Manhattan Hillbilly

A Cold But Colorful Chinatown Parade

Following my discussion last week about ethnic diversity, the Missus and I got to enjoy our first Chinese New Year Parade Sunday in Chinatown. The plan was to meet for dim sum beforehand, but a one-hour-plus wait to be seated meant we settled for bacon and eggs on a roll (a dietary Chappaquiddick, but that's a subject for another day). 

When I was growing up in the hills of Tennessee, you'd be hard-pressed to find enough Chinese Americans to set off a bottle rocket, much less organize a two-hour parade filled with floats, streamers, bands, dozens and dozens of prancing dragons -- in short, everything we got to enjoy Sunday. In fact, without fire trucks, tractors and tow trucks, you'd be hard-pressed in the South to put on a parade at all.

Here's some photos from the celebration. Enjoy, ya'll.

 

 

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New Yorkers Are Still Saying Sh!t

Apparently some native New Yorkers who watched last week's "Sh!t New Yorkers Say" thought the film was a little too new- New Yorker and too hipster. So they've responded with their own YouTube video entitled "Sh!t Native New Yorkers Say." Needless to say, there's a lot more cursing.

 

It's Not Discrimination When WE Do It!

One of the great things about New York City is it's diversity. Southerners don't get to experience a great deal of ethnic diversity -- in fact, they work hard to avoid it by enforcing rigid but unpublished rules of social conformity. Perhaps the biggest adjustment on a subconscious level Southerns must face when moving to the city is the broad swath of different ethnic origins, beliefs, dress, habits and values.

It may be an oversimplification but I think it holds up: Southerners value conformity; New Yorkers value diversity. I can ride a subway car with people wearing hajibs, cowboy hats, bindis, dark suits and hasidic hats. It makes things interesting, and while for the first few months it was slightly uncomfortable, now I find it a pleasant diversion during the day.

New York truly strives to epitomize the Founding Fathers' belief in a secular government where all religious beliefs are respected, but none are allowed to use the power of civil government to foist their beliefs on nonbelievers. In 17th Century England, you had to pay taxes to the Anglican Church, even if you were a Catholic. And if you didn't attend services (because you didn't believe) you were fined or whipped. Prior to the Revolution, Puritans passed laws in Massachusetts banning Christmas celebrations. When the Constitution was written, these abuses were recent memory, and so it was drafted with no mention of "God," and the Bill of Rights were quickly added insisting "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

 Sometimes the lines are difficult to draw, and our courts have done yeoman's work trying to maintain the balance. Laws banning discrimination in housing and hiring due to one's religious beliefs are part of the nation's great heritage. 

Given that, and given the fact that Jews in particular suffered from incredible discrimination in both hiring and housing during the last century here, it's a bit disheartening to watch the rampant discrimination taking pace in the Hasidim sections of New York.

There have been recent cases where religious zealots have tried to force women to sit in the back of buses. And now there's a letter by a landlord insisting landlords in the Crown Heights area should stop renting to "goyim" (non-jews).

I still find it odd that the community feels the need to have its own private police and ambulance force, and I sure hope tax dollars aren't supporting any services that don't treat both jewish and non-jewish citizens.

But I'm trying to figure out how a call to landlords to discriminate against people who aren't part of your religion is any different from past calls for, well, discriminate against people who aren't part of your religion.

H/T: Gothamist.

Laundry Day At The Museum

 

The missus and I constantly try to suck up as much culture as we can while living here in New York City. They don't seem to have many monster truck pulls, so we have to settle for going to these museum things. 

Last week she got us tickets for the Guggenheim Museum. Had the darndest time trying to find the museum, because it looks like a big white biscuit rather than a building.

Supposedly there was this special show by an avant garde artist named Maurizio Cattelan. But I don't think I got to see it, because the missus and I must have shown up on laundry day.

