Rudeness

I've heard quite a bit about New Yorkers since I got back earlier this week. People who hear that I've been there say a lot of, "Ugh, those New Yorkers are so rude." All of this from Midwesterners who have never lived in the city, of course. But, it seems, if there's one thing these people know for sure, it's that everyone living everywhere else is a jackass.

I actually found New Yorkers to be quite lovely. When you live in New York, when you take the subway to and from work at rush hour, when you shop in a neighborhood grocery store, when you spend lazy weekends in the park; you realize just how great New Yorkers can be.

The tourists who bitch about a rude New York fail to recognize that the city is not an amusement park. It's inhabitants are not Disney employees paid to make sure you have a pleasant stay. The New Yorkers live there. When they're out in the city, they're actually trying to get somewhere. If you're standing in the middle of a street corner at 6:30 on a Friday evening holding your camera and a map, spinning in those wiiide tourist circles, trying to figure out which way is east, you shouldn't be surprised if some woman trying to get home to her kids after a long day at the office tells you to MOVE.

If you followed that woman into the subway, you would see that, without saying a word, she'll take the cumbersome bag from the old woman in front of her and lift it to the top of the escalator. She'll do this for two reasons: first, she is a decent human being who cares for the elderly, and second, the old lady was taking so long that none of us was going to make it from the 51st to 53rd street station if somebody didn't move things along. I respect her for both.

The point is, I'm not convinced that it's a city full of jackasses. In fact, I found a lot of people--very different people--living in a relatively small space, very few of them killing each other. Like I said, lovely.