people do that, I just shake my head and think, "What an ignorant fool," and go in the opposite direction.
I think that your belief that the dislike of New Yorkers by other Americans is due to envy is misguided. Just as New Yorkers do not give much thought to outsiders and their likes and dislikes, outsiders truly do not consider what is important to New Yorkers to be important to them. The materialism evident in your stated pride in owning a Lexus is New York materialism. That said, it’s a poor choice on your part because they're common everywhere. Similarly, the fancy private school syndrome of New York leaves others cold and, honestly, I think our public schools are better than almost any private school in the New York area simply because we learn more about other Americans than do New Yorkers --- their ignorance of the rest of us is appalling.
What offends outsiders most is the assumption by many New Yorkers that there is nothing outside of New York, no quality of life, no entertainment, no decent dining, no adequate schools, no culture, no intelligence, no wit, no talent, etc., nothing. Also offensive is the often expressed New York impression that outsiders’ lifestyles are dull and drab in comparison with theirs; it refutes their self-image of great tolerance. This condescension coupled with the often expressed attitude that New York is better than every place else in the world in every way ultimately leaves the city in the position of having to prove it. A visit to New York by anyone quickly reveals that, while it has its virtues, NYC is still just a city with all of the negatives and positives that implies. Consequently, it's easy and probably too desirable to see the negatives after being bombarded with the bragging and the condescension that New Yorkers frequently levy upon others---and they do this, I have experienced it virtually every time I have been there and from most casual New York visitors to my home in Ohio.
Why is it that New Yorkers cannot respect other peoples’ lives and homes and cannot accept that New York is not without its faults? Showing some humility and respect for outsiders would do much for the city’s image and undo a good deal of the poor relations its citizens have with the rest of America.
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