I Feel Relatively Neutral About New York Read online

  PROS: See-through building.

  CONS: Recognition that humans are inherently greasy.

  CONCLUSION: Think different? Think Dial Antibacterial Hand Soap.

  SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE. WASH UP. THERES NO APP FOR BETTER HYGIENE.

  * * *

  1. Granted, this was an iRag, which can communicate with other rags wirelessly.

  CHRYSLER BUILDING

  True story: When William Van Alen was commissioned to design the Chrysler Building in the late 1920s, his only instruction was to make it the tallest building in the world. Turns out, the folks at the Bank of Manhattan commissioned Alen’s former partner and contemporary rival, H. Craig Severance, to do the same thing at 40 Wall Street.1 Thus, an unofficial tallest-building contest had begun. As far as we know, the winner would receive a gift card to Bed, Bath, and Beyond!2

  After going back and forth, changing their blueprints to make the buildings higher and better, Severance was sure that he’d won. “Ohmygosh, you guys, I think I, like, won,” he gushed. But after the construction of 40 Wall Street was complete, Alen pulled out a secret weapon: a 123-foot-tall steel spire he’d been hiding in an elevator shaft. He won the contest by 121 feet. Check and mate, Severance.

  Unfortunately, they were both beaten months later by the Empire State Building.

  Unfortunately, the Empire State Building was beaten in 1954 by the Griffin Television Tower in Oklahoma.

  Unfortunately, the Griffin Tower was beaten in 1956 by the KOBR-TV Tower in New Mexico.

  And so forth. Moral? You should never try anything because you’ll never be the best.

  PROS: It’s very pretty.

  CONS: A monument to being the thirty-ninth best/tallest building.

  CONCLUSION: A for effort?

  SOME FAIRLY TALL THINGS

  (L-R)

  Burj Khalifa: 2,717 ft

  101 Taipei: 1,667 ft

  SWFC: 1,614 ft

  CHRYSLER BUILDING: 1,046 ft

  KAREEM ABDUL-JABAR STANDING ON SHAQUILLE O'NEAL'S SHOULDERS: 14 ft

  * * *

  1. Home of Tina Fey’s little-known sitcom, 40 Wall.

  2. Apparently, W. Van Alen really liked Memory Foam.

  TAXIS

  Some time ago, New Yorkers got together and decided they’d simply prefer to leave the driving to others.

  “We’d rather not drive,” they declaimed in unison with their New York accents.

  “We’d prefer to leave the driving to others. Also, the parking.”

  And so they did.

  And cabs are pretty great because, let’s face it: Owning a car can be sort of a drag. You have to worry about tickets, and parking, and at some point you’ll probably be driving with some friends and you’ll accidentally hit and kill a local fisherman. You’ll dump his body in the ocean and make a blood pact with your friends never to speak of it again, but, of course, he’ll come back and try to murder you with a hook.

  Luckily, there are cabs everywhere in New York. Look at all those cabs! Tons of cabs! Almost too many cabs! So many, in fact, that it seems like they constitute 90 percent of the vehicles in any given New York traffic jam. Any given frustrating, inconvenient New York traffic jam. Hmm.

  PROS: There are literally a trillion cabs.

  CONS: There are literally a trillion cabs, bumper-to-bumper, between you and where you’re trying to go.

  CONCLUSION: We can walk it from here.

  CABS BY THE NUMBERS

  LEFT COLUMN: Cabs speeding past you when you’re just trying to cross the road. RIGHT COLUMN:Cabs around when you need one and it’s late and raining and you’re in sort of a bad neighborhood.

  OLD-TIMEY PHOTOS OF CONSTRUCTION WORKERS EATING LUNCH ON BEAMS OF SKYSCRAPERS WITH NO HARNESSES OR ANYTHING

  Guys: You’re living in a time when New York is expanding up into the skies and it seems like anything is possible, and if you feel like eating your tuna fish sandwich on the exposed beam of a highrise, ain’t nobody gonna hold you back. Okay. We get it.

