Watching As Good As It Gets again for the umpteenth time (because I love it), and the scene with Nicholson dancing down the street yelling don’t touch me reminded me of this:
Moving is never easy; moving to New York City even harder. Moving to New York while blogging an election was probably too large a leap for an excitable chap like myself. Visiting NYC has always been a thrill. But living there? After the initial wonderland feel, you get to adjust to a whole new rhythm. Just in some basic respects – like getting online or using your phone – it’s like going back in time a little. Time Warner cable … well, I probably don’t need to tell New Yorkers what it’s like there. We bought the most expensive cable package to expedite my work at home – and it just decides to crawl like dial-up every few minutes. My mifi cannot get a signal that’s stable. My iPhone is suddenly iffy – calls are dropped and online access is far slower than in DC. And if you keep your wifi open, it gets grabbed by squeegee hotspots that are hard to get rid of. Not a good time to lose Google maps either.
Then the following: we went to a store and found a couch; they delivered the wrong one. We went to Best Buy to get a new TV; they delivered the wrong one. When they did deliver the right one, the cable-box was dead. We could not get any DVR either. I had to go into the Beast offices to live-blog Obama’s implosion. Scalding hot water comes out of the cold faucet – randomly. And the space we live in is one fifth the size of our place in DC. Just to walk a few blocks requires barging your way through a melee of noise and rudeness and madness. And a glance at your bank account shows a giant sucking sound as the city effectively robs you of all your pennies at every juncture. When you’re there for a few days or a week, it can be bracing. But living with this as a daily fact of life? How does anyone manage it?
This post almost makes McMegan seem human and in touch.
Spaghetti Lee
For you, Mr. Sullivan: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41X0JH8HZ9L._SL500_AA300_.gif
Jim, Foolish Literalist
’nuff said
has “excitability” ever been listed in the DSM? are there meds?
The prophet Nostradumbass
Shorter Sullivan: “ME, ME, ME!”
Michael
My last building had RCN, but when we moved we had to switch to Tkme Warner. The effimg worst.
freelancer
American Exceptionalism!
Seriously though, why shouldn’t everyone feel bad for Sully? Time Warner Cable? Walking around NYC is noisy and full of people? Jesus fucking Christ.
Dude just admitted to what he always was, an Amish Bus Driver.
I want to become this thing, but my upbringing hates that very thing. I just moved and my DVR didn’t work yet, so I had to watch it at my office in this giant corporate media conglomerate which I despise. Also, nobody told me living in Manhattan is expensive.
WTF?!
Yutsano
Buddha on a bicycle why in the hell do you pay attention to Sully?
cay
It makes me happy that he’s suffering. It’s like my girl friends who have kids when they’re 43 and complain. He didn’t understand NY? Idiot.
Nicole
Urgh. Am not happy to think this twit lives in my city now. Not that we don’t have oodles of twits already, but really, we don’t need another one, especially a twit of such magnitude.
And he’s a fricking idjut to have gotten Time Warner as his provider. FIOS is much faster, at least in my sample size of one. Though I do miss Dreamy Pat Kiernan on my TV every morning telling me what’s in the papers.
But hey, NYC- love it or leave it. Seriously, Sullivan. Think about it.
suzanne
The douchecanoe could just shut up and move to a suburb and have functioning DirecTV and not have to pay $3000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, but he would probably find that déclassé.
White people problems. It was ever thus.
AT
If only Obama had embraced Bowles-Simpson everything would be alright!
Kane
Wherever you go, there you are.
Roger Moore
Sounds like his biggest problem is he hasn’t found a good dealer yet. Once he gets some of his favorite medicinal herb in his system, he’ll calm down a lot.
PeakVT
He’s never going to change.
RaflW
We need an internet-wide pie filter to block out the Sully.
Redshift
I am proud to say I never even knew he lived in DC.
Good riddance, just the same.
RaflW
And can I just say, before I go off to be and try and sleep, that Michael Brodkorb is today’s Worst Person in the World.
The Other Chuck
So, uh, why the fuck did you move there, Sully?
Valdivia
Heh. The guy should try walking in Shanghai with people randomly spitting at you or trying to kill you with cars and bikes. And smells? In NYC? Dude–that city smells like fucking roses compared to here. I don’t need to describe for you all what every single corner smells like right?
amk
So basically sully is trashing teh free marketz ? Aren’t all the things he is whining about coming from the fucking hallowed private playahs ?
