Dispelling the Myth

Working and living in NYC is nothing like the media portrays it. All of the Candace Bushnell-spawned television programs and Meg Ryan movies to the contrary, it just isn’t like that at all.

What brings this up? Recently I got a comment on the blog from a non-NYer offering a major appliance for the opportunity to live in NYC. I think this an instance of “the grass is greener,” so let me do my part to dispel the myth.

To go on the record, I don’t actually live in the five boroughs. I’m a commuter from a suburb just over the Bronx border. Thanks to a train, shuttle, and subway, I manage to get work everyday. On a good day with an express train door-to-door it’s just about an hour of colorful interactions with my fellow “happy” commuters. On a not so good day, the commute is much longer and emotionally taxing. The worst one-way commute to this job so far has been two hours – and that was because of rain* … and I think I stood up the entire time. In general though, commuting is crowded, stressful, and an often sweaty and grimy affair. Glamorous? I think not.

Fancy Corner offices that you get to yourself? HA! I work in a Big Grey Box that’s in the midst of a five year construction/expansion project. The dulcet drone of the massive drilling project directly below my feet has a massage-like, yet deadening quality to it. While there’s a window in my office, I don’t look out it. I have a Dilbert Cube wall that separates my desk from the rest of the office that I share with two other people. (I’m lucky; one office has 5-7 people in it on any given day). My view, such as it is, five grey filing cabinets and reams and reams of paper. To combat the institutional grey, lack of opening windows, and the institutional air that’s vented in directly over my head, I’ve brought in splashes of color through my decorating, my oh-so-delightful personality, and some plants for CO2. Feng shui? I laugh in your general direction.




For every NYC worker and dweller, there are millions of these examples, some funny, some sad, some poignant, and some hysterical. For the most part though, we envy you as much as you envy us—for your open green space, room to park, lack of tourists, your real grocery stores with actual room to take a cart up and down the aisle, reasonable real estate rates, low crime rates, etc.

Once and a while though, we’ll experience a totally random moment that could only happen in a big city that makes us go: hey, this isn’t so bad. Like last Thursday when I stood on the subway platform in my usual location, grooving to my shuffle (TM). All of a sudden this guy walked up to me. Now, you have to understand, people don’t often walk up to me, though I’m starting to look “native” enough that people ask me for directions more and more (or is the L on my forehead that flashes “librarian”?). I wasn’t too concerned. It’s a safe platform, it was rush-hour, and he didn’t give off a “vibe.” Lots of people were around, and we’re all paranoid enough now that if “we see something, we say something.”I didn’t really have time to react when he reached out and handed me … 1 quarter. Yep. Just one quarter. 25 cents. That’s it. That was the transaction. I was so completely befuddled that I let the guy walk away before I could ask "why?". The business man from ABC standing next to me got one too. Bemused, we both looked at each other, and then turned and watched the guy as he worked his way all the way down the crowded platform, handing out one quarter to each person from his Ziploc bag full of about $20.00 worth of quarters.

Was it performance art? Am I supposed to pay it forward? Or it is just one of those weird New York Stories that offsets the grind of the commute and that brightens the finish on working in the Big Grey Box? Where is the grass greener?

You decide.


* I’ve managed to avoid the commutes that were affected by 9/11, the East Coast power outages, massive flooding, and transit strikes. Keep your fingers crossed.