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When we walked in, there were all kinds of strange objects hanging in the center atrium of the museum. The spiral staircase inside goes up hundreds of feet, and they'd used about every square inch of it to dry out these strange sculptures they must have just run through the washing machine. There were lots of dogs, but they were either stuffed or made of paper mache, both of which would make them quite unsuitable for hunting. There was a woman sitting in a refrigerator, strange pictures and even the world's longest foosball table. 

We enjoyed looking at all the stuff, but I gotta say I hope next time they try and get it all washed before the people show up ... and maybe include a pickup truck in the display.

Parking In New York? There's An App For That

You may be able to speak French. Or German. Spanish. Even Mandarin, Greek or Latin. But how many of us can translate the hyroglyphics of the modern New York City traffic sign?

More people than you can think of have racked up traffic tickets because they couldn't determine if the parking space they were lucky enough to find was legal. 

So it was inevitable that someone would develop a app that will use GPS and the NYC parking database to tell you if that just-big-enough space is a legal place to park at the time you're there.

The sign above is a parody from Futurama, but the one below is quite real.

 

 

OK Ladies, Forget The UES, Start Hunting For That Perfect Man In Queens

OK, ladies, if you're single and hunting that perfect man, statistically you're trolling the wrong turf if you're hanging out in Upper East Side bars. Greenwich Village? Fuhgettaboutit. Midtown? Financial District? Nope.

According to statistics released by the New York Economic Development Corporation. the happiest hunting grounds for women should be in Queens, specifically Bayside, Flushing, Kew Gardens. Or in Brooklyn in the Bay Ridge, Sheepshead Bay, Coney Island or Sunset Park areas?

Why?

Well, NYCEDC has released a map showing which neighborhoods have the lowest and highest men-to-women ratios. Overall, New York City's population is 47% male. In the age 20-34 subgroup, men outnumber women 742,400 to 729,500. 

So how do you increase your odds? Stay out of the Upper East Side, where young single women outnumber young single men nearly 2-to-1. In Queens, there are just 1.7 males for every female. In Jamaica, Queens, and Pelham Gardens in the Bronx, the odds are an even 1-to-1. But do you really want to be trolling for guys in those neighborhoods at night?

 

 

Snow In The City

If you ignore the October snowfreaknik we had, today was the first snowstorm of the year in New York. Central Park was awash with dogs frolicking, sleds tumbling down small hills, children whining about constrictive clothing and gallons of hot chocolate flying out of Le Pain Quotidien near the Sheep Meadow. 

In the interest of contributing, I give you my three Southern born and bred beagles, who last year discovered they loved playing in the snow. 

 

 

Sh!t New Yorkers Say

Great video produced by and starring siblings Eliot and Ilana Glazer. I have to confess I've said about 63.7% of these things ... not that I'm counting. (Only the title is NSFW).

 

Feeling Right At Home On The D-Train

As a hillbilly, I often feel out of place when I ride New York's subways.

Riders are cranking Ice-T on their headphones. If they happen to hear a snippet of my Sam & Kirk McGee bluegrass songs playing, I get strange looks.

Most wear black jeans, black T-shirts, black jackets and black boots. I wear blue jeans and a orange T-shirt with "Tennessee" emblazoned boldly across my chest. To paraphrase The Most Interesting Man in the World, "I don't always wear shoes, but when I do, I prefer tennis shoes." 

 So it was with great joy I learned that one of my Southern kin hitched a ride on the D-train the other day: The noble possum.

The New York Times, the newspaper of record, recounted this turnstile-jumping rodent's ride, foolishly spelling it's name as "opossum," which I learned is how their stylebook requires it be spelled, er, spelt. Apparently it scurried aboard the train, which runs from Coney Island for an hour all the way into the Bronx, somewhere shortly after it left the first station.

Seeking warmth (who isn't in New York these days) it cozied up to the heaters placed under the seats and took a nap. Several policemen were dispatched during the train's run to shoo it out the door, to no avail. It wasn't until after the train had completed its northward run and was in the Bronx railyard that the possum split.

My guess is, it was worried the train would take it even further north.

 

Enter The Rate-A-Rat Contest!

