Reasons to love (hate) New York

Reading the year-end double issue of the New York magazine was a frightening insight to why people chose to live in one of the world’s most expensive city that has dirtier streets, crappier subway, poorer public service, and more polluted air than all of the European cities I’ve ever been to.
In their third annual “Reasons to love NY” issue, editors of the magazine came up with fifty things that reveal more about the local culture of Manhattan than any anthropological study could possibly come up with.
I have my own reasons to love and hate this city and since I haven’t decided yet which group outweighs the other, I was ready to be convinced that this is the world’s best place in fact. So what’s here to love asked the magazine its readers? NY fanatics dutifully emailed their odes to Manhattan.
Here’s a short panorama of the survey: they love NY because they can dress however they want and no one frowns upon them, they can date five people at once and never get caught, their household garbage can end up in a Chelsea gallery anytime, they can order up pizza from the Italian restaurant right across the street, or get their laundry delivered, they can get a pack of Camel Lights at 3 am in the morning in walking distance, they can hook up with someone on the day of a breakup, they live in the only city that has a nostalgia for crime and last but not least because people in NY wipe their hands with antibacterial after traveling one stop with the train but not after picking up after their pets on the street.
These and a bunch of other vital things are why they love this unique city.
Honestly, I couldn’t give a better summary of why I hate it.

MoMa Milieu

Contemporary art is a perfect reflection of the amoral times we live in today. If you want to know where we’re headed, pay a visit to the MoMA. Look around, breathe in the fragrance of the 21^st century and capture the essence of our modern age – and if you come out without being unreservedly depressed you should consider becoming an artist TODAY. These days, you can apparently create literally whatever and not even bother giving it a title (why the effort?). All you have to do is to put a price tag on it and in New York, it would most probably sell.
I used to feel “left out” and simply stupid wandering around in contemporary art exhibitions. I always felt I’m probably just too conservative to understand “art” and there is a good reason for, say, a totally blank white canvas or a 6 square feet large pink, glossy floorboard to be exhibited in the most reputable museums of the world.
But as I’ve spent more and more time studying art history, visiting and re-revisiting the best modern art museums in Paris, DC and New York, I grew more comfortable with modern art. I have a certain taste, preference for artists and periods, and can tell the difference between seemingly identical works of Picasso and Georges Braque.

I think I’ve seen and learned enough by now to boldly say: most of the contemporary exhibits that today occupy entire floors of New York’s most reputable modern art museums should not be on public display.
What is happening nowadays with mainstream contemporary art is, for me, a disaster. Not that there aren’t many contemporary artists who I acknowledge and appreciate. There are quite a few. But the tragedy is that they never make it to the elitist “mainstream” club and will never be seen by millions of visitors each year in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I wish I knew who ultimately decides that two dozen oversized paintings of faceless nurses bleeding here and there in the most obscure body positions and color combinations must definitely be seen by thousands of people from around the world every day. I would love to introduce them to my eight year old sister who kept asking me all the time: “Anna, what about this is art?”
I wish I knew what to tell her.

"Merry Whatever"

Just when I realized how politically incorrect I have been in the last two weeks sending out my verbal and virtual "Merry Christmas" wishes I saw this sign on the street in a shop window on Times Square:
"Merry Whatever - Happy 2008."
Despite the fact that I come from a city that has one of the highest Jewish population and has been historically considered to be the most religiously tolerant one in the region, P.C. language has not yet encroached upon our Holidays in Hungary. Thank God! (...or any deity you believe in.)
But of course, when it comes to multiculturalism and diversity of religious affiliation, Budapest and Manhattan can hardly compete with each other. So considering the practical and profit oriented WASP business culture of this country it does make some sense to simply refer to “Holidays.”
But notwithstanding the numeric minority of Christians in New York City, I staunchly oppose “Merry Whatever”. Whatever can’t be "merry". Being PC is one thing and staleness is another especially in the case of quasi-popularist euphemism treadmills aimed at the most sacred day of the year.
I am afraid, MTV’s Broadway sign was the latter one, a linguistic first degree assault on Christmas. On a holiday, that way too many people spend in solitude or in multiplex cinemas in this city.
So, as for myself, I stubbornly refused to be trendy this year and stuck to “Merry Christmas” even to all my Muslim, Jewish, and non-Christian friends. None of them were offended and they all seemed to be happy with the old fashioned terminology.

