Yokel in the City; I Take On Manhattan

I used to think of myself as a sophisticate. Okay, not so much a sophisticate, but somewhere between a poseur and cool kid. Depending upon the day, the dial slid one way or another. 

These days I pretty much fall into the category of clueless dope. I can’t even read the tabloids at the salon. That used to be my favorite part of getting my hair cut: the guilty pleasure of catching up on celebrity gossip without embarrassing myself by purchasing tabloids. The last time I visited Rosie not only did I not know the people who were ‘Just Like Me’ but I didn’t care. I only know about Kimye because Seth Rogen and James Franco won’t stop pranking them. Which is how it should be.

I blame some of this on the fact that I work for myself. Since there are days when I don’t actually interact with anyone other than my phone, and I don’t watch reality television, I miss a lot of the useless pop culture information one absorbs from co-workers and clogs your brain. By the time I hear jokes in incredibly bad taste, they have already gone from ‘too soon’ to irrelevant.

It doesn’t help that I moved from an area where star sightings were common at Starbucks, in restaurants and regularly in my yoga classes. Where I live now, my horse vet is a celebrity. And guess what? He is  ‘just like me!’

Last week it became really obvious that I’ve become a complete country bumpkin. I took a red eye to New York for a day trip to Manhattan followed by a week with Mom in the Berkshires. Before I went to Mill River, MA, population 500, I was taking on the Big City.

The first stop was the rental car agency. It was seamless, but it did throw me that there was a concierge in the pick-up area.  Normally the clerk just tosses the keys, points toward a bunch of cars and waves me towards the door without looking up. Not at Enterprise JFK. Here the guy walked out with me and gave me a choice of the cars and colors. ‘Course, it could have been because it was 6:30 in the morning and he was lonesome. Or I might have looked insane. A red eye in sold-out coach does not cultivate pretty.

After driving in Los Angeles for a million years, I didn’t find the traffic to the city particularly daunting, though the $7.50 toll for the Midtown Tunnel took my breath away. As did the pot holes in the road. Literally. They were tire-swallowing huge. I was convinced that the axles in my tiny rental car were going to snap.

I also didn’t expect that it would take almost as long to get across town from the Tunnel to my Westside hotel as it had taken for me to get cross country. It wasn’t the number of cars, compared to the 101 at rush hour, the traffic was nothing. It was all those damn pedestrians. They were everywhere. If you stopped for a minute, to avoid rear-ending the truck stopped in the middle of the road, hundreds of people would jump in front of the car. These are things that never happen in LA. Particularly in my sleepy section of LA.

If you walk in front of a moving car in Los Angeles, you are either trying to die, or a member of a ring of insurance thieves.  You’re definitely not trying to get from one place to the next. Not so in Manhattan.  

After I ditched my car at the hotel valet ($59 a night!!!.) I rediscovered the joys of walking in the city. I could jaywalk across any street without fear of a $250 ticket. In Manhattan you are encouraged, nay expected, to jaywalk if you actually want to get anywhere. If you wait for a light or a break in traffic you’ll never leave the corner.

I had a lunch and a dinner set up with friends. Neither of whom said to me, “You’re staying on the West Side? Sorry, I don’t do the Westside.” Neither did they preface their acceptance with a disclaimer that if it was raining or snowing they were going to cancel. Impressive.

They did say that the respective restaurants were only a few short blocks from my hotel, which I believe is the NYC equivalent of the LA phrase, ‘it only takes 20 minutes.’  But they were close to my hotel. Directions were a little sketchy. “The address?” They both said, “It’s on Broadway, between 48^th and 49^th. You’ll find it.”  I was a little skeptical about locating anything without an actual street number, but when you’re walking, it turns out those are pretty good instructions. In both cases they were correct. The eateries were close to my hotel.

