I Love – I Hate – New York
I Love What Drives Me Crazy About NYC

Let’s make one point perfectly clear: New York is the greatest city in the world. No, it doesn’t matter that I haven’t scoured the earth looking for the perfect metropolis in order to substantiate my claim. As a connoisseur of world cities, I’d have to say that, though I’ve been to several, in terms of expertise I’m woefully starved. But it doesn’t matter. New Yorkers know their city is the greatest, and we make the boast not out of experience but with a conviction as enormous as one of our deli-sized corned beef sandwiches, the dimensions of a football. New York is the best. End of story. Fuhgeddaboudit.

But damn if it doesn’t feel like a living hell more often than I wish to admit. But, you see I’m less inclined to offer up this insight for one simple reason: I live here. I want life to be good. Somewhere, in some small town with a village green and a white clapboard church, neighbors wave to the paperboy as he slings his daily onto a large lawn, while genteel folk rock comfortably on a porch swing, no trouble in the world that disturbs their state of bliss. Me, I’m having trouble sleeping. The kids are downstairs in the street bouncing a basketball off the hood of a Toyota, and setting off one of several car alarms which make themselves known at precisely the point I find myself beginning to nod off for the night.

Everyone has their story of daily misery, but, since it’s experienced by everyone, most keep their stories to themselves, bringing them out like holiday china only at long sessions of bitching. The daily commute via subway, crammed into a narrow car like a sardine among dozens of perilously smelly individuals, each of whom must hold onto the bar above your head for support, is a story that millions can tell. Getting soaked by a lakeful of water as a speeding cab caroms through an intersection: that’s another. Brushing against an irritable bloke who’s apparently been waiting all his life to tell someone, while cracking his knuckles, just what a violent scene a little accident like yours can cause, and you’re in the line of fire: again, another. But to illustrate how one can find beauty and peace in New York’s often-ugly enigmatic encounters, I must relate one personal and bizarre event.

I found myself late one Saturday night on a crowded PATH train en route to my then home in New Jersey after a night in the city. As all New York stories begin, I was just standing there minding my own business when I inadvertently brushed my foot against the fellow standing next to me in the jammed car. It was one of those miserably hot nights that the city makes more confining by seeming like a prison of humidity. Though the air-conditioned car was so cold you could hang meat, when the doors opened we were blasted by smelly hot air, like the distinctive breath of dog. This was apparently unbearable for this burly goon, for when I mumbled “sorry” he squared shoulders with me and asked with an ominous seriousness that, writing about it now, still makes me want to pee my pants, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Sorry” I said, rather brave of me I thought. This guy had the physique of a bulldozer.

He looked at me with narrowing eyes that said, “I would delight in tearing your head from your neck, then stuffing down your torso.” Instead, he asked again, and this time with a much greater emphasis, “So what the fuck you think you’re doing, asshole?”

He had breath like gin and an accent like mustard. I just stared at the guy, as bravely as I could, though I of course feared that he was about to go postal on a subway car full of drunk teens, and he was going to warm up his fists on my clean-shaven face. The guy actually bared his teeth, but turned away. Temporarily relieved, I buried my nose in the book I was reading when, somewhere under the Hudson, he turned back to me. I shuddered when his meaty hand touched my arm.

“Yo, bro.” He said. I looked up now at sad, forgiving eyes. He had a sad look of apology on his face.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry, you know.” I told him it was no problem, to forget about it, in essence.

“Yo, man. I’m sorry. I really sorry.” he implored.

I looked up. “Hey, no problem at all.” But somewhere under the river this guy apparently was struck with some awesome guilt, so much so that it must have clubbed him over his fat head. Once started, he became a robot of regret.

“Yo. I’m sorry.” He must have said it a hundred times in the minute before I got off, each time with more emphasis, more gesticulation. By now, he was touching me, on the verge of tears, and I just wanted off. When at last the doors opened, by stepping onto the platform and bounding up the stairs I barely escaped a bear hug from this bi-polar stranger dripping with apology.

Thinking about it afterward, I realized that this genius was unduly hot because of the requisite black turtleneck and heavy leather jacket that he kept on, the attire of the male clubber, and on this sweltering night, an idiotic slave to fashion. Still, it makes me smile now. The whole exchange was one that could only happen here.

It needn’t be repeated what New York has to offer. The sheer scale of its variety is immeasurably awesome. There’s something for everyone here and a list of its offerings in terms of culture, cuisine, business, shopping – and on and on – would run to pages. But it’s the people of New York that truly make the city what it is. New York is perhaps one of those few places where it’s possible to run across, for the first time, that special person with whom you have so much in common, it’s as if you’re staring into a humbling mirror. A someone who seems infinitely more enterprising, more imaginative, more creative, and uniquely inspiring, in fact, the embodiment of beauty, the ideal complement to self. I found such a person in New York one December evening when I was down and more than somewhat confused by what I was doing in this hostile, expensive, unforgiving place. I married her.

