Why I Hate New York

January 3, 2007

I find New York City to be such a cliché that anyone who moves there in their twenties immediately loses respect in my eyes. Including my own parents.

To be fair, the allure of Manhattan is understandable. For the average person, who has grown up somewhere in between the two coveted coasts, New York City holds in it the promise of everything that Middle America lacks: fame, fortune, success, love, excitement. New York City is far more accessible than a place like Los Angeles, its loose rival; New York City is, in fact, the historic gateway to America, boasting Ellis Island and a lasting Lady Liberty, her light a beacon to immigrants and college graduates alike. The heartbeat and lifeblood of the city are very real and palpable, which makes it even more appealing to someone just embarking into a brave new world. New York is a cultural, artistic, and business Mecca; none of these things can be denied. But New York is also an excuse; it is the easy out; it is the obvious answer. And for these reasons I find New York to be so despicable and deplorable that any of my peers who eagerly leap towards the city after graduation cause me to shake my head and become embarrassed that I am even acquainted with them.

Part of the reason that I hate New York is because it has lured away many people in my life who I would have rather stayed with me, near me, anywhere but there: the longtime girlfriend wanting to be an actress opting for the stage rather than the screen; the sporadic lover whose attention I could never quite hold; the best friend from college who found the city to offer a life far more simple than Los Angeles. Part of my antagonism towards New York is the result of a defense of Los Angeles, where I have inexplicably (and, admittedly, also somewhat clichéd-ly) found myself at this point in my life. I chose Los Angeles; everyone else apparently chose exactly the opposite, resulting in my need to defend my choice vehemently.

But New York also is a place built upon romance that can not possibly hold true that it disgusts me that I once associated myself with people who fall ignorant to its empty promises. I lived for quite some time during my childhood in upstate New York and consequently visited the city several times before my adolescence; at the time, it was a breathtaking, fascinating, glamorous city; far more interesting, certainly, than Buffalo, where I lived, and Boston, where I spent my summers with my mother’s family. I loved the action, the museums, the liveliness of everything. But then again, I was merely a child; children are easily sucked in by oversized toy stores and gargantuan ice cream sundaes.

The most significant aspect of what I like to call that New York Cliché is that the people in their immediate post-collegiate years who choose to move there somehow think that they are instantly these chic adults by simple virtue of the fact that they live there. You know the type: they cram themselves like sardines, four people to a one-bedroom sixth-story walk-up apartment on the Upper East Side; they read the Village Voice because that instantly conveys a level of coolness otherwise unattainable; they stop at the City Bakery for hot chocolate. The young women picture themselves to be replicas of Carrie/Samantha/Charlotte/Miranda; the young men, Patrick Bateman, in perhaps the most amusing irony of all given the fact that the vast majority of college men don’t realize that American Psycho is a satire.

My first visit to New York City post-childhood came the summer after my sophomore year of college, for fourth of July weekend to visit a friend from university. It was significant because it was my first visit to a 9/11 site; 9/11, having been a particularly traumatizing event for me considering the fact that I did not directly know anybody affected, holds with it a weight all its own that is above New York itself. I had sensed long before the visit that I would not like Manhattan upon my return, but I vowed to look at it with fresh eyes and the vigor only a college coed can have. Unfortunately, I found it to be a city so full of itself and up its own ass that even Ground Zero lacked the emotional meaning I expected it to have for me.

It’s not that I can’t handle the brusqueness New Yorkers pride themselves on; Angelenos can have as much of an attitude as any grouping of people around. It’s not that I don’t find New York to offer a plethora of lifestyle and activity avenues that aren’t found most places; these things, to be certain, are something New York rightfully prides itself on. It’s the significance that people in their 20s give New York; it’s the ignorance that my peer group somehow has come to adopt as a collective whole that has led it to believe that New York is heaven on earth; the most outrageous move a young person can make. New York, in fact, is the Cliché of Clichés.

The most intriguing aspect of all of this anti-New York sentiment to me is the fact that I, too, find myself drawn in by the romance and apparent anything-can-happen feel of the city, and want to live there at some point while I’m still young and single. Of course I want to: who doesn’t want to be a successful young ingénue with her pseudo-boho apartment on her oh-so-perfect block of brownstones, wearing her delightfully charming Jimmy Choos and tapping away on her Mac, dating a string of handsome and eclectic men. This, however, is the myth of New York that still makes it the number one hotspot for post-college children to descend upon. It is a city built upon myths; myths that should be, if not shattered, then at least shaken a little bit.

You see, New York has been reduced to an idea, a concept, a pose; its inhabitants, the ultimate poseurs. It has become a parody of itself, pastiche within post-modern pastiche; it has developed into the exact ridiculous portrait of wannabes and moochers that Ellis started to lay into the chemicals with American Psycho. This is so beyond insane that I am forced, by my own stubbornness and desire to go against the grain, to hate New York.

And so, I hate NY.