"out-of-town" | Imamother

chavamom

Sun, Jul 31 2005, 6:40 pm

SaraYehudis wrote:

Also, the out-of-town style of dress is less competitive.

Apparently this extends to boys too. When buying my son a hat for his bar mitzvah, we had a range of a nice hat that was not so expensive or the 'name hat' that cost quite a bit more. My son didn't even press for the 'Borsolino'. His comment? "Look mommy, someday if I'm in yeshiva in New York, if it's important to me, I'll buy myself one." I was impressed!

queenie

Sun, Jul 31 2005, 9:12 pm

NY is theee town? I always thought Toronto was the centre of the universe!

shanie5

Sun, Sep 04 2005, 12:36 am

I grew up in ny, but in canarsie and was considered an "out of towner" (canarsie is about 2 miles from flatbush)
my dh was born out of town, but lived in ny for about 8 years when we met
it took us ten years to get out of brooklyn.
when I lived there, I didn't even know all the people on my block-everybody could pick and choose who they wanted to be friends with. here, you have to be friends with whoever is here-even if in ny I may not have been. I like it better this way. no-one knows anybodys address, but everybody knows where everyone lives.
(although thats a bit hard for newcomers who belong to a carpool)
ill take "out of town" any day, but I still like my ny friends

sarahd

Tue, Sep 06 2005, 2:30 pm

Hey, I had a friend in elementary school named Shanie who lived in Canarsie!! Very Happy

Except we didn't consider it "out of town" because we were all from the same couple of neighborhoods. The "out of towners" in our class were the two or three girls who lived in Flatbush. LOL

shanie5

Tue, Sep 06 2005, 7:46 pm

sarahd- there are not too many shanies from canarsie. did you go to bnos yisroel? the only other shanie I can think of went there too. I guess it depends on what year you graduated in.

shanie5

Tue, Sep 06 2005, 7:46 pm

by the way, where did you live-east flatbush?

chen

Sun, Oct 30 2005, 8:03 pm

NY is unique among the cities I've seen (OK I've never been to the southern hemisphere or the far east or africa) in that many Jews live in the actual inner-city-concrete-jungle cheek by jowl with evry other imaginable ethnic group. most everywhere else even though they are living within the city limits, they are in more suburban environs, in private houses or garden apts., not in high-rise apts. in the city center.

what does that have to do with rudeness? well, if you read experimaental psychology you learn that animals subjected to overcrowded conditions become hostile and vicious. furthermore, exposure to noise causes stress, irritability, hostility and combativeness.

in your average suburban supermarket the aisles are wide, the shopping carts are well-oiled, and there are plenty of cashiers. in your average NY supermarket, the aisles are narrow and blocked with merchandise, the carts are balky and the cashiers few and far between. In your average suburban supermarket you have a generous parking lot. In your average NY supermarket you have no parking lot. Your average suburban homeowner has a house and a garage. your average suburban apt. dweller has a reserved spot in the complex's parking lot. your average New yorker lives in an apt. bldg. and has no car. If he has a car, he either spends several hundred dollars a month renting a parking space in a cellar somewhere, or else spends roughly half an hour a day circling his neighborhood looking for a spot--any spot. new yorkers who own cars parked on the street do not go out anywhere b/c it would mean losing their parking spots.

If a new yorker ventures to take his car downtown, parking in a commercial lot can cost $15 for an hour, $45 and up for the day.

your average suburbanite spends twenty minutes each way commuting to work. your average new yorker spends close to an hour each way. during rush hour, which lasts approximately three hours (I am not making this up), most of those commuters are standing on their feet.

Your average suburbanite speaks english. your average new yorker speaks Hindi, Punjabi, Russian, Vietnamese, Polish, Cantonese, Spanish, Creole, Korean, Greek, Tagalog, Farsi...and that's not counting the tourists.

Your average wait to see a doctor in a New york emergency room is five to eight hours. That's assuming no one else comes in with a spear through his chest.

I could go on, but...is it any wonder that new yorkers have the rep that they do? could you live that way?

Some of my best friends are new yorkers.

carrot

Sun, Oct 30 2005, 9:49 pm

wow! I had a great time reading that post! thank you!

sarahd

Mon, Oct 31 2005, 8:11 am

Did you write that yourself, chen??

chen

Mon, Oct 31 2005, 10:25 pm

whaddaya think, I would plagiarize? shock

not since my report on simon bolivar --or was it vasco da gama?-- in 5th grade. (Not my fault, we hadn't been taught about footnotes.)

carrot, thanks! I had fun writing it. writing is just like talking, except slower. Smile

sarahd

Tue, Nov 01 2005, 4:18 am

Sorry, chen. You get an A+ in writing skills. You should submit this to something....or start sending it round the internet. LOL

Yael

Thu, Nov 10 2005, 12:32 pm

Quote:

Also, the out-of-town style of dress is less competitive.

not just dress but house decorating and occasion making and everything you can think of is a big competition for NYers.
cant stand it Mad

chavamom

Thu, Nov 10 2005, 12:35 pm

My dd age 8 tells me she wants to move to NYC. Why? B/c she doesn't want to have to learn how to drive!