Give me a reason to love you

The magazine care package that thoughtful as ever Tony brought me to fill my endless hours had a bit of everything. Of course the fist thing I jumped on was Globe magazine. I mean, when a cover includes pictures of Tiger Woods, shirtless Obama and Sarah Palin, headlines like “Scandals and Shockers” and captions such as “sex secrets, suicide dramas, dirty divorces, medical ordeals” (sic), all punctuated with more exclamation marks than my average Facebook status message thread, you know that the Economist can (and will) wait. After just glossing over OK magazine (sorry, Hello! person here) as well as the special end of the year Time issue, I started reading the New York magazine.

Its main article is called Reasons to Love New York, and as it is usually the case in this type of lists, it’s a mixture of more or less whimsical stories that make this city the object of our love and, while at it, the alleged capital of planet Earth. I definitely agree with this last conclusion (if only because I live here and therefore it’s the capital of the world I care for, i.e. mine-my excuses to traditional contenders like Paris, Tokyo and London and up and coming metropolises such as Shanghai, Sao Paulo and Minsk). However, the reasons of love they give, for the most part I frankly don’t care so much for. Maybe I’m too uninformed, unhip or un-local, but Jets Coach’s antics do nothing for me nor does the lesbian bar scene in Williamsburg. So anyways, why do I like New York?

It’s a tough question to answer simply. There are many little things I like, small, almost trivial details here and there that make this place appealing to me, but not one big huge reason I can point out. At first sight NYC is not particularly pretty. Not in the European way at least. It’s not terribly clean, with sidewalks invaded every other day by mountains of trash teeming with creatures you prefer not to think of. Public services are not exactly Tokyo level. The subway, well it’s functional, huge, 24/7, I know... but also eminently nasty and ugly. And so on and so forth.

However, from a safe distance, just like an impressionist painting or an elegant lady slightly past her peak time, New York is simply magnificent. Back in 2000, when I was first being driven into the city, I saw in awe Manhattan skyline cutting the horizon. By the time we reached downtown I knew I loved the place, even though back then I had no clue I would end up living in the middle of it.

New Yorkers are not a bad bunch either. Beyond all the clichés and common places (which they themselves love and promote by the way, you know the ‘only in New York’ thing that they live for) I find them a pretty funny, helpful and even pleasant crowd, considering the little hell that urban living can mean sometimes. Of course you have the nasties too, but if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have overheardinnewyork.com and that would be unforgivable.

Damn. I think in this post I bit more I can chew. My list has to be be enormous. And the four-paragraph limit for my posts I imposed myself is clearly broken. So I will just say that I like many many other things about this town, e.g. the chute in my building (pure awesomeness); brunch in the East Village; same day shipping for online stuff; General Tso chicken from the Chinese place downstairs; policemen and firemen teams in my street during the General Assembly; walking cross town from Tompkins Square to Christopher street piers on a Sunday afternoon; white haired elderly ladies with red lipstick and big berets; café frappé with plenty of eye candy in Astoria’s Athens Cafe; a new Apple store every other month; and of course, the Statue of Liberty (come on, Rosario, it’s very beautiful). I just don’t care so much about A-Rod Having Babe Ruth in His Sights. I guess I’ll never be a New Yorker.