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I Love NY
Many great jobs, lotsa cute chicks and guys, 24 hour access to liquor and groceries by taking an elevator to ground level, all the incredible parks - Central park has deer, alligators, pythons, geese, swans, blue herons, bluebirds, cardinals, orioles, woodpeckers, flickers, peregrine falcons, hawks, owls, many visible easily with the naked eye. I once rested a hand on a tree trunk and missed touching a flicker by inches. Other parks have turkeys and coyotes, most have skunks, oppossum, snapping turtles. Unfortunately they all have mice and rats ranging in size from lab rats to small beagles. Then there's the skyline, the many many museums, zoos, botanical gardens, the Planet Arium, (But with Neil Degr-Asse-Tyson instead of Pluto - the bastard!) Michael Newberry's studio, Top-notch medical facilities, (I've been in the same Hospital where George Costanza watched the nurse bathe the naked lady on Seinfeld - my ward was not so stimulating nut it was clean and my surgeon the best in the country - saved me from a more than 30% of death and from having to get a lifelong colostomy (as they were going to give me at Saint Lukes where they let Lennon Bleed to death) by using radical treatments - Nicolas Feahy, at NYHospital Presbyterian, if anyone needs a reference and relatively low crime rate in NYC (It helps too, if you're over 6 feet and don't look too much like Woody Allen.) Then there are the movie theaters and play houses, the restaurants, the ethnic diversity (I actually get uncomfortable going back to my home town which is 95% WASP, even though I am Russo/Nordic in appearance.) And best of all is the books. Books everywhere, two flagship B&N stores each 4 stories high with regular appearances by renowned authors, used bookstores all over, 21 miles of books at the Strand - the largest store on the east coast, and specialty book stores of every type. Some lunatic judge said that the first amendment allows people to sell books on the sidewalk. In certain neighborhoods you can but vintage and textbooks from homeless people for a dollar.
Indeed, my last visit to the freegans netted me:
Atlas Shrugged (80's ppbk)
Fountainhead (90's ppbk)
Ratzinger's official vatican cathechism w/179 pp of ethics and politics in summa form.
White Goddess by Graves
Clancy's Sum of all Fears
Crichton's Airfream
Chthon by Piers Anthony
all for $10
The subways get you anywhere with a free transfer for $2, 600 miles of track up to 45 miles long, with relatively clean airconditioned cars. You run into celebrities. I've met or bumped into Patrick Stewart, Mariah Carry, Regis Philbin, Bernadette Peters, Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Kathleen Turner, and many more. My boyfriend Got OJ Simpson's autograph one weak before the murders.
Of course, my boyfriend was killed in a hijacking. The tax rate and cost of food is ridiculous, Milk is between $4.50 & 5.50 a Gallon. A parking spot in a good area costs as much as the rent on a studio apartment. Space is expensive, most people food and clothing shop on monthly trips to NJ to wholesale clubs. But luxuries are cheap.
My only advice is that NYC is no place to raise children, they come out rude, loud, parochial, poorly dressed, and this is in the rich neighborhoods. The white enclaves of the Upper East and West sides of Manhattan have the rudest people on earth, they put the French to shame. The wives and daughters of white businessmen are clueless, walking backwards through intersections talking on their cellphones. They cut in line (I put my hand on their heads or shoulders and stop such behavior) and if they don't get their way the usually scream or cry or both.
But if you can put up with those minor inconveniences, nothing beats NY.
Ted Keer
(Edited by Ted Keer on 9/14, 7:12am)
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