I Love NY

Every year, the citizens of Vermont and New Hampshire get together to have their governors see who can throw a piece of cow dung the farthest. It's the symbolic representation of the feud that exists between the two states over which one is better. Both states are litteral mirror images of one another. Flip New Hampshire 180 degrees and drag it west by a few miles, and it will overlay Vermont. New Hampshire has the White Mountains. Vermont has the Green, but who cares what color mountains are--you can jump off them, ski on them, or freeze to death on them whether they're Green, White, or the more traditional rock-colored. Vermont has rapidly aging hippies. New Hampshire has rapidly aging gun maniacs. Vermont has Ben and Jerry's. New Hampshire has drive-through liquor stores. Guns are fun to use on hippies. Rum raisin ice-cream is better with real rum.

These are two tiny states somewhere up near the arctic circle. Combine their two landmasses together and they're giving Maryland a run for its money. Their only contribution to the national scene is that New Hampshire has the first Republican primary, so it's fun to watch as idiots like Phil Gramm try to get down with their Bad New England Selves, and Vermont sends Barry Sanders (a socialist with a party designation of "Independent") as its sole representative to Congress. As far as both states go, they should be traded to Canada for Vancouver and we could even throw in Detroit and a draft pick. If you want to ski, go to Colorado. If you want milk, go to upstate New York or Wisconsin. If you want granite, there's probably an alternative source somewhere. (Not that I worry about it a whole lot, because it's something that I just take for granite. Snork.)

Both states literally think that they are the literally the cow's patoot. Provinsialism rears its ugly inbred head.

Provincialism is something that one would normally associate with out of the way, irrelevant places, like Vermont, New Hampshire, or Dallas thinking that their particular, peculiar, parochial way of life is the best. Since everywhere's smaller than New York, everywhere is provincial relative to it. Last week, New York was provincial. You would have thought that it'd lost the World Cup of Cowshit Throwing. Too bad everyone there was so immersed in the city that no one could notice the smell.

Just last week, Money magazine selected DC as the best large city in the east. New York ranked third behind Boston. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, referred to by my cabbie today as a "real psychofuck" (an attitude shared by many) also provided a few good ones. his Honor said that Boston has been irrelevant for two hundred years. Washington DC is nearly bankrupt and its mayor is a crack-using felon. Boston is one of my favorite cities, DC is America's Mecca. New York has its own financial problems, and its mayor is really a psychofuck who permits his police force to enjoy open season on minorities. At least that's not a felony. Yet.

The reaction in the New York City press was hilarious. The only thing that saved Andrea Peyser's editorial in the Post was that she made fun of New Jersey. But that's a cheap shot: no city in the world should try to improve their image by comparing itself to Newark. Ms. Peyser also made fun of New Jersey's pollution of Arthur Kill, while somehow forgetting to mention that Arthur Kill is the body of water that separates New Jersey and New York City's Staten Island.

New York's highways cannot handle its inhabitants. The expressways are parking lots. There is no fast way to get across town in Manhattan, whose average 7 mile per hour traffic inspired Jimi Hendrix to write "Crosstown Traffic". In spite of my friend's declaration that people do not get off the highways in the Bronx because it's too dangerous, I have left the highway and gone into the Bronx--once--and to me, it's a dead ringer for Brooklyn and Queens.

While I was with Mark on a story in Bedford-Stuyvessant in Brooklyn last week, people came up to talk to us. They thought we were lost because we were white--or that we were looking for drugs or whores. Bed-Stuy was the location for Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing", and it was obviously cleaned up for the movie. There are areas in Brooklyn that look like sets from "Escape from New York". It's not possible to drive on the Staten Island Expressway without being overwhelmed by the stench of the landfill. Manhattan has four smells: exhaust, garbage, sewage, and roasting peanuts, and the peanuts may simply be the combination of the other three. New Yorkers pay an extra 4.5% income tax in addition to New York State's already high taxload. I have no idea which river they're flushing that money into. New Yorkers' favorite hobby is complaining among themselves about how terrible New York is--and while you can't understand a thing that any of them are talking about, 12 million New Yorkers can't be wrong. It's a place only a real psychofuck could love.

Just try and get one of them to admit it.