  Could you put on just a small harness, though? A wee little safety cable? Or put a net underneath you? Okay, sure, we understand how harnesses can chafe, but we imagine nets aren’t too expensive in 1932, or whenever you are. We’re getting heart palpitations just looking at you, and we’re eighty years in the future. Our hands are clammy and our tongues are dry. Please be careful, Construction Workers Eating Lunch on Beams of Skyscrapers With No Harnesses or Anything. Think of your children.

  And suppose you do, against all odds, manage to stay on that little beam. If your tuna sandy slips, there’s going to be an old-timey gentleman below with your lunch permanently embedded into his forehead. Johnny Sandwich-Face, they’ll call him. He’ll have to go get a job in the sideshow at Coney Island, and nobody wants that.

  PROS: Your picture will be printed on posters in dorm rooms and offices, forever.

  CONS: You’re making your mothers very upset.

  CONCLUSION: We’ll stick with a poster of a puppy wearing sunglasses, trying to do a pull-up, thank you very much.

  OUR HUMBLE SUGGESTIONS FOR ALL BRAVE MEN IN OLD-TIMEY PHOTOS:

  1. HARNESS

  2. NORSE FLYING HELMET

  3. GYROCOPTER

  4. WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA

  5. NET

  CENTRAL PARK

  Central Park wasn’t always the 843-acre Eden we know and love today. It was just a big, desolate swamp until the state decided to turn this wasteland into a wonderland, open to the rich and the poor, the cranky and the crankier. Designers Fredrick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux (actual names!), crafted the landscape meticulously, all to encourage New Yorkers to mingle, relax, get high, and play intramural sports with their shirts off.

  So they hauled 1,444,800 cubic yards of earth, excavated 198,000 cubic yards of rock, and laid 95 miles of pipe below the park’s surface to build and maintain the beautiful-but-artificial ponds. That’s a lot of pipe!1

  Finally, in 1876, the park opened its gates. It was magnificent, and Olmsted and Vaux celebrated by smoking some pot and playing a shirts-and-skins kickball game with Ulysses S. Grant.3

  But that was then and this is now. Central Park has gotten a bit of a bad rap over the last 130+ years, mostly due to how many bodies they find there in Law and Order: SVU. But the truth is that Central Park is a lovely and generally safe place to hang out, and we applaud those early pipe-layers for their forethought in preserving a little space on the island that wasn’t covered in buildings. Granted, even Central Park has concrete and roads, but what are you going to do, complain? Don’t be like us. It gets old after a while.

  PROS: Nature’s great.

  CONS: Cars driving though it: kind of a bummer.

  CONCLUSION: It’s really nice, but comparing it to actual nature is like comparing a sour apple Now And Later to an actual sour apple.

  THINGS TO DO IN CENTRAL PARK

  Take a romantic horse-drawn carriage ride: We shelled out fifty bucks for one, and boy did that get uncomfortable. As it turns out, theres no easy way to convince a carriage-buggy driver that youre just two dudes trying to enjoy an ironic romantic carriage ride through Central Park.

  Visit the Central Park Zoo: Depending on the time of year that you visit, it may look more like the Central Park Empty Cages.

  Go ice skating: Central Park has a bigger rink than Rockefeller Center, but it can be just as crowded, so keep your eyes open for other skaters barreling toward you with the speed of Apolo Ohno and the grace of Yoko Ono.

  Jog around like you own the place: Youll feel just like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man. But without all that Nazi torture. Hopefully!

  * * *

  1. That’s what she said.2

  2. Sorry.

  3. Our next book: I Feel Relatively Neutral About Historical Fiction.

  GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

  Much like the Arby’s in Elko, Nevada, the Guggenheim Museum is a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece. With its famous cylinder and slab construction and its great sloping inter
ior ramp and rotunda, it’s totally a signature of twentieth-century architecture.

  Inside the museum, there are some six thousand works of art, which is sort of like staring at art in art!

  Our question: Do you think any of those artworks could possibly be used to hold other, smaller artworks inside them, to make some kind of art-in-art-in-art turducken? We don’t think we’re asking too much here, to demand that all sculptures contain paintings, and all paintings contain video installations, and all video installations feature tiny, mouse-size Claes Oldenburg hamburger-beanbag-chairs, smaller and smaller, into infinity. C’mon, Guggenheim! Get on it!