WaynersT
rich white guys problems.
oh and his “summers in Ptown” are just a plethora of choking kojak
Rafer Janders
Jesus Christ, sack up, you mewling little wanker. Millions of people deal with living in the city every day, and they don’t whine about it one-hundredth as much as you do.
You know who has it tough living in New York? An immigrant mother who gets up at 4 in the morning to walk to the bus stop in the cold, and then takes two buses and two subway transfers to get to her manual labor job, all for minimum wage, which she uses to help pay for her children’s shelter, food and clothes.
You know who doesn’t have it tough? A semi-famous man with a well-paid and easy job which he can do from the comfort of his own couch, a man who has a loving spouse and many friends to help him. That man should shut the fuck up, go down on his knees, clasp his hands in supplication and give thanks to the imaginary god he believes in that he has it so good when billions of others don’t.
Rafer Janders
Personally, I get succour from my Oakeshott in the New York Public Library.
Rafer Janders
The horror…the horror….
dance around in your bones
Maybe Sully should move back to the UK where
in the UK Candy Mountains there’s a land that’s fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the cable boxes are functional and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the ganga trees
Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the UK Candy Mountains you never change your phone
And the little streams of alcohol come a-tricklin’ down the mifi zone with a squegee tone
And you never get that sucking sound comin’ out your banking zone
Oh, I wish he would go home!
Rafer Janders
Now, I never had to blog an election while moving to New York, that’s true, but when I moved to New York, I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have an apartment to move into, and I didn’t have any immediate way to get any of them. I had to spend a lot of time sleeping on people’s couches, and there were a few nights when I didn’t even have that.
Yet time has moved on, and now I have a lovely apartment in a lovely part of town, money in the bank and in my brokerage accounts, and a well-paying and prestigious job. Somehow I managed.
Somehow I doubt he will.
Rafer Janders
And you know what the worst part of it is? NO ONE EVER WARNED HIM ABOUT ANY OF THIS.
After all, it’s not as it New York is known for small apartments, crowded streets, and being a very expensive place to live. It’s a complete surprise! So little gets written about the city, it features so little in popular TV shows and movies and books and magazine articles, that it’s always such a shock when strangers, who had been expecting a bucolic and pastoral retirement community, arrive here and find out what it’s really like. Can you blame him for being in shock?
Rafer Janders
@Nicole:
Well, that’s it, isn’t i? I. will. not. give. up. Pat. Kiernan. I cannot start my day without him.
And I think Time Warner Cable knows it, which is why they have me by the balls.
dance around in your bones
Well, he went down to NYC in his Sunday best
Excitable chap, they all said
And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest
Excitable chap, they all said
Well, he’s just an excitable chap
Rafer Janders
Yes, how on earth would you get from 14th Street to 18th Street without Google Maps?
Rafer Janders
Let me just emphasize that “at home.” Meaning he gets to work on his couch, does not even need to commute, does not need to bash on into the subway at rush hour, back and forth every day. And still he’s whining.
suzanne
@dance around in your bones: Epic, absolute win.
e.a.f.
why would anyone move to New York City? It has a lot of people, is expensive to find a place to live, no place to park your car. I have heard it is exciting but who cares? going to the moon is exciting but most likely a whole lot less expensive.
Want a nice place to live, try Canada. Our cities function, o.k. some places the cost of housing is high like Vancouver & Toronto but we have clean air, tolerant societies, bloggers, Oh & best of all we have a good almost free medical system. The Prime Minister isn’t as cool as Obama but he isn’t as crazy as Mittie, almost but not quite. We have great skiing, its amazing, as is th sailing. We are fairly tolerant, etc. So if New York city isn’t what you want, stop complaining & move. I hear there are other parts of the U.S.A. which are really nice also. of course they do have a lot of guns. Canada, not so much & neither does New York, so I hear, compared to the rest of the U.S.A. You might try Detroit or Chicago. I hear they can be pretty exciting especially when things go wrong. Lots of houses to buy, really cheap.
Come on you moved you knew what it would be like so stop complaining or is the new thrust of the blog, pity party for you because you moved to New York.
Rafer Janders
You know why? SUPPLY AND DEMAND. The very thing you worship Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher for championing. Land in New York is scarce compared to the demand for it, the supply is constricted, so it becomes very valuable and therefore very expensive to rent or buy.
You know why you can get five times the space for the same amount of money in DC? Not as many people want to live there. It’s less valuable.
Free market at work, old chap.
dance around in your bones
@suzanne: Grazi, mil grazi.
There never was a more noble Oakeshottean whiner.
Rafer Janders
I recall Yogi Berra, who famously said “No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
Rita R.