CNN Moms

Growing up on CNN I was always trying to imagine how these perfect looking anchors with flawless
make up and hairdo can look like when they wake up at 5 am before dawn and instead of smiling “Good Morning America!” into the camera yawn a prolonged ‘mooorning to their dearly loved husband. My first day at CNN gave me an unforgettable revelation and answer to my immature ponderings: guess what, they look like any “man on the street” (or MOS, by media jargon).
Ok, maybe from the aesthetically more gifted clan.
When I first met the anchor who was sitting right across me for the last 4 months, I uttered a relieved sigh seeing she was indeed human. Then my eyes rolled down to undergo another shocking discovery. Not only was she human: she was pregnant. Reeeally pregnant. I guess you can’t be more human than that but that’s something you can never tell from your couch watching her updates on Wall Street trade indexes or the latest merger of the month.
Amazing how professional pregnant moms can sound on air and how naturally they can switch over to random baby care topics ranging from the daily record number of diapers to babysitter drama. The more I walked around in our trillion-dollar building the more I felt that literally every second woman seemed to have an unusually large and suspiciously round belly. And no, this time it actually didn’t have anything to do with world famous American obesity. CNN moms simply flooded Time Warner Center this year. This made me wonder whether I missed some sweeping libido booster cupid-tsunami this year or Time Warner just simply pays CNN moms a decent enough paycheck for maternity leave. Well, it turns out that the second guess was as far from the truth as one can get. Namely because in the US moms get (read my lips) “ze-ro” paid days when they pay their duties to society and give birth to a new proud member of the American citizenry. The US and Australia happen to be the only industrialized countries in the world that don’t recognize that parenting is as tough a job as any respectable work on the labor market. While in most EU countries it is a mother’s codified right to have an average of 3 months of maternity leave, most US companies fail to provide any financial assistance for the new moms. When Maggie left us a week ago, although she gave her professional-as-always anchor-self, her tummy-size was alarming and we couldn’t stop wondering when the baby eventually would plop out. On her leave I asked when she would be back and she said she’ll be back February. I gave a puzzled look and thought of my mom who being a decent European social welfare mom took out a seven year leave when me, my brother and my sister arrived one after the other. But that’s Europe, where governments don’t just preach family values but use tax revenues to defend them. Here, being at home for more than a couple of weeks is a huge financial sacrifice and by the way: they’re the epithet of women labor inefficiency.
The phenomenon might not seem so perplexing and hyper-feminist if we consider Workaholism and
Productivity as America’s true secular religion but if I were an American, I’d rather satisfy myself
with a slightly smaller chunk of the world’s GDP and raise my children in peace, at home.

I feel it in my fingers...

When I moved here, I knew I was going to live in a different time zone, but no one warned me that living on “American time” will also mean that the week will start with Sunday instead of Monday; daylight saving time will come a week later than it is supposed to; that mid-November-Thanksgiving starts around Halloween, in late October, and Santa starts knocking on doors before most Americans recover from their ten course Turkey-day dinners. I am seriously afraid, that on Christmas Eve people will be celebrating New Year’s Eve...
I have the feeling that I jumped not only a time zone but a month zone too. I usually feel that Christmas comes a little earlier each and every year as it is supposed to. But here, it came brutally early. I started to hear Christmas carols and see red-white-and-green decorations a month and a half before the Big Day which eventually coincided with Halloween, creating a slight holiday décor traffic jam of Superman costumes, Thanksgiving pumpkin pies and red nosed reindeers.
At first I was distressed as most of us, gift sprinters, who do Christmas shopping on the day before and spend the entire pre-holiday week under the familiar mid-December chronic stress. Why on earth can’t they leave me alone in early November with hip-swinging Santas, and glossy Happy Hanuka postcards? Naively I thought it was my inalienable right to maintain my bad habit of last minute present-hunt.
Well, not in this country. Especially not in this city. And particularly not in my case, working in the same building with the fanciest shopping mall in NY. Time Warner Center (TWC) has its pros and cons. Normally, lots of pros and few cons. Well, in December, the cons seem to triumph as TWC happens to be the second most favorite destination of my beloved British shopping tourists. I have been under constant attack of all the tacky holiday décor-wonders the most expensive shopping mall in NY has to offer for more than a month now.
At first the Nutcracker offensive seasoned with jolly jingle bells assaults made me want to organize my own little “Remember? Santa’s coming to town in DE-CEM-BER!” protest movement…then as time flew by and I learned all the Christmas songs by heart, bought couple of presents 3 weeks earlier than I was used to, (partially alleviating the severe pre-12/24 symptoms, by the way) I realized, how much I was enjoying the abundance of colorful lights, flashy shop windows and holiday edition gingerbread lattes.
Obviously, now that the streetlights go on almost midday and my winter coat becomes my second skin it all makes much more sense than a month ago. And I can’t say it bothers me that I could smell those wonderful pine trees piled up neatly on the street on my way back home either. Extending the best 2-day Holiday of the year into a 2-month event is not a bad thing, really. After all, it’s about that dusty, old 4 letter word, that so many people seem to have forgotten about here. Love, actually. So if you can enjoy all the fun stuff it comes with its Big Day for a little longer, why not?