ALMOST CARRIE ~ Talkin’ Shit About My Boyfriend

Can you be in love with a city—real, complex, complicated love?  Absofuckinglutely.

Can you be irritated, frustrated, and pissed with said city?  Posifuckingtively.

Even Carrie had her days.

After posting last week’s ode to New York, I read a refreshing, candid article in W magazine (I know—it’s the last place I’d expect to find anything refreshing and candid either) by Holly Brubach.  Ms. Brubach spent nearly her entire adult life in New York and then moved to Pittsburgh, and reports on our fair city from the perspective of someone who no longer feels the need to stroke its inflated ego.  She highlights some of the city’s most trying hassles and outlines ten myths that New Yorkers cling to in order to survive them.  For example: if you hold fiercely to the outdated notion that “New York is the capital of American culture,” spending $15 on a slice of artisan apple pie with cinnamon foam becomes more palatable.

I never want to be the sort of tour guide (or writer) who insists that New York is the be-all and end-all.  It is one (one) of many interesting cities on Earth, one (one!) of millions of places to live, each with their very own perks and disadvantages.  So, in the spirit of truth and balance, here is my list of the five WORST things about living in NYC:

1. Sending packages is a nightmare. Ask anyone.  You have to budget at least an hour for notoriously insane postal lines, and then mentally brace yourself for notoriously miserable postal employees.  I pine after my childhood post office the way other people pine after the one that got away.  There, the teller looked like Santa Clause and always remembered to inquire about my cousin with the Florida zip.
2. The wonderful annual events you see on TV are not wonderful, they’re crowded. A lot of out-of-towners know by now to avoid New Year’s Eve in Times Square, that wall-to-wall freezing mess where you can’t see a thing and aren’t even allowed to drink.  But the other big events are equally swamped and exasperating: the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade…these are best viewed from the comfort of your couch (unless of course you’re directly related to Al Rocher).
3. The food is pretentious (especially in Brooklyn). I love eating out.  J’adore la nourriture superbe.  I know which restaurants in the city have Michelin stars, and I’m a sucker for Top Chef.  However, when your local artisan cheese retailer describes its “Baley Hazen” as having mold that is “relatively mild with a subtle mouthfilling warmth [and] faint hints of anise and parsley,” what you really want to say is Get a life!
4. The pretzels suck. My mother loves soft pretzels more than she loves her first born (me), and she is repeatedly heartbroken when she comes to visit.  New York street pretzels are terrible.  I can say with an extremely straight face that on this front Philadelphia has us way, way beat.
5. When someone leaves something at your apartment, it upsets the order of your entire existence. I went away last weekend and when I returned, I found an alien phone charger sitting on my kitchen counter.  This was not evidence of my husband in the midst of a torrid an affair.  This was a relic of a boozy night my husband spent with his high school buddy from New Jersey who forgot to take his shit home with him.  In a 650-square foot apartment, this is akin to someone leaving their refrigerator in the middle of your living room.  Every millimeter of space is accounted for, and the careless remains of loved ones are enough to make you eschew company forever.

Of course, getting too bogged down in all of New York’s hassles can be as bad as getting too high on all of its splendors.  It’s glorying anything that gets you into trouble…whether that be a spiritual leader or a political hero, a lover or a child, a city, a country, or even (well well well) a show on HBO.

Emily Sproch is a writer and a “Sex and the City” tour guide.  Each Friday, she chronicles the fine line between reality and fiction in her column “Almost Carrie.”