On behalf of my fellow New Yorkers, I’d like to invite Andrew Sullivan to get the fuck out. Opens up one more apartment for the rest of us. This city has already been overrun with enough people who think it’s either a concierged playground for their entitled rich asses or a hipster theme park.
@Rafer Janders:
Word.
Rita R.
@e.a.f.:
Uh huh, you’re exactly right. Especially that part about us having no place to park our many cars. Please don’t come.
YoohooCthulhu
::briefly ponders calculations::
DC isn’t that cheap. Unless Sullivan lives in a closet now in NYC…good god, I can’t believe how overpaid this guy is. We’re talking 300k+
Rafer Janders
The Yankees and the Mets, the Knicks and the Nets. The memory of the Dodgers and the Giants. The memory of Max’s Kansas City, BCBG, the Mudd Club, S.O.B.’s, Area, the Tunnel, Palladium and the Stork Club. Harlem, SoHo, Tribeca, the East Vilage, Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side. Broadway. Wall Street. Chinatown, my Chinatown. Little Italy. The Bronx. Brooklyn. Queens. Staten Isla…ok, never mind about that, no one ever moved to NY for Staten Island.
Moving on, Broadway shows. The Met, the MOMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Natural History, the Public Library. Rockefeller Center. Central Park, Bryant Park, Prospect Park, Hudson River Park and my beloved Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Brooklyn Bridge. The GW lit up at night like a necklace stretching across the Hudson. The might Hudson itself, America’s first highway. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and oh, the World Trade Center.
The Village Vanguard. Showtime at the Apollo. This is where Malcolm X and John Lennon were martyred, where Dylan Thomas sailed to his death on a sea of alcohol. You live here so can drink at the Cedar Tavern and the White Horse Tavern and Chumley’s and 21 and dear departed Elaine’s. So you can work at Goldman and Morgan and Merrill and NBC and ABC and CBS and the New Yorker and New York and Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and the NYPD and the NYFD and the Manhattan DA’s office. You move here for the people — for the great grand glorious mass of people who will never cease to amaze and astonish and infuriate and astound and move you.
Every morning when I go running, I see, at one spot, the vista of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty in one vast 180 degree sweep. Where else can I get that?
dance around in your bones
@Rafer Janders: What a lovely paean to NYC.
All I can say is NYC is a great place to live if you’ve got the dough, not so great if you’re broke.
Oh hell, even if you’re broke it’s a great place to live. But – better if you’ve got the moola.
sharl
I was gonna bitch about yet another post focusing on that whiny weenie, but I see that it qualifies under the “Monitor and Mock as Needed” provision of this blog’s policy, so, umm, never mind, and do carry on.
Narcissus
@The Other Chuck: I’ll bet you a romney he’s angling for some Morning Joe action
vernonlee
Imagine what Sully’s world would be like if he ever enabled comments?
He’s considered it from time to time (I no longer read him – thanks, I feel much better now) and always comes down on the side of Nope.
What’s he’s missing in his life is a healthy dose of mockery.
But it’s probably too late now; too much of a hothouse flower now. The young are much more resilient at loudly proclaiming twattery to a chorus of ridicule. But they do better, on balance, by having to subject their ideas to tests. Once you reach a certain age, your cherished Potemkin fantasies are too brittle for real exposure to the knock-and-tumble of any real marketplace of ideas. Alas!
Calouste
@Rafer Janders:
When I lived in London I used to cycle to work, crossing the Thames with Tower Bridge on one side and St. Paul’s Cathedral on the other. Didn’t suck either.
Some day I’ll move back…
Arclite
@Yutsano:
Sully might be a drama queen, but there’s no denying his blog is fascinating.
Elizabelle
@dance around in your bones:
brilliant. hope sullivan sees your poem.
wetcasements
You’re a big, rude meanie like Uncle Joe Biden, Cole.
Prepare to be Moore Awarded!
mai naem
@Narcissus: He probably will go on Morning Ho. Tina Brown and some other Newsweek people are regulars and Willie Geist is moving onto the Today show. He’ll fit right in. He can go on bitching about reforming entitlements and business taxes and how Obama is being such a meanie weanie to Wall Street and no labels.
Ben Lehman
@Valdivia: You’re dissing Shanghai? Really? One of the cleanest and most functional cities of the planet?
hahahahahahah!
Schlemizel
@Arclite:
Sorry, I’ll deny it. Its boring, predictable, repetitive, self involved, incorrect and inane.
