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.