Last night I came out to walk the beagles and startled a rat scuttering through our garbage cans out front. He shot across the street with amazing speed -- a bullet would move more slowly. I haven't seen any rats in the subways in the past week or so, but they sure are hanging out on my block.

But should I see one down underground, rest assured I'll be snapping a picture. Why? Because I want to win the "Rate A Rat" Contest the MTA subway workers are currently putting on. They've set up a website for entries, complete with some rather disgusting rats that you can rate yourself as to their level of disgustingness (I don't think that's a word). 

There's a motive to the website. The transit union has seen the MTA cut the number of sanitation workers, and they rightfully are pointing out it's led to an increase in rats.

That said, they clearly need my help. At least one of the photos on the site is actually of a possum. I can understand why Yankees don't know what a possum is, but even they shouldn't be confusing it with a rat.

Because unlike a rat, possums is good eatin'.

 

How You Know Christmas Is Over

In New York, the ceremonial end to the Christmas season is the annual "Chucking O' The Tree," a tradition that dates perhaps to the city's founding by the Dutch in the early 17th century. You know that Christmas is over when the first fir tree -- sold just weeks ago at one of the thousands of stand that pop out on the sidewalks faster than rats on garbage day -- hits the sidewalk.

WIthin hours, the sidewalks are littered with hundreds of live, semi-live or brown trees. Some still have tinsel attached. A few have the cheap plastic tree stand still attached and occasionally they even have ornaments still on them. 

Usually by the second week in January, the sanitation department will roll their recycle trucks and cart the trees off for chipping. Last year, a pair of two-foot snowstorms kept the trees on the sidewalks until the end of February. 

Next year I'm thinking of celebrating Christmas under the Greek Orthodox calendar -- on January 6. That way, I'll have plenty of free trees to choose from. 

The Subways Are Filled With Riders Wearing No Pants

A 'brief' posting: It's No Pants Subway Day in New York City. And it's spread nationwide. 

Back Safe in New York City

I don't ever want to hear my Southern brethren lecture me about crime in New York City.

Just finished a whirlwind 12-day tour of the South, with stops in Richmond, Knoxville, Atlanta and points in-between. The stated goal was to visit kinfolk for the holidays, but the true goal was to put 1,500 miles on the car, get cramps in my gas-pedal foot, confirm my allergy to cats by spending a week living among them, and re-energize my Southern accent, which my wife says is losing it's edge after 14 months of living in Manhattan.

Mission accomplished on all fronts!

Another goal was to raise my cholesterol level a good 50 points by enjoying the food that made me the man and a half I am today. To wit: 

Waffle House. The closest Waffle House to New York is in Elkton, Maryland, just across the border from Delaware on I-95. Don't think I didn't pull off the road as soon as I crossed the Mason-Dixon. 

Krispy Kreme. There's only one shop in all of Yankeeland. It's in Penn Station, and the doughnuts are so stale by the time you get them there's rumors the Rangers come across the street from Madison Square Garden when they run low on pucks.

Ali-Baba's Deli. This is a uniquely Knoxville sandwich shop, run by two Palestinian brothers. It's a landmark in the city after 30 years, and if you don't know what a "Steak in Sack' is, well shame on you.

Barbecue. Doesn't matter whether it's Buddy's or Dreamland or Williamson Brothers. It's all good, and after a year my quest for good BBQ in NYC is still unresolved.

All my kinfolk were fine, and most generous to the Manhattan Hillbilly at Christmastime (maybe it was pity that caused them to be so kind). Everyone looked great, and my family and I even managed to squeeze in a round of our infamous Death Croquet game in the backyard of mamma's house. (Think the Kennedy's and touch football, but played with mallets and hard wooden balls that can all be used as weapons). 

As for safety, the night before we were to leave Knoxville on New Years Eve, we went to a movie and returned to find this:

 

Happy New Year! Someone had tried to break into our car, and after failing to pry their way through to door to the lock, decided to just shatter the driver's side window. Apparently when they unlocked the door it set off the car alarm, which sent them scurrying without taking anything from the car. It took us an extra day to get home since no glass replacement companies were open Jan. 1. 

