Peter’s Blog V2

I walked by the American Girl Place on Fifth Avenue today.  The line waiting to get into the store, moms and dads and young American girls of all ethnicities (but 95% white), stretched all the way to Madison Avenue.  The line blocked the entire front of an office building, some restaurants, and the chiropractic office that I visited.  I did some research later and revealed no sale or special promotion going on… people simply waited in the cold to buy dolls, accessories, and $20+ makeover sessions for their silly plastic toys.

That’s New York City.  We’ve got all the glamorous celebrities, exhaggerating stores, ridiculous sales, tramatizing tragedies, and overrated landmarks.  What seem to be once-in-a-lifetime events or sightings for most people in this country, are rarely more than daily routines that we run by over lunch break.

Every year, the Rockefeller Center lights one of the most famous Christmas Trees, and Times Square hosts one of the world’s most widely known New Year celebrations.  Walking back to my office between those places, on a day between those holidays, made me sort of anxious.  Not really anxious, actually, but I can’t tell if it was a cheerful depressing feeling, or a depressing cheerful feeling.  There wasn’t much work to be done, but it was a work day after all.  Why was I then surrounded by all these cheerful folks, some of whom probably left the state of Kansas for the very first time, celebrating Christmas and New Year and finally seeing New York?

Hong and I wondered if residents of Las Vegas or Orlando feel the same frustration – you wake up to yet another shitty work day, drag your feet to the nearest coffee shop for some much-needed morning fuel, only to find yourself in line with 20 goddamn tourists who can’t stop taking pictures of your stupid city.  Perhaps the economy of those cities are more dependent on tourism, so the residents who by large hold hospitality jobs feel more grateful toward the visitors?  On the contrary, New York would still be an overly full and crowded city without the tourists, so we’d really prefer to not have any.  In addition, if there were non-tourism office jobs in those cities, their workers probably don’t have to drive through the Strip to work or wait in a long lunch line in a theme park…

So the next time you question why a New Yorker is so pissy and rude, the answer is simple – you’re freaking in his way!

While researching the American Girl Place, I found this interesting story about their discriminatory practice.

That’s right – another Christmas-y thing that I have issues with.  Soon enough I’d be writing my own version of Twelve Days of Christmas.  Speaking of which, if I still drive to work everyday and listen to the radio, I’d hate the Christmas songs by now, too.  Good thing that’s not the case.

No offense here… but Christmas is the most over-rated and over-emphasized seasonal phenomenon in America… when everyone spends two full months per year making a big deal out of something, I’m sorry, I may get sick of it.

Nothing’s wrong with Salvation Army itself, either.  I just hate its army of bell ringers.  And it also wasn’t used to be annoying – recalling the good ol’ days when we bought groceries once a week at the local Walmart Super Center, when we’d run by the old dude in the red uniform who smiled and rang the bell, right before meeting the old dude in the blue uniform and taking a cart from him to shop the everyday low price items.  That was nice.  The crisp bell rings for 15 seconds a week brought out all the holiday spirit.

But like the expiration date on milk bottles, everything is different in New York.  Here you have an army of grumpy New Yorkers in their red uniforms, ringing the bells like mad men, in the subway stations where the beggars beg and the homeless poop/pee/sleep.  Having a red bucket or not, they look more like thugs than most beggars.  And they have to do the bell ringing in a freaking enclosed confinement where large crowds of people have nowhere to run or hide for 5~15 minutes at a time.  We already have to deal with the various loud noises the subway system creates, and now this constant high-decibel crap?  Maybe if I stay in the station long enough the bell ringing will destroy my mind and cause me to go crazy and lose my job and end up on the streets and needing their salvation one day.  Arg.  And they’re always in the way.  Did you know that New York subway stations are crowded?

Every year, on this day and the weeks that follow, it becomes exponentially more difficult to:

• Find a seat on the subway
• Walk on the sidewalk without being slowed down by a not-in-a-hurry tourist
• Walk on the road, due to the police barricade
• Jaywalk, due to the police barricade
• Run the red light, because the cops that pop out of nowhere actually care about it for once

I don’t understand why people can’t simply go to Mercer County, NJ where the tree came from, and see it there.  They can actually take all the photos they want without blocking any hungry New Yorker who just wants a quick bite before returning to work.

New York subway… working 24-7 but never fails to fail you.

For those of you unfamiliar with this system, at least a couple of routes are “under service” every weekend, and sometimes also on weekdays.  Flyers like this are everywhere, just like the cockroaches.

The bitter comment is not at all unreasonable.  The same crappy subway is still slow, dirty, and unreliable after every service.  The 7 line was “under construction” for months in a row, and had to go back to maintenance again two weeks after “normal service” resumed.  When you pass by the labor workers:

• 20% of them would have a tool or radio in their hands
• 10% of them would be eating a sandwich or from a lunch box
• 50% of them would be sitting down
• 5% of them would be laying down
• 5% of them, if you’re lucky, would be actually doing something on the track

Makes me want to join a union too.