NewYorkNotes

I just moved to NYC all the way from sunny northern California (august 2003). Scotto suggested I write down my thoughts on what's similar here and what isn't, the idea being I will forget all the differences after a while. Update: I've also started collecting tips for moving to New York.

gum on the sidewalk - so many people, so much gum - it's little black spots everywhere on the sidewalk. Not sticky or anything, but mashed into the very substance of the concrete.

the g*Damn weather! It's not that it gets too hot here (80s, low 90s). The problem is the constant 75-85% humidity. I have to wear undershirts to work because I'm always dripping in sweat. The subway and the busses are air conditioned so that helps. But, you have to walk to and from public transportation.

farmers cheese - what the hell is this? it's everywhere in the stores.

Heilman's Mayo instead of Best Foods. Well, that's just a different label.

Brown mustard - French's Yellow is not very popular here - everyone has the stone-ground stuff.

It's really hard to find original Coors in bars. Everyone has Coors Light, though. Ugh.

coffee in cups and bags - I thought the flat plastic lid with the pull-back slot was horrible compared to the Starbucks raised lid with a hole. Then I realized the advantages: when you get a coffee and a bagel here, they put them both together in a paper bad with a wad of napkins. This works great because you can carry the bag easily and nothing spills. The starbucks coffee lid would spill all over in the bag. What it all comes down to is that everything here is tailored for walking around - you can transport these cups with other stuff much more easily. The starbucks coffee cups are for people who have cupholders in their cars. They don't do the paper 'egg-crate' multi-cup carrier here either.

women dress much better here in New York - no nappy hair (or armpits, for that matter). Black chicks have nappy hair of course, but that's different. Women wear skirts, too - no shorts (or even worse, 'skorts'). Very nice. Men dress about the same, maybe a little more formal.

Not too much surf wear, or guys with colored hair (mine is blond right now)

Similarly, not too many long skateboard riders such as myself (I've seen a few, though).

New Yorkers like to use a straw in their soda cans. They thought it was disgusting that I would just crack open a can and drink from it. Maybe I go for a quick shirttail wipe, that's it.

No Standing signs mean "don't even stop your car here for a second". Renee got a $105 ticket in one of these.

A favorite topping on street vendor hot dogs is onions in some sort of red onion sweet sauce.

The pizza is fantastic! I love new york style crust (which appears to be the only style here). Guys serving me pizza like to call me "boss", as in, "here's your slice, boss".

Duane Reade is the drugstore that's everywhere instead of Walgreens (like in San Fran). There are Walgreens here.

No Bank of America! I had to open an account at Commerce Bank, the only one with decent accounts. The big guys want a minimum of $1000 in your account, or they start charging fees like $12 a month. Update: there are BofA ATMs in Loew's movie theathers. I saw one and actually felt homesick.

It's hard to find a store where you can get cash back on purchases. Also, most small stores won't take credit cards unless your purchase is at least $10.

No right turns on red lights. Makes sense since it's safer for pedestrians.

Similarly, jaywalking is expected here. No one waits for the light - you cross whenever you can.

It's very, very important to use your horn all the time to let other drivers know you exist. Driving here is basically a white-knuckle nightmare. PArking is even worse, what with very confusing street signage and twice-weekly street sweeping. The message: get rid of your car, idiot. You can take the bus or train anywhere you need to go (even Yankee stadium!).

Vermin! I've seen a few big juicy rats around the subway and out on the street. Plus, my office building is infested with big, evil, quick cockroaches. Yes, what everyone says about cockroaches really is true - they are fast and omnipresent.

Garbage collection is a casual affair. First, not "official" carts - you put whatever cans you have on the street for