As I told everyone who came by to feel sorry for us as we waited for the police, I couldn't wait to get back to the streets of New York City, where I felt safe.

Freedom Tower Looking Good

One World Trade Center, now commonly known here as the Freedom Tower, replacement for the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, continues to leap out of the skyline and has reached its 90th floor. That puts it just 15 floors from completion. The tower will eventually reach 1,776 feet and is scheduled to be completed in late 2013. But it's already gone from being a block of concrete to a true part of the city's skyline.

It's Christmastime in Brooklyn

Yeah, yeah. You've seen the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Pretty impressive. But in the middle of Manhattan, I've been missing some good old fashioned, Southern house decorations. So what do you do if you want to see a house dolled up with a million lights and fake Santas stuck headfirst down chimneys with their animatronic legs flailing? 

You go to Brooklyn.

Yeah, there are other places, but it seems the Dyker Heights section is the place where the people go big when they go home and decorate. Some even hire lighting companies that make a secondary business out of "professional holiday decorating."

So without further ado, enjoy:

 

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Potty-Mouthed Women

I've previously documented Yankees' love of obscenity. What I haven't really delved into is a sociological phenomenon that continues to baffle my cornbread-fed sensibilities.

Women in New York curse worse than the men.

I don't have any hard a fast stats on this. And admittedly, hearing a young woman drop the f-bomb in about every fifth word of a conversation is so foreign to me that I may notice it more than when men do it. But the fact that they do it all is as disconcerting to me as a Justin Bieber concert in a nursing home. 

High school girls here are the worst. They love cursing, and they love doing it walking down the streets and on the subway, because they know cowed New Yorkers will never call them on it. And in those situations, yes, I have counted that the f-to-regular-word ratios for girls is two to three times higher than for boys. 

What's sadder is running into an extremely attractive professional woman, who clearly has her act together, and then suddenly engaging her in a conversation that would make a Merchant Marine blush. 

It reminds me of an old Skip Carey story that may be apocryphal. Supposedly during an Atlanta Braves game, the camera was panning the crowd and stopped on an extremely comely and model-level blond woman smiling and watching the game. Since she was great eye candy, the director stayed on her a little too long, and suddenly she reached up and dug her index finger into her nose and went fishing.

After a long, long pause, as he tried to find something Skip Carey-ish to say, the Skipper finally and dryly intoned, "Well, she was almost perfect."

SantaCon Is Today!

If you haven't experience a SantaCon, then you haven't lived. Imagine an entire city -- in this case, New York -- invaded by 10,000 revelers in Santa suits, all drinking, partying and having a good time. Imagine bars filled to the brim with jolly red men. Imagine entire subway trains packed with elves, Santas and high-skirted "Mrs. Claus's" all shouting "Ho! Ho! Ho!" in the style of British soccer hooligans.

It's all good clean fun for the most part, and the event even ties in with a canned food drive to do some good. I can't wait. Because of another commitment, I can't participate, but I'm hoping the Santas will invade Central Park like they did last year, so I can watch the show.

 

 

More Southern Music to New York, Please

Sadly, I found out about this hot new Southern group's visit to the Brooklyn Bowl too late to get tickets. They performed last night. Gonna have to do a better job of keeping track of when my fellow countrymen travel north of the Mason-Dixon line. Maybe we can put GPS chips in mandalins and banjos?

 

Sneak Peek at Apple's Grand Central Terminal Store

As a now-New Yorker and an Apple fanboy, I was a little worried about how Apple's new store smack in the middle of Grand Central Terminal was going to look. Placing a garish retail store in the middle of such an historic building would be like plopping big billboards atop the peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains. 

Fortunately, as this sneak peek tour from Fortune's website shows, Friday's grand opening will be grand, with Apple respecting and in many cases incorporating the classy architectural features of the century-old structure.

 

 

 

Rock Center is Rocking

It's Christmastime in New York City. Tourists are snapping pictures, Shoppers are shopping. Skaters are skating. Great time to be a New Yorker.