New Yorkers and the burbs.

[Perd Hapley]

Like most folks, I have imbibed a fair amount of Gotham-centric film and television. I always find myself stumbling over the horror with which many of the Yorkers regard (forgive me for saying this) MOVING TO THE BURBS.  [cue ominous music]

So, is it just that anyone living outside The City must be kidding, or do they actually think of "out-state"as fly-over country? I mean, if a New Yorker gives up on having a real life and moves to the burbs, is it as bad as if they had moved to Wichita? Or is the Midwest considered a lower level of hell?

[HankB]

I always find myself stumbling over the horror with which many of the Yorkers regard (forgive me for saying this) MOVING TO THE BURBS. 

Having been there on business a couple of times, I view the idea of actually living in NYC with horror . . .

[RoadKingLarry]

I once had an acquaintance in the Navy from NYC. To him NYC was the center of the universe and everything else was more or less a joke.
He explained and firmly believed that since he had driven across Oklahoma on I-40 he knew everything there was to know about Oklahoma. I asked him that since I had driven through NYC on the Cross Bronx expressway in 1981 did that mean I knew everything there was to know about NYC?
He was actually ready to go to blows over that.

[vaskidmark]

A friend from Some Other City Than New York came to visit for the weekend when I lived just outside Fredericksburg, Va.  They were taken by the lack of streetlights, lack of the constant noise of traffic, and most ominously the pervading sound of KILLER CRICKETS!!!!!!!!ELEVENTYOMG

Having lived in large cities, as well as out beyond the teulies, makes it somewhat easier to understand how folks from either extreme feel about the other extreme.  It's mostly a matter of what you are used to and therefore considering everything else as just so much that just does not matter.  Remember the line from The Blues Brothers when Elwood tells Jake that the trains run "so often you won't even notice them"?  Contrast that with the sensory overload of Barney Fife hitting the Big City for the first time and walking around with his neck craned and his head way back, looking up at all the skyscrapers, unable to hold a conversation for all the noise assaulting his ears.

So, yes, for a New Yorker moving "45 Minutes From Broadway" to the cow pastures of Yonkers is to find themself in the back of beyond.  Waking up to find they were dumped in downtown Wichita is not quite so bad, as their view of the flat open prairie is temporarily blocked by buildings.  But let them hear the strange accent of the folks there, and learn that the sidewalks actually are rolled up and taken away to be washed and pressed each night ....

stay safe.

[lee n. field]

I mean, if a New Yorker gives up on having a real life and moves to the burbs, is it as bad as if they had moved to Wichita? Or is the Midwest considered a lower level of hell?

It does happen.

A couple or 3 or 4 years ago, one of my cousins that I seldom see showed up at the family Christmas with a woman in tow.  The lady had that (to me) annoying upper east coast accent. 

Turns out, she was in the World Trade Center the first time it was bombed.  Had to walk down many floors and out.  And, she was commuting in the second and final time.  She decided it was time to move.

She moved out to our neck of flyover country, in time for this to happen.   

[wuluf]

I grew up in Brooklyn and Queens and while i'm proud to be from there, i left as soon as i could.  Some of my friends still live there and don't know any different.  I also know suburbians who are proud that they NEVER go into the city.  Takes all kinds, you got a problem w'dat??

[Ned Hamford]

Here is a song about that. Jonathan Coulton's Shop Vac

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ9KHCbBOn0

"This song is an ode to suburban angst, which is where people move out to the suburbs to get big houses with big yards and driveways, and everything seems great until they begin to realize that there's nothing to do in the suburbs except go to strip malls and eat at chain restaurants and wait until the kids grow up and leave you.

This phenomenon is exemplified in the shop vac, a tool found in many suburban garages for sucking up leaves, dirt, nails, or whatever. When you first use a shop vac, it seems like the most awesome thing ever. But then you realize it's just a vaccum cleaner."

[gunsmith]

You do learn a lot by growing up in New York and environs , I met The Clash, The Ramones, knew the Bad Brains pretty well.
Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsburg, Charles Bukowski, Burroughs are just some of the people I met & had interesting discussions with.
Learned a lot about many different cultures because they're all there.
Renoir,Van Gough,  plus lots more are always on display, cheap at the museum.
New Yorkers are often way ahead of the rest of the country on lots of different things.

Even though they visit rural USA they can not fathom living here  & think people like me who do live rural, carry guns & pray are are neanderthals who are easily fooled.
Yet for some reason my old friends in the city can never tell me what the English translation of nazi is, hate soldiers but expect them to die for them, want organic food but vote for a gov't that's regulating it out of existence 

I don't get it but I miss NYC sometimes, I won't visit till we win some more court cases and I can carry.

[230RN]

I had quite a bit of culture shock when we moved out to Colorado in the early sixties from Brooklyn/Queens.  Not so much with my then-wife, who was from upstate New York.  I found my accent put people off quite a bit and worked pretty hard to flatten it out.

A specific example was when I tried to tip a grocery clerk who helped us get stuff out to the car, which was standard in New York, where you even tipped the lamp-post if you leaned on it.  Poor kid didn't know what to do when I tried to hand him a quarter.  A quarter was substantial in those days.

Another example was when I saw a counter full of handguns at the Gibson's Department Store up in Boulder, after living under New York's Sullivan Law all my life.  I was shocked to find that no permit or anything was necessary to purchase one.  (This was even pre-GCA68.)

