New Yorkers are Rude--Fuggedit

There is that long held belief that New Yorkers are rude, pushy, and mean. Or that's what the rest of the country believes about the 8 million inhabitants, and the millions more who come into the city to work (we should note most of these people come from New Jersey, Connecticut, and even Pennsylvania).

So, here's what I've noticed about New Yorkers, thus far. They are fast walkers, a necessity here. They have no problems stepping around you if you are dawdling in the middle of a sidewalk. But they rarely do so muttering profanities under their breath. Actually if they were so incensed they would most likely just cuss you out, right there in the middle of a busy sidewalk. But that is something I've yet to see, or worse be the recipient.

You would think so many people squeezed in together would make tempers brittle, but that is far from the case. On an given day, on a crowded subway car, or bus, I will witness a person giving up their seat to an elderly person or a mother with a young child. These unexpected acts of generosity and good manners reaffirms my belief that people here are not rude, pushy, or mean. I've been the recipient of such generosity whenever I've gotten on a bus or subway with my son where a young man, young woman, or just man, or woman, have gladly given up their seat for us. I've also been aided, unasked I might add, by a passerby about which subway to take to get me home. This gentleman was not creepy, certainly not using this opportunity to ask me for a date, but was helping out a confused damsel.

Why, then, have New Yorkers suffered such labels? It does make you think about it since I'd just left a city full of sun shine and full of some of the rudest, self-involved people I'd ever encountered. It was as if the perpetual sunshine made all of their home training, if they'd had any, disappear along with most of their brain cells. I've seen grown men, sitting, or rather, lounging at the outdoor tables of any number of cafes, watching a woman struggling with the door as she tried to squeeze herself and her stroller through. It was more of a rarity for one of them to get up to open the door for the woman, but rather the norm that they would, collectively, sit and watch as if they were watching television. I've written enough about the craziness of LA drivers, how so many of them use their cars as weapons, or rather shields as they vent their frustrations out on the rest of the drivers on the road. LA is the city known for people shooting at another driver in a fit of 'road rage.' Isn't that where this term came from, this land of sunshine and supposedly laid back Angelenos?

I attribute this disconnection with propriety, good manners, consideration for others to the simple fact that life is constantly filtered through the windshield of a car. If you deal with people in the most limited, and in most cases, synthetic manner then you are apt to live in a bubble where anyone else's consideration is never considered. Angelenos can drive past the many homeless, an easy thing to do if your car radio is blaring the newest Radio Head song, allowing you to pretend that the body buried under a sleeping bag on the sidewalk is of no consequence to your immediate world.

New York, a city where you are constantly juggling yourself against the multitude of citizenry, makes it difficult for you to filter the world, in any manner. You are always forced to consider how your action, or inaction, affects someone else, even if most are strangers. Each time you walk past a homeless person asking for a quarter, or better yet, a dollar, you are forced to consider so many personal, and public questions. And no, you don't hand over a quarter to everyone that asks. But this doesn't mean you don't think about it.

I also think one's constant contact with the general public forces you to behave humanely. Look, if you were a young guy, sitting there as an old person with a walker stood by your chair, I am certain most around this young man would say, or do something to point out his lack of consideration. It is the pressure of the collective that, in the end, makes all of us just a bit nicer, just a bit more considerate, just a bit less aggressive.

A life, or rather, a city that is always lived behind gates takes this pressure off of the individual, giving you a false sense of privacy--something that can be abused. That is the strangest thing of all, this city of 8 million, can, on most days, make you think about your anonymity, your face just one of many. Yet, the sense of privacy that most in Los Angeles feels is their God-given right, is not something we can assume as a way of life here. No, we are always forced to deal with all of humanity: the good, the bad, the fragile, the hopeful, the beautiful, the ugly, the helpless, the frightening, the weak, the mentally ill, the young, the old, all of it, day in and day out. And perhaps that is what debunks the myth about New Yorkers since each of us can see something of our own fragility, humanity, in the face of someone else, thereby propelling you to act as you would hope someone would act toward you. Whatever the case, New Yorkers certainly do not earn the rudest people on the planet moniker. No, I would say some other town or city may deserve that stereotype.