So much has changed in me since I moved here. I used to think a New York taxi was one of those enduring, romantic images of the city. Well, they’re everywhere, that’s for sure. But now I feel queasy just looking at anything yellow and moving. With their low, leather seats, peculiar smells and bone-jarring rides, I’d rather be on a roller coaster getting a wisdom tooth pulled by a drunk dentist. I’m certain I’d vomit just as much. Getting a cabbie to agree to drive me home to Brooklyn is a game of gentle persuasion (“head downtown toward Canal Street”) that only my wife has truly mastered. The whole cab experience can be truly dreadful, but I’m glad they’re here in this city of millions of walkers, especially in a sudden storm.

Winter in New York City, after the snow has accumulated and plows have piled it up into enormous gray drifts in the middle of Broadway, can be a frozen hell. Just crossing the street may involve equal parts walking, wading and climbing. I can’t count how many times I’ve had to slosh my way across the street, soaking my socks and ringing my good shoes with salt. But a newly blanketed city is one of the most sublime scenes I’ve ever encountered, particularly after a heavy snowfall. The normally-raucous neighborhoods become muted to a subtle sound that feels like silence. Kids take to the sylvan parks – Central, Prospect, Flushing Meadows (how about that for a name?) – in sleds, a mode of transport normally not seen in this city of pedestrians.

And about being a city of pedestrians: we’re all walking all the time. Elbowing one another up stairs, shouting “excuse me” a little louder than needed, bundling up from the wind that cuts between the midtown buildings, or trying to stay cool on the sticky summer pavement, all are situations we’ve encountered several times. But walking forces one to interact with others, and that, I feel, is generally a good thing, drunken schmucks aside. When I go home to my native Detroit, I’m struck by how few people there are in that metropolitan area of five million plus. They’re there. But they’re all in their cars of course, motoring from home to store to work to school to soccer practice to practically everything. I think some walk to the mailbox but that’s about it. It’s no surprise why Michiganders are so obese. The streets and subways of New York are great social equalizers. They force all to interact in a variety of ways. One morning I shared a subway car with two well-known actors, a supermodel, a skatepunk with orange hair and twelve piercings that I could see, a trader with his nose in the Wall St. Journal, a bag lady and a troop of singers doing a bang-up a cappella version of “Under the Boardwalk”. Even the mayor takes the subway.

For a year I commuted every day to my office in Times Square. It was wrought with discomfort the first night I stepped out of the building. Exiting the lobby to walk the five short blocks to the subway, I was confronted with a mass of humanity with the shape and dimensions of a tidal wave. Except that this wave barely moved. It’s composed of one part commuter like myself to ten parts tourist. These folks love to gawk at the bright lights, big crowds, the Good Morning America studios, MTV and the naked, singing cowboy. Tourists are easy to spot: they’re the ones wearing clothes a New Yorker wouldn’t be buried in. The men are conspicuous by the heavy cameras that hang around their necks or the camcorders that seem to be attached to the end of every hand nowadays. The women seem to wear jean shorts and sport massive plumages of feathered hair, often dyed a dusty blonde. Both sexes are invariably plumper than I’m used to seeing. They amble through the streets in no hurry to get to the theatre, to dinner. They drove me crazy. I just wanted to get home.

But then one evening I went to a play with my family. Walking out of the theatre we all must have had the look of one who has just been recently satiated, not gluttonous at all but pleasantly satisfied. There, in all it glowing glory, was Times Square, with my office far above. Billboards glowed, flashbulbs flashed, video screens cast large swaths of color across the front of hotels, musicians pounded plastic buckets with a wild abandon. Nowhere was there ever such a corona of artificial color than this tall, narrow mecca of capitalism. It was beautiful, and a beauty found only here.

Last week, I found myself in one of the heavy rains that dump a copious volume of water on the city, the remnants of the many autumn tropical storms that peter out in the Atlantic as they work northward. It was as if some enormous spigot in the sky was left on. This storm was coupled with a ferocious wind that drove the rain sideways. Downtown, where the tightly-clustered buildings make huge funnels of wind, we found ourselves dodging traffic and crossing streets with our umbrellas straight in front of us, blind to what was ahead. This is the kind of weather where I find myself jabbed in the eye by an umbrella spoke as so many insist on keeping theirs open all the way down the narrow subway steps. Some umbrellas are far too large. There are people in Third World countries with far less roof over their heads. The rain here can really bring out the worst: clothes become soiled, cabs fill up about a nanosecond after the first drop, tempers flare and those that left their umbrellas at home are particularly surly, certainly after they’ve shelled out $5 for one from a street vendor, only to find the flimsy thing fall apart just a few blocks away.

But today, there was a collective giddiness among the pedestrians, and it was palpable. It had barely rained all summer and we were thoroughly enjoying the change, as well as the inconvenience, as only hardened New Yorkers can. Turning a corner near City Hall, a wind off the Hudson grabbed a hold of my umbrella and I all but levitated across the street, my umbrella acting like a sail but looking like a satellite dish as I held on with two hands. Standing on the opposite corner was a woman who clearly just went through the same little ordeal and who was now laughing at my little escapade. Her glasses looked like a glass door after a hot shower and she and I found ourselves trying to repair our umbrellas which had become discombobulated in the typhoon. We each smiled the lips-closed, half-smile that is the New York sign of fraternity. We both understood, and we both said it above the din of blaring horns and sloshing puddles, sighing at the same time:

“Ah, New York.”

Sean Hickey
Albany - October, 2002