Back in the saddle

Peace, muchachos. I took a little week-long sabbatical to compose myself and now I'm back—refreshed, re-energized, and renovated. I'm tucking away the old voice because it's a little too cumbersome, a little too time-consuming and besides I doubt that any of you are reading this for my prose (although I do intend to post a few short stories as soon as I learn how to link them up without copy and pasting the entire document into a blog post... help me, Internet-Savvy Ravi!).

For today, I'm going to throw down the first installment of my series entitled Where Is Jeremy Going To Live Next Year? Breaking each place point by point, I should end up with at least a couple attractive options by the Deadline. So without further ado...

New York

Went there this weekend and in the process got some firsthand experience on what it's like to live in the Big Apple. Also got a taste of what it is like to ride in a bus driven by a Hassidic Jew (bumpy, to say the least).

Food.
The most important factor when selecting a residence—and New York delivers. In fact, the bulk of my Saturday was spent either a) eating food b) thinking about what kind of food to eat or c) travelling to get that food. This is what the melting pot is about, my friends... throwing down a few bagels in the morning, eating a slice of pizza for lunch, gorging yourself on cheap Chinese sweetmeats at night (sounds dirty, as it should), and then having another slice of pizza in the middle of the night because that kind of quality deserves an encore. The only reason I can stand "diversity initiatives" at UVA is because of the food potential, and the culinary community of New York is like a Ryan MccLvene wet dream.

Atmosphere.
Really pretty, in a dirty kind of way. Yeah the ground is covered with random shit and I'm afraid that I contracted typhoid because at one point my sandal fell off and my foot touched the ground. But if you keep your eyes up then it's a worthwhile spectacle—the urban jungle setting that makes you really feel like you're absorbed in a civilization and not simply lying to yourself like in the suburbs where your lawn gives you the illusion of a relationship with nature.

I find myself comparing it all to "Ozzymandez" a little too often, which worries me. The global warming factor could be troublesome.

Things to Do.
Great jazz/blues scene, TV capital of the world, the NBA draft was on Thursday and it sounded incredible to be there (the crowd taunting Steven A. Smith, laughing at Yi Jianliang... oh man, that's my element), museums. Blows D.C. out of the water in this regard. Might be hard to play sports with any frequency. Also, lots of parades and events... over the weekend we stumbled upon the Immigrant Pride Parade which featured, among other things, a swarm of people marching with the Columbian flag while a confused, disoriented guy with a sombrero stood in the middle dressed in the colors of Mexico.

Transportation.
Metro and walking. The metro is worse than the one in D.C. or Boston—too much dirt/crazies, but it takes you anywhere.

People.
This is a tough one. I'll break it down into categories.

Lifers: Obnoxious, loud, surly, have names like Jimmie "The Swatch" Carone. Entertaining, however.

Tourists: People like me who ask irritating questions about directions, snap pictures of everything in sight (including crime scenes), and drive all the prices up/clog all the metros.

Young Professionals: Toolbags who when they're not working 80 hour weeks are in the strip clubs doing coke off each other's stock portfolios.

Artists: The hipster bunch. Responsible for the abundance of organic produce markets. Some of these people are cool, some are not.

The Chinese: self-explanatory

The Crazies: I don't know why... maybe they all made the progression from tourist to CRAZY or lifer to CRAZY or Chinese to CRAZY (actually, haven't met any crazy Chinese so far... can someone explain this phenomenon to me?) but the fact remains that I have encountered more Crazies in New York than anywhere else. Just this weekend we were sitting in a pizza place in a pretty nice area of New York when one of the patrons just got up and started calling the guy behind the counter all sorts of epithets, culminating in angry chant of "show me some respect! show me some respect! you don't even speak English!" I was 40% confident that there was going to be a stabbing/shooting/firebombing. I can't imagine how it is to work in the service sector.

Jobs.
The ones where I could keep a pretty high standard of living all blow... wall street investment nonsense crap. Still, there are interesting possiblities provided that I'm okay with sharing a bathroom with a Cuban drug-dealer or living in a "Joe's Apartment" type situation (remember that movie?)

Weather.
Too cold in the winter, uncomfortable in the summer. Why couldn't they have built this place on the West Coast?

Cost.
Fuck. And not in the "cheap as fuck" way. Just "fuck."

X Factor (positive).
That sense of superiority that you get by virtue of living in New York—the ability to stare down a visitor and nod your head and give that pretentious "you'd get raped in two seconds if you ever lived here" smile, even though that's probably not true and you yourself are a testament to how easy it is to live in the city but they don't know that and so you can pretend.

Z-Factor (negative).
The "Midnight Cowboy" potential.

Conclusion: It's good, but let's not get carried away just yet. More places await.