  PROS: Art is great, if you’re into that sort of thing.

  CONS: Let’s be honest: You’re not. You haven’t been passionate about anything in quite a while. You’re depressed.

  CONCLUSION: Frank Lloyd Wright? More like Frank Lloyd Wrong. Zing!

  ARTISTS CONCEPTION OF “ART WITHIN ART”

  Now imagine, if you will, that this artists rendering is inside another artists rendering. And the artist who created itwithout getting too graphic is literally inside another artist. Pretty wild stuff, huh? Yeah. Wild.

  WALKING

  There’s nothing quite like the beautiful, surging chaos of the sidewalks of New York. It’s a sea of humanity out there, in the summer a literal melting pot, where thousands of people with thousands of wants and dreams and flu-bugs and bedbugs converge to add up to something greater than any one of them.1

  But like the treacherous undercurrent of the sea, the sidewalks of New York have their own potentially dangerous—or at the very least annoying—flow. Top scientists attribute this to the fact that New Yorkers seem to walk faster than anyone else in the world. Why are they going so fast? Where are they all going? Why don’t they leave a few minutes earlier? We tried to ask, but everyone rushed right by us.

  This fast-walking is especially hazardous around revolving doors, which are great at keeping out the drafts and noise of the streets,2 but, coupled with the speed at which New Yorkers walk, also have the potential to spin like the frenzied blades of a food processor. Watch out, New Yorkers!

  The point is, walking in New York can be a blessing and a curse. It’s nice to live in a city where physical activity and fresh air are part of the daily routine (are you listening, Los Angeles?), but also, with all that walking, your feet are going to kill for the first few months.

  PROS: Self-reliance.

  CONS: Blisters.

  CONCLUSION: Jury’s out.

  ALL THESE PEOPLE HAVE SOMEWHERE VERY IMPORTANT TO GO.

  * * *

  1. A several-thousand-legged, super-wanty-dreamy people-bug. It’s like in Transformers, when all those robots get together to make that super-robot. But way whinier.

  2. There’s a reason they call it “The Big, Noisy, Drafty Apple.”

  HUGE, SOMETIMES-OPEN STAIRWELLS RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAMN SIDEWALK

  Wait a second. Hold up, New York. You want to put huge, sometimes-open stairwells where? Right in the middle of the damn sidewalk? That’s where pedestrians go, New York. How are you going to make sure people don’t fall into those huge stairwells when they’re walking? Oh. Sometimes, you’ll put out a little orange cone? Okay, cool. As long as you’re looking out for everybody’s best interests…

  PROS: It’s an efficient way for businesses to load and unload goods from trucks on the street.

  CONS: It’s an efficient way to fall into a huge effing hole right in the middle of the damn sidewalk.

  CONCLUSION: That’s a lot of faith to put in one little orange cone.

  “LITTLE HELP?” ASKS THE MAN WHO HAS FALLEN DOWN THIS OMINOUS STREET HOLE. NO HELP WILL COME.

  UNION SQUARE

  One of the first things you’ll notice upon arriving in Union Square is the bronze statue of George Washington, one of our nation’s first presidents, atop a majestic steed, with his right arm extended and his right hand open as if he’s trying to use the Force to summon his lightsaber and kill an approaching snow beast. The horse, which we’ve nicknamed Ol’ Bronzie, has a lowered head, perhaps to ponder the fascinating history of his surroundings…

  In 1815, the city commissioners decided the strangely shaped lot didn’t lend itself to commercial development, so they declared it a public commons. It was named by Samuel Ruggles, a local lawyer and politician, who purchased the adjoining lots and expanded the park in order to allow fruit hucksters to sell their wares 150 years in the future.

  “I predicteth a grand spaceth for a farmer’s marketeth,” Muggles [sic] declared in his old-fashioned New York accent or whatever.

  By 1845, with Fuggles’s [sic] continued encouragement, Union Square was surrounded by houses, trees, and sidewalks. A dog park was added so poodles could sniff each other’s poodle-parts and ultimately generate more poodles.