The nicest thing I can think to say about I’il Andy’s work is it aspires to be Megan when it grows up. If he is what passes for an intellectual its no wonder we are in a world of hurt.
chopper
yeah, NYC frustrates the shit out of me every day and this guy has already complained more about it in a week than i have in 8 years.
tho i do have to say, fuck Time Warner cable. fuck em so fucking hard.
Jamey
@cay: I’d hardly call Sully’s travails “suffering,” but if he’s unhappy, then I am happy for it.
dr. bloor
He’s right about Time Warner, but more generally, if you’re not in the streets doing your best Mary Tyler Moore imitation after moving to NYC, you have no fucking soul.
Go the fuck away.
arguingwithsignposts
@sharl: Hey, Sully just got “moved” on the blogroll again too!
@Arclite: Meh. I never found his blog that fascinating to begin with. He has a couple of tropes that are good ideas, mostly the window thing. Other than that, he’s a Tory twit.
Blue Neponset
“Shaka, when the walls fell”
jayackroyd
@Rafer Janders:
There’s the rent control thing. And property taxes…. The former is gradually going away, but the latter, especially in Manhattan, is never getting better.
‘Course he’s crazy. New York is the warmest, friendliest place I’ve ever lived. It’s all about being on foot.
pseudonymous in nc
When you live in New York City, the city becomes your home; if you approach it with the idea that your private living space has the same function that it does in a suburbacity like DC, you’re going to get very frustrated very quickly.
different-church-lady
WhiteClear people problems.Rafer Janders
@jayackroyd:
Same as what I’ve always said — New York is the friendliest small town in America. And I completely mean that. You can build your own village here.
Or, as a friend of mine has often said, if small-town America is supposed to be so nice, why do all your misfit toys wind up moving to New York?
kc
He had to go to work … at an OFFICE? How dreadful! The poor thing!
McJulie
So, Sullivan admits that he was going through all sorts of big, emotional life stuff during the first debate, and he still thinks his perception that Obama got whupped is entirely an objective evaluation of the plain facts?
Introspection is apparently not his strong suit.
cmm
My biggest reason for still reading Sullivan is to know what you all aare mocking here.
Cuppa Cabana
If your points of reference are Oxford, (well-heeled) DC, and Provincetown then a little real life in New York might be jarring. Especially in such a gritty and tough neighborhood like Chelsea.
Seanly
I’ve lived in lily white suburbs in Lexington SC & now Boise ID and I’d never leave my wifi open. WTF kind of an idiot does that?
And for transit, Hopstop.com
I love NYC. I love my brother & his family stuck in a tiny 300 sf apartment. Visit in August & take some non-tourist subways and then decide if you want to live there – my answer was no.
I know my brother only tolerates TWC coz they’ve now added NFL network. Sounds like Sully has AT&T wireless which is horrendous in NYC.
Rafer Janders
@Cuppa Cabana:
I know you’re joking, but for those not familiar with the city, Chelsea is not at all gritty and tough. These days it’s known mainly for its gay community, art galleries, the Chelsea Market, new media offices (Google is there) and high-end luxury clothing boutiques…..
KXB
@Rafer Janders:
There are many complaints about housing costs in NYC, but free market is not one of them. There are still many WWII era rent controls in place that distort the market. Then, there are plans to dismantle the rent controls, but they are done so piecemeal that it adds further distortion
WarMunchkin
Oh god, does this fucker live here now. Get out of my city.
Rafer Janders
Can someone please send post and comments to Sullivan? Maybe it’ll teach him a thing or two.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Good lord, Sully’s such a whiny-ass little baby. He should try living in San Francisco – it has everything he’s freaking out about but multiplied by a factor of ten, with huge extra helpings of filth, violent crime and homeless people.
(San Francisco has more homeless per capita than any other city in the world. I used to feel really bad for them. Five years of living there and dealing with them on a daily basis cured that.)
ETA: Only thing I don’t like about New York is the subway stations in the summer. I’m sure dozens of people die from heatstroke in them every day.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Valdivia: I was there for a week in 1997. Holy fucking hell. I could deal, sort of, with wall to wall people and the staring and the smells and the shit everywhere and the smog and the smoking and the 24/7 traffic noise and all the rest of that, but the food was the killer. Their idea of a good time foodwise is “organs harvested from a live animal at your table”. I thought I was going to starve to death, and of course no one will feed you rice. Turns out it’s really rude to do so (it’s poor people’s food). I dug China and really want to go back, but it really is extreme living by our standards.
