Ten Things I Hate About New York
1. The subway. Getting a seat is a miracle, even when I try to travel at odd times of day. (Taking the subway to Roosevelt Hospital for surgery: could not get a seat at 4:45 AM. What. The. Hell.)
2. The lack of food. This is more neighborhood-specific, but there is one halfway decent 24 hour place in my neighborhood, which is next to a homeless shelter with dudes outside who smoke pot and proposition you, not to mention the registered address of six convicted rapists (according to the precinct website), and therefore not the sort of place you'd want to walk to 24 hours a day. Not to mention that their food is overpriced. If I'm going to pay $7.50 for a salad, those croutons better be made of solid gold.
3. CURB YOUR DAMN DOG.
4. Sequestered green space. I miss the Lawn. The Morningside campus has a fake lawn (patches of green), which is better than the med campus, which has a "Memorial Garden" consisting of literally fifteen tulips (I know because I counted them) but the Morningside lawns are fenced off and surrounded by a privet hedge so high you can't climb it. Hate it. I miss the Lawn.
5. Tourists. Shut up, stupid tourists. I glower at people a lot these days, mostly because I don't want to be asked to take a photo of them in front of Low Library. (Morningside: Not. That. Exciting.)
6. Rent. I do like my view of the river and the bridge, but it kills me every time I realize I could buy a house in Charlottesville instead.
7. Crowdedness. At least five million of you need to leave. Right. Now.
8. The bubble. You've all seen the New Yorker cover. It's not really a joke.
9. The way it rains, which is to say that rather than Virginia storms, we get three, four, five days of straight-up rain. Even when it's nice out, there is nowhere to go, because everyone floods Central and Ft. Tryon Parks and you can barely move without stepping over bodies.
10. The way that ancillary and retail staff makes a fuss unless you dangle the promise of a tip. You know what pisses me off? When I buy groceries, say, the cashier does not look me in the face, has a sullen expression the whole time, and at the end of the transaction, when they hold my receipt out in space and I take it from them -- I thank them. What the hell? Sometimes I fantasize about calling people out on it, Woody Allen style, but instead I shop at Trader Joe's and Columbia Wine Co., where the cashiers actually, you know, say hello and treat you like a human.
Nineteen months to go!