  Then, some things led to some other things, and now there’s a Staples, and a Babies “R” Us, and a Petco, and a Barnes & Noble where, if they were alive today, George Washington and Ol’ Bronzie could mosey over and pick up a copy of this very book! Really makes you think, huh?

  PROS: Interesting history.

  CONS: History always ends with big-box chain stores.

  CONCLUSION: Bleh.

  “I CANNOT TELL A LIE,” SAYS GEORGE WASHINGTON. “STAPLES HAS GREAT DEALS ON PRINTER CARTRIDGES.”

  NEW YORK NEWSPAPERS

  It’s a tough time for newspapers, many of whom are being forced to cut staff, tighten budgets, and run boilerplate Dilbert comics, which, let’s face it, are worse than job loss.1 Most major cities can barely support one newspaper, let alone two, which was actually the norm half a century ago. But four major daily newspapers in one metropolitan region would be impossible these days, right?

  Wrong! Somehow, through sheer determination (read: stubbornness), New York City is still managing to support four mostly legitimate daily papers, for better or worse: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and the New York Daily News.

  This—the four papers—is a hard feat to accomplish, and we would like to offer New York a variety of pats and rubs and gentle kisses on its back and tummy and earlobe, respectively, for its support of the newspaper industry. Not a sexual thing. Just our way of saying, “Way to go, Inky City! You did it! You really did it, New York, and now we’re going to give you the tiniest, softest kisses on your earlobes and collarbone.” Nothing weird about that, except that now we’ve got ink all over our hands.

  On the other hand, have you seen the Internet lately? All that shit’s free!

  PROS: Lotsa newspapers.

  CONS: But for how long?

  CONCLUSION: Unfortunately, you can’t reblog a news item if no one reports it in the first place.

  EXTRA! EXTRA!

  If you look very carefully, these newspapers have a hidden message.

  * * *

  1. Today’s hilarious punch line: “And that’s exactly why we never get anything done around here.” Today’s hilarious setup: “I see you’re already using the conference room, but I’m going to have a meeting here too.” We’ll let you guess the hilarious middle panel.

  NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

  Poet Archibald MacLeish once said, “What is more important in a library than anything else—than everything else—is the fact that it exists.”

  Well, nobody can argue that the New York Public Library doesn’t exist. Try: You’d be all like, “That library isn’t even there.” And then your pretty friend Meagan would be like, “Then where did the beginning of Ghostbusters take place?” And then you’d stand there in silence for what feels like hours, trying to think of something clever to say. God, Meagan’s so smart, you’d think. She’s so cool and smart and funny. If only I could come up with some super-hilarious answer that somehow relates to Ghostbusters and libraries and maybe it’s a little bit flirty, but not too forward…we’d be laughing together and having a great time and maybe someday in the future, if someone mentions Ghostbusters,
she’ll think of me and the super-hilarious joke I came up with so quickly…Three days later, while sitting in traffic, you’d think of the perfect answer, but by then it wouldn’t matter. Such is life.

  Anyway! The New York Public Library exists, in a major way. It’s one of the biggest libraries in the world, sporting eighty-eight miles of bookshelves (which, incidentally, makes Strand Books’s eighteen miles of books seem like negative-seventy miles of books.)

  Unfortunately, if you’re looking for a library that does more than exist, this one might not be your jam. Yes, it’s got beautiful architecture, with columns and carved ceilings and marble lions guarding the entrance, but it’s also a “no-browsing” facility, which means that almost all the books are stored underground, and you have to type in the title that you’re looking for on one of their computers and they’ll get it for you with a mysterious system of dumbwaiters and subterranean mole-people who fetch the books while quietly plotting a bloody uprising.

  ARTISTS CONCEPTION OF NYPL STACK ACCESS

  (left) BOOK MOUNTAIN

  (middle) SCHEMING MOLE-PEOPLE

  (right) LEVERS AND/OR PULLEYS

  We don’t want to sound nitpicky, but doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose of a library? The ability to wander around and find books that you weren’t necessarily looking for and physically leaf through them with your physical hands? Without books to root through, the New York Public Library is just another big, pretty, sort-of-drafty building that, well, exists.