Just back from an overnight party in what Manhattanites would call “the country” (a two-hour drive up the Hudson River)… New Yorkers are definitely different from the backward academics here in Cambridge. Lots of guys at the party were classic late 1980s “masters of the universe” Wall Streeters, drinking single-malt Scotch and smoking cigars. An 11-year-old boy, who attends an expensive private school in Manhattan, responded to the standard “What do you want to be when you grow up?” question with “I want to be an investment banker.”
Managing other folks’ money and taking 2% off the top every year sounds great but there is a dark underside. One mother noted “I wish that we never had to go back to the City. Every day that I’m in Manhattan I’m reminded that there are millions of Muslims out there trying to blow us up. Three of the parents in my kids’ school were killed in the World Trade Center.”
[A fellow who puts money into new insurance companies (where they expect to earn a 15% annual return!) noted that September 11th cost insurers $50 billion, making it the most expensive loss in the history of the industry.]
New Yorkers work hard for their reputation of being annoying. At the restaurant I worked at in Salt Lake I remember the mantra about New Yorkers – they are a pain in the ass, but if you stick with them, they tip well.
I met a New Yorker on the slopes as well. He was just a classic – stock broker, thought he was hot shit, was forking out $30,000 for a week of skiing. I just remember though feeling sorry for him because I had forked out say about $3 in gas and $50 for a weeks worth of rides (Solitude sold tickets by the chair life ride) and he was going home before the good storms. Anyways, the money seemed relative. I was going skiing next week, and he was going stockbroking.
Later, a week after September 11, we had a reunion in Indianapolis and drove across the country to be there. I remember getting off the freeway and getting lost near Terra Haute, Indiana. There was this little neighborhood of big trucks and little, vinyl siding houses – typical poorer small town. Nearly every house had a “we love you New York” or something on it. It was just incredibly touching.
Anyways, about worrying about Muslims wanting to blow you up, it seems to me that that is just about as much bullshit as every militia member in the US wants to blow up Oklahoma City the way Timothy McViegh did. The Muslims of the world seem to be the targets right now of the terrorists in their own countries. I’d a told her that.
And I really do love New Yorkers, even, perhaps especially, the pain in the ass ones.
The New Yorker who has to return home vs. your being able to stay and ski seems to be a case of your money or your life.
Didn’t Thoreau argue something along the lines of what was preferable, spending three weeks working for someone to save up train fare to get from Boston to Philadelphia, or just walking it?