36 Reasons You’re Insane If You Live Anywhere Other Than New York
1. There is an actual place where you can get a gourmet popsicle, which maybe doesn’t sound so appetizing ATM but whatever. Put it on your list of things to do!
2. You can start a small business here and four years later watch it blossom into something great. Shake Shack, everyone’s favorite burgers and shake parlor, started in 2004 as a food stand in Madison Square Park. Now there are 34 locations all over the world!
3. Our new mayor is married to a black radical lesbian and they have two biracial kids.
4. Sample sales. SAMPLE SALES!!!! Also? OAK is here.
5. The “New York Moment,” where you run into someone you haven’t seen in ages in the oddest of places and at the oddest of times. It’s like, “What are you doing here?!”
6. There’s a whole restaurant devoted to chicken nuggets !!! And only in New York would such a restaurant have a line of people waiting outside of the door to get in.
7. Despite all the crack downs on nightlife, we still have underground parties and secret shows. A performer you really like has a “secret show” somewhere and when you get there you realize the show is happening in some celebrity’s 6th floor Tribeca loft.
8. The smell of Nuts for Nuts on Broadway.
9. Because every time you come here you will feel fabulous.
10. Jimmy Webb.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1af96AzPls&w=584&h=390]
11. You can go partying in the East Village and then chow down at any of the 24-hour diners in the area.
12. Because there are still people here who have lived here way longer than you have, two, three, five decades of their lives. They sit on the sidewalk and people watch and talk to you about how Bedford Avenue used to be a two way street, or about when their rent was $30 a month.
13. Because even though New York is forever changing, always evolving, there will always be people who think that New York was “better” back “then.” The truth is that New York is always great.
14. Because there’s no such thing as one version of New York. Everybody has their own New York.
15. When you get a smile on your face as you walk past restaurants or condos and remember when they used to be clubs. Though now it’s some sort of fancy cafe, every time I walk past that secret door at Broadway and Bleecker all I can think about is that gay basement dance-den Mr. Black.
16. Because New York is an awesome college town, and not just for the colleges in the city but also for those nearby in Jersey, upstate New York and Connecticut.
17. That a band can get their start playing on the subway and in parks and within a years time end up headlining in important venues around the country.
18. Because every Sunday in December, the MTA rolls out the Holiday nostalgia subway cars, meaning you can take a trip back to 1930s!
19. Because some French dude invented a thing called a Cronut that costs $7 a pop and which requires you to line up at 7 a.m. to even think about getting one.
20. All the media industries are here. Actually, any industry you’re looking to break into is right here: porn, finance, writing, fashion, real estate, blogging, food, freelance everything, nannying, rent boy-ing, politics, whatever! It’s here!
21. Lou Reed.
22. Because we know how to party better than any other city.
23. Because you will bump into a celebrity and not even notice. Or…not even care. Once I rolled past Gwyneth Paltrow typing something into her Blackberry!
24. Because there will never be anything like the old DOMA cafe/restaurant in the West Village. It stayed packed. There was no internet. You couldn’t use your laptop after 5 or on the weekends, and there were always fabulous models and publicists and celebrities in there having creative meetings. Also: best French Toast in the city.
25. Because somewhere near you there’s a coffee shop that also has a liquor license, meaning you can work there during normal hours, downing coffee, but then help yourself to wine and cocktails in the evening without even having to go anyplace else.
26. Because everyone is attractive.
27. Even though NYC is increasingly becoming, if it isn’t already, a place for rich people, the city still drives talented, ambitious people who will stop at nothing to reach their dreams.
28. Tokio 7.
29. Because there are green taxi cabs now that are dedicated to taking you to Brooklyn or, worse, Queens. Now there’s no need to say “But you have to go to Queens.”
30. Because New Yorkers get creative with space. There’s not too much of it!
31. You can eat anything at any time and get it delivered.
32. There’s nothing like hearing the last bits of someone’s conversation as you cut a street corner. And then he did WHAT to your HUH?!?!
33. Holiday parties! Holiday parties in New York are the best.
34. Because you can sit at a bar in Soho having cocktails with your best girlfriend when she pulls out her new boyfriend’s dick pic and the bartender doesn’t even flinch.
35. Because our skyline never gets old.
36. Because you love getting outside of the city every once in a while, but there’s nothing like coming back. Every time.