NYC or bust!

After another Time Warner internet snafu (put them on the list of things I don't love about NYC) and a lovely month on the West Coast (which I still personally feel is the best coast but I'm working on my bias) I'm back in New York and ready for fall.  Had you asked me in August what I love about NYC I would have been hard-pressed for an answer...the humidity gets to me--I don't do well in it and don't pretend otherwise.  The city is sticky, smelly and generally overrun with confused tourists and the disgruntled locals who lack Hampton-getaways.  But this last week running around getting ready for school, watching the city refill with the post-labor day rush of New Yorkers working back into their city routines I have to admit, I too heart NYC.

They say that culture is so ingrained in our everyday lives, such an integral part of how we live, breathe and eat that we are hard-pressed to observe it from within.  Within classical genres of academia the study of foreign cultures is a fine balance between "going native" and maintaining the objective eye.  It's the minutiae, the tiny details you don't realize that define your role within (or outside of) a culture.  Die hard West Coaster that I am, I could swear up and down until I'm blue in the face that I will never succumb to being a "New Yorker" but that would be a lie...it's rubbing off.  Here are three things I forgot I loved about NYC:

1) Bagels.  This is kind of a no-brainer--you don't have to be a New Yorker to love a good bagel.  In fact, you can get them anywhere in the world so what makes NY bagels special? They're big, they're doughy, and if you ask a bagel-purist to toast it for you they will scoff at you as if you are from Nowheresville, Nebraska and not the apartment upstairs.  Thick with cream cheese or as the ubiquitous breakfast sandwich bagels are one of NYCs great contributions to Americana.  Trust me, they are just better here.  

2) Jay-walking. I didn't realize until I came back but I never press the crosswalk buttons here...why? Because most intersections don't have them (and for those that do, the buttons are decorative pedestrian placaters)! Lights are timed, crossing is on-the-light or as-you-dare.  You have to admit it's slightly more sanitary that pushing buttons touched by who knows how many overeager kiddos and impatient elderly. (Begs the interesting question: are crosswalk buttons at all effective in the age of computer-controlled traffic signals or do they exist merely to satisfy some primal urge to exert control over our environment?)

3) Street-music.  Nothing like being serenaded by the orchestral sounds of Metro buses, taxi horns, FDNY sirens and subway saxophones.  It can be loud and obnoxious but it is easy to forget how enjoyable it is to sit in Washington Square Park and listen to impromptu street shows while the city whirs by.  Welcome back and welcome home indeed!