I still have that first handgun that I bought as soon as I became a resident of Colorado.  It was a cheap crap RG-22, but I brought it home and felt like a criminal for about a month whenever I handled it.  To the point of checking the windows to see if anyone could see me from outside.  My next gun was a used commercial 1911 from Colt itself.  Yes, the 1920's gangsta gun --the ones all the big bank robbers used, the one the Capones and Nittis used, the one which was a murderous implement in and of itself.  It took a long time to emotionally understand the fact that  it was also the gun that the ordinary Joe Blow used, and the common Sam Smith used, and that I could, too.   
Although most of the folks out here at the time used revolvers.

But until I took it out to the Boulder Dump up north of town (which is now the estimable Boulder Rifle and Pistol Club range) and shot it a couple of times, still looking over my shoulder, so to speak, that I began to get comfortable with the fact that guns were ordinary hunks of iron like a hammer or an axe, shaped to fill a particular use or need.

Noo Yawk?  Last time I went back there was in about 1983, and never want to go back again.  I miss the ocean, and I miss the culture, but that's about it.

And when I did go back, I found that I missed the "free air" of Colorado.

Terry, 230RN

[Hawkmoon]

So, is it just that anyone living outside The City must be kidding, or do they actually think of "out-state"as fly-over country? I mean, if a New Yorker gives up on having a real life and moves to the burbs, is it as bad as if they had moved to Wichita? Or is the Midwest considered a lower level of hell?

My late uncle (father's older brother) was a life-long resident of New York City. He was typical of a great many (not all -- it stands to reason that nothing can be typical for ALL of 13 million people) Noo Yawkas, who do indeed regard anything west of the Hudson or outside of the five boroughs as uncharted wilderness. My uncle was even worse -- he lived near the UN on the east side of Manhattan and he regarded the other four boroughs as being substandard and uncivilized.

[Hawkmoon]

A specific example was when I tried to tip a grocery clerk who helped us get stuff out to the car, which was standard in New York, where you even tipped the lamp-post if you leaned on it.  Poor kid didn't know what to do when I tried to hand him a quarter.  A quarter was substantial in those days.

Ah, yes. The Big Apple. Where every rest room (if you can find one open to the public) has a paper towel dispenser containing no paper towels, and a useless drag on society standing next to it handing out SINGLE paper towels if you cross his palm with silver. When my late uncle was alive and I had the misfortune to visit him in "the City" once, I think the going rate was a quarter. What is it now, a buck ... for ONE paper towel?

No thanks.

[RevDisk]

One of the places I worked was headquarters in CT.  They viewed anywhere south or west of NYC as being terra incognita.  A land filled with Morlocks and other sub-humans, with the occasional "semi-person" if they were somewhat distinguished and "civilized".  By civilized, it means not able to do any direct tasks and accepted CT doctrine without regard to reality.  Management and the occasional knowledge worker could theoretically become semi-persons.  Non-persons were always referred to as "directs" (officer workers), "contractors" (contractors) or "hourly" (Morlocks who worked on stuff).  Non-persons were rarely if ever called "employees" unless it was for technical or legal reasons. 

The "real persons" literally did become anxious if they had to go to "the sticks" outside of the Boston-NYC-NJ-DC sprawl.  It was seen as a hardship tour for real people (ie CT/MA/NYC folks) to go outside the sprawl and would be lavishly compensated for it. 


The caste system was rigidly enforced, in a manner that most of pre-Ghandi India would have blanched at.  Because the core business units had been steadily looking profits and market share unless they had government contracts or purchased near monopolies, they were big into acquisitions.  SOP was to buy a profitable business and then promptly run it into the ground over the course of three to ten years, with the mean being approximately five.  This was done by installing the company religion (variation of Six Sigma), replacing all key non-person managers with real people (ie CT transplants) and killing productivity through integration.  Basically, the integration was making the company dependent on the HQ for everything.  Also, corporate policies were specifically designed to kill innovation outside of special engineering zones, reduce productivity by introducing massive amounts of procedures or red tape and to drive off the best non-person employees.       

Surprise, surprise, the company is facing financial difficulties and losing market share. 

Yea, NYC'ers do tend to think of themselves as the center of the universe.  But to the folks here putting all of New England in the same basket, you're missing a lot of necessary information.  There is two sections of New England.  The Sprawl, and the Crescent.  The Sprawl starts north of Boston, goes straight to NYC, goes south along New Jersey, hooks over through Philly to Baltimore, and down to DC.  It's extending south of DC well into NoVA and will continue down I-95.  The Crescent starts in Maine, hooks over through New Hampshire, Vermont, Upper NY, and into PA.  Both are obviously amorphous, and the borders do move.  The Sprawl isn't aggressively stretching that much into the Crescent, it is expanding there but not as much as it is extending south. 

I personally try to avoid the Boston-DC Sprawl as much as possible.

[Hawkmoon]

In other words, the Boston-Washington megalopolis.

'Tis truly a world unto itself.

[gunsmith]

in NYC in the 80's I lived near a homeless shelter, guys would sit on chairs in front with cardboard boxes as tables and sell individual ciggs for a quarter, I bet they sell em for a buck now.
I used to look for books that have been thrown away, sometimes finding really good ones-I would sell them on the street & make a few bucks.