Following drinks and dinner and conversations that did not involve either facelifts or the sex lives of people I didn’t know or recognize, it was time for the theater. (Of Mice and Men; it was terrific.) After the play we had a drink or three to recover from the weighty mood of the show.  The cost of relief was pricey, but necessary.  We walked back to the hotel. Not a thought of DUIs.

I had a lot of time to think when I was driving to Massachusetts the next day, mostly because I missed the turn to the 87 and the trip took about an hour longer than normal. I miss New York. I love LA, but I really, really miss New York. I haven’t given up on city life. Yet.

Man the Lifeboats, We're all going to Die. It's raining in Los Angeles

The news media was agog: after the worst drought in three years, and no measurable precipitation for almost a year, it was going to RAIN! Not just drizzle, it was going to pour. We were expecting more rain in three days than we had had in almost 30 years.  Yes ladies and gentlemen, it was on. It was STORMWATCH 2014!

I find it pretty amusing that Los Angeles gets its collective knickers in a knot whenever it rains.  As a city we are even more distraught about a quarter inch of rain than Atlanta is with two inches of snow.  Except no one in Los Angeles would EVER abandon their car on the 405. Unless Godzilla comes to life and picks up the car and shakes its occupants out, we’re going down with the auto.

That doesn’t mean that Los Angelenos know how to drive when it’s damp. Some would say we don’t know how to drive at all, but I digress. In our defense, because it rains so seldom, oil and nasty stuff does build up on the roadways, which makes it exceptionally slick when it’s wet. Also due to terrible drainage, roads tend to flood. But that’s a rationalization.

The sensible reaction to all this would be to simply slow down. Instead, most LA drivers clutch the wheel in a white knuckle panic and step on the gas. They tailgate the driver in front of them as if that car is carrying  the last development deal on earth and if they catch up, it’s theirs.

Or people just hole up in their homes and don’t leave until the weather gets better. Seriously, people are actually afraid to leave their homes if it’s raining. It is as if everyone in Los Angeles is related to the Wicked Witch of the West and will melt if unimported water touches their surgery-freshened faces.

I grew up in the East, in Connecticut, where we not only had rainstorms; we had hurricanes. And snow. Nobody worried about driving in the rain; it’s just what you did if you wanted to have a life. In New England, it is unheard of to blow off plans due to weather unless the snow is dumping.

I was back there earlier this winter, and realized that I’ve become quite a Southern California flower. If it was up to me, I’d have never set foot outside. It was cold. I mean really cold.

I was in the Berkshires for almost two weeks, and except for one day, when it was a balmy 20 degrees, it never got above four during the day. We won’t discuss how cold it was at night.

During the day I had two small chores. I had to drive the two miles to the Village center to pick up the mail and I had to fill the outside birdfeeders. This meant I had to brave the wind chill. On went the sheepskin lined boots. The scarf, the fuzzy hat, the mittens and of course, the down jacket. By the time I was dressed I looked like the Michelin Man. I didn’t care. The drive to the town was too short for the car heater to kick in, and five minutes sitting in a car in that temperature is five minutes too long.

When I got back the bird feeders were waiting. Most people have a feeder or two; mom has more than a dozen. They hang from poles and are all outfitted with a complex system of baffles that are supposed to keep the squirrels at bay. Actually, the squirrels have no trouble bypassing them. I, however, do. Getting the feeders open on the best of days is a chore. Doing it wearing mittens while standing on an ice floe becomes a sport worthy of the winter Olympics. But I did it twice a day, with only a modicum of complaining. Okay, there was an enormous amount of bitching. It was COLD for God’s sake!

Making it even worse, for reasons known only to the DirectTV people, mom gets the West Coast feed for network news, so we were getting Los Angeles weather. And it was taunting me. The temperature was in the mid-80s in Los Angeles. People were complaining that it was beach weather. That there was no winter this year. Apparently that was a problem.

Thing is, if I’d have been home, I’d be leading the whining pack. Which is why now that we’re under STORMWATCH 2014! I’m keeping my mouth shut.