One of the major cultural differences between New York City and the South is how you interact with the neighbors.
Quite bluntly, in New York, you don't.
As any dyed-in-the-wool Southerner knows, interaction across the fence with the neighbors isn't just a tradition, it's required as part of the social code. You may hate your neighbor, but you'll kill them with kindness by pointing out with a fake sense of sadness how their rose garden is rapidly dying, subtly suggesting that it's their lack of care or dearth of horticultural knowledge that's doing them in.
In the north, we've lived in our apartment building now for six weeks. There are 12 apartments and I've seen three neighbors as they passed in and out of the front door. I've said hello. Introduced myself to two of them. Nothing.
Neighbors in New York City are ships passing in the night. Even the mere act of holding a door open for them brings about odd looks. Actually conversing beyond "hello" is immediately greeted as suspect. Apartment doors are quickly closed so that neighbors can't peek in and see who has the nicer apartment, or who might be busy dismembering corpses in their kitchen. But according to The New York Times, this trend might be changing.
So being a sociable hillbilly, me and the misses are going to try and change that. We're sending out invitations tomorrow for a "meet-the-tenants" social at our place in two weeks. We're going to avoid freaking them out by having a pig-picking or a catfish fry, and attempt something more urban and less threatening: a little wine-and-cheese get together in the evening.
We'll see how it goes. If I start feeling comfortable, who knows -- I might put the NASCAR race on the TV.
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