Nueva York...cold, wet, and nothing special.

Rant, START:

My big beautiful car that brought me so much joy and excitement in California, the one i NEVER scratched or dented the three years I had it on the left coast, is in the shop again getting yet another garage related wound fixed. it's bumpers look like they suffered chickenpox as a child and the doors have all sorts of minute imperfections. this is ALL related to NYC parking, and a $500 monthly garage spot. you would think for that kind of money, there might be a smidgen of consideration from the guys who slam it into its spot everyday when i am not looking. they seem to do this with no mind to the car, a skill only mastered by a true new york mindset.
Meanwhile, the shitty weather is yet again, cold and raining, and I am forced to walk through White Plains in the constant downpour so i can take the Metro North back to the city. no doubt I will be doing this all week since nothing gets fixed in NYC in under a week. But what is most egregious about the cold weather is the fact that May is almost over. May is usually the one month of nice medium weather, after the cold but before the real searing heat. If we don't get a nice may here it has the effect of winter slamming into summer without a break from extremities. Come June suddenly its 100 degrees and the city becomes a roaring medley of drippy A/C units and sweaty butt cracks. yay.

So here's my question to myself. WTF am i doing living here?!?! I have this rent-controlled apartment with a large private garden on the upper west side. i know, i am absurdly blessed to have this. but i am also cursed by it. i continue to keep the place and live in it out of obligation to the fact that is such a rare commodity. so rare, that even the hint of the idea that i would give it up makes people shutter. so, in the end, it really keeps me. it keeps me from enjoying months of great weather. it keeps me from the beach most of the year, and certainly from good waves. it keeps me from living in the same neighborhood as most of my old friends. it keeps me from good, convenient skiing (if anybody mentions Vermont, then they haven't done the math. it takes the SAME amount of time to fly to the Rockies as it does to drive to VT, and the mountains are actually big and get powder.) it keeps me from enjoying a generally higher quality of life, eating superior sushi, Mexican food, and wearing flip-flops all the time.

Am i seriously putting up with yearlong dreariness and nature isolation just to rub elbows with the hoards of suburban stripey shirt wearing rude-sters that populate the island of Manhattan now? is it that i really like swerving all over the 20 foot wide sidewalk avoiding baby strollers being pushed by an army of surly nannies so i can go to a real museum every now and then? it's really starting to look like insanity to me. or at least a failure to let go of my hometown. but it let go of itself a long time ago. or rather, it let go of it's beloved funky natives when it decided it was ok to quadruple every body's rent. now natives Manhattanites live in Brooklyn, or god forbid, even further. unless, like me, they ended up with one of the few rent-controlled anomalies that slants the rental market against the very people that used to make NYC a special and different place. it was once a sanctuary from the mundane, and the boredom, and the endless repetition of franchises that is America. now it's just like the malls of the mainland, only WITHOUT the convenience.

I was in a sunny and beautiful place this last weekend. I actually got a tan. The airport was a breeze and the food was great. the night life was easily accessible, even for a clueless visitor, and the dance floors were crowded and active. I don't know if anybody has noticed, but dance floors in NYC are only for places with cabaret licenses. they are rare and usually a 20 dollar cover IF you can get past the bouncer. That's the kind of system that Footloose was dealing with. the second i landed in the big rotten apple i was struck with just how decrepit and ugly the place is. fucked up streets all under construction that never seems to get finished, cars that look like they got into a death match with Ironman. big, old, brick projects that should have never been built staring smugly across at big, new, ugly, glass condos that should never have been built. the whole scene is just plain depressing and indicative of a place that is WAY past it's prime.

but first, before all that fun, i needed to go to the bathroom at La Guardia. I was suddenly faced with a looong line of guys waiting to destroy one of 3 dirty stalls. just 3. that really says it in a nutshell. thousands of swinging dicks, and just three toilets.

It all used to be worth it. Simply because the city was SO wild and crazy. it was so funky and fucked up back then, that most of the people that live here today would have gotten mugged and moved back home a while ago. it was a place to visit, to say that they had been there and seen it, but to live there one needed real guts. Now? it's the very people that i got to avoid by living in NYC that now surround me. It's their bumped up cars that bump mine in the expensive garage.

It's really really hard for me to just give up on my hometown like this. But clearly, it's just not as cool or pleasant as living on the west coast anymore. my days here are hopefully numbered. At least on a seasonal basis.

I look forward to one day complaining about traffic on the 405, the lack of good bagels and pizza, fog in the bay area, the slow driving skills of people in the north-west. those are complaints i know i can live with in the long run.

Of course, flash forward 10 years and i will probably still be ranting like this and living here. So maybe i just need to get really good at voicing my complaints just for the therapeutic effects.

Rant, DONE.