
Of course cornerstone to our routine is the well-refined list of stuff we hate on – the things we, as 20-something New Yorkers (sorry, this one’s location-centric) have collectively deemed annoying, worthless, and – let’s be honest – below us. It’s not pretty but, besides Christy Brinkley’s 50-year-old face, nothing true ever really is.
Suburbia
The concept of suburbia with its cookie-cutter, safe for kids, mall-shopping inhabitants goes against everything we poor, anti-cars, who-needs-a-backyard New Yorkers believe in. Drive for a decent cup of coffee? Over our barely-squeezed-into-our-4’x4’-bathroom-bodies. Plus dry cleaners store your winter clothes over the Summer for free negating the point of a house.
“It” bars on weekends
This is admittedly 5 years old but it works so well that we keep it around for sport:
- Friend from city other than Manhattan: “So, should we go to some cool club tonight?!”
- You: Oh my god no – it’s Friday! Those clubs are only good Monday through Wednesday. The weekends are so B&T , no one good goes out then.
Murray Hill
Murray Hill flies in the face of everything Manhattan stands for. It’s full of straight men and preppy girls drinking affordable beers in places predominantly featuring 80’s music that are conveniently located to the office and home. If that’s what we were after we would have stayed in Boston.
LA
New Yorker’s hatred for LA runs so deep that we’ve placed Winter in our plus column, “I mean, how unnatural to not have four seasons – I could never live like that.” They’re plastic we’re organic. They sit in traffic, we ride air-conditioned among the true melting pot of our society. They drink, drive, and get caught – we drink, cab, and get ass. We don’t care that their apartments are twice the size of ours for 2/3rds the price – all the cool celebrities pick us and The Today Show is #1, always.
People who gawk at celebrities
Um can they not tell by the lack of blonde hair and smog that this is not LA?! Here we treat our celebrities with the decency and respect they deserve – we pretend not to see them, text all our friends we just did, and email GawkerStalker the second we can get to a computer.
Nepotism
We will sell our friend whose dad got her the Vogue gig up and down the river like a 5 cent whore – until we find a job posting for something at Conde that suits our fancy
“Hey lover – was soo excited to hear you got the Vogue gig – well deserved chica!! Also, just noticed a posting for something at Vanity Fair –wondering if your Dad could provide any career advice on that. Let me know. Drinks ASAP pah-lease!! XO”
Networking is not at all the same as nepotism.
Hoboken
See Murray Hill – add in traveling to New Jersey and bars that close at 2am.
Canal Street and everyone who goes there on purpose
If one more person softly whispers “for yooo – Gushi purse – 20 dollar” in my ear I’m going to knock over their entire table of $3 sunglasses and then take three pair for myself. Also – it is always 10 degrees hotter on Canal Street – tested fact.
People who refer to the subway lines by color
How do they not understand that the “blue” line is comprised of three trains – two of which are local, one of which curves from west to east, and the other an express that will take you from 79 to 125 without warning. This is not Paris – the letters here are written in English!!
When the rain shuts down the subway system
Two fold: it’s hard to hail the merits of your world-class city when rain is its transportation kryptonite. Also it pisses us off because we lose 75% of our salary to city taxes that apparently go to shit slash stadiums.
The one hour between 4:00 and 5:00 when it’s hard to get a cab because the drivers are switching shifts
They are supposed to be available always and immediately. We cannot lose any grounding in our ever-waging war against LA.
Having a Blackberry from work
“Ugh, they can always get me on this thing. I just hate having it…but I had no choice,” we grumble as we check our gmail for the name of the bar, google search it, google map it, and blackberry message the link to our friends.
People who hate New York
We don’t really hate them, we just feel bad for them. But not everyone has what it takes to make it in the greatest city in the world: 3 to 5 credit cards, under-the-bed storage devices, and an expert ability to believe our own delicious lies.
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This post just convinced me to go to Los Angeles.
someone forwarded me this blog last week to read…after reading it for a few days i realized i didn’t need to have it forwarded to me, i’ve read it time and time again throughout the years, and oh yeah, there is a show based on almost all of these topics, it’s called sex and the city…bloggers really need to be original
every heard the adage, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”?
and if you’re gonna diss someone at least have the balls not to post anonymously.
Laura, although I like to agree with that saying most of the time (not really, but for the sake of argument just stick with me), in this case, when Jess posted on the internet, she left herself open to criticism. And, why not? Through constructive criticism, we learn and grow.
But what anonymous fails to realize is that although Sex and the City shares a similar setting and subject matter– and anonymous dares to suggest that the hit show was more than about (gasp) just SEX– that doesn’t make 20-nothings unoriginal. The two simply use a formula that is successful: personal contact with complex issues, guidance/advice/perspective of a young woman living in a difficult and competitive environment, humor instead of sentementality, irreverence to tackle serious issues. In other words, nothing is sacred, and it’s all about relationships– or better yet, Relating. These are themes that other bloggers attempt to tackle and do so with much less flair and entertainment value; plus, they miss the point most of the time.
This criticism sounds more like a personal attack than it does anything else. That is why, as a reader, I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. What was that shitty line from Quarter Life? “We blog because we live/live to blog…” And that shit made it to TV!
Keep up the good work Miss Rosen.