KXB
I grew up on Long Island, and as a kid, I thought NY was the center of the universe. Living in other places now, I see it is as just over-priced and cramped. For all the talk of diversity, which is real, political power and influence is still largely split between Jews and Catholics; Protestants have left the city. Blacks and Latinos may be sizable voting blocks, but in a city with a Democratic monopoly, there is no competition for their vote, so their interests, such as more focus on the outer boroughs is ignored in favor of Manhattan money.
Over the summer, one of my cousins who still lives in NY came to visit Chicago. We were talking sports, and I mentioned that NY is a great city if you have talent, but the city does not foster sports talent. Chicago and its surrounding suburbs have produced Kevin Garnett, Donovan McNabb, Derrick Rose, and Dwayne Wade to name just a few. I cannot remember the last major sports figure who grew up in NY and made a name for himself. Then again, that’s kind of hard to do on Long Island, where lacrosse seems to be the high school sport of choice.
Rafer Janders
@KXB:
Well, that’s part of it, but only part. One other reason for high rents is indeed “free markets”: theres’s a large highly paid population in the NY, specifically in the banking, finance, and media industries, and they’ve helped bid up the price of housing while chasing out opportunities for the middle class. Landlords and developers find it more lucrative to build luxury condos for lawyers and bankers rather than sensibly-priced middle class apartments.
Also, too, aside from the Bronx, New York City consists entirely of islands, so there’s a hard limit on sprawl. We can’t build out like cities such as Houston, Phoenix, Chicago and LA have done.
JR
ZOMG he can see sounds! Sully’s a bat!
burnspbesq
@Rafer Janders:
My, aren’t we full of ourselves this morning.
Rafer Janders
@KXB:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dr. J, Carmelo Anthony, and Stephon Marbury come to mind straight away….
shortstop
I’m sad that Doug J didn’t write this post, because I’m having serious trouble identifying the song.
El Cid
A traditional sarcastic dance is in order.
shortstop
@KXB: As we’ve pointed out before, your strongly held views on urban life are consistently skewed by your never having lived in the cities you like to opine on, but only in the suburbs with your parents.
KXB
@Rafer Janders:
I should have added “recently”. Marbury had talent, but somehow never channeled it to success. Whether Anthony has staying power remains to be seen.
vernonlee
@Rafer Janders:
Beautiful. Will be quoting elsewhere in 3…2…1…
Rafer Janders
@shortstop:
OK, but there’s no denying that Anthony and Marbury are (a) major sports figures who (b) grew up in New York and (c) made a name for themselves.
Rafer Janders
Uh, that should have been a reply to KXB, not shortstop…
Cluttered Mind
I live in Forest Hills, Queens. This morning, on my way to work, I saw an older woman being harassed by a crazy man in a bagel shop, she was doing nothing more than enjoying her breakfast in peace. She ignored all of the man’s horribly cruel words (calling her ugly was the least of what he said to her), and even stoicly ignored it when he hurled coffee at her and ran out of the store. No one said a word to her until I went over and asked her if she was okay, offering my sympathies and asking if there was anything I could do to help. Suddenly this woman who had so calmly endured all that abuse just a minute before looked like she was on the verge of tears. Not because of the abuse, but because she wasn’t expecting anyone to care. She reacted like someone who has been soaking up this kind of abuse her whole life and never had anyone so much as notice or offer a kind word of support. Suddenly I felt like a monster and a coward for not stepping in sooner, though I try to tell myself I would have if things went any further, I just don’t know.
Anyway, the moral of the story is, there are people in NYC with real problems, Sully, and not the kind of simpering whinging that you produce that belongs on the front page of whitewhine.com and not on a major publication.
shortstop
@vernonlee: Yes, that’s a really good one. The Towns Without Pity are too often the little ones.
schrodinger's cat
@JR: Bat or no bat he most certainly is batty.
Michael Finn
My class and I took a trip to NYC in the 7th grade and it really was awesome. The first thing the bus driver did was drop us off in front of murder investigation. Took a few years to get over that one…
Rob
For lack of a better term but, HOLY FUCKING SHIT. Is this not the perfect example of First World Problems and White Whine? Sullivan makes well into a six figure income yet you’d think he’s living in abject poverty. I guess he’s figured out that living in NYC wasn’t just going to be cruising the Eagle all day.
Some advice, if you don’t like it so much then go. Trust me, no one is going to miss someone complaining about his cable service. We’ve already got Patrick Stewart doing a better job of that anyway.
Teejay
“…noodle salad”. “I’m drowning here and your handing me a glass of water.”
…and what, what this obligates me?
“Is there any other way to see it?”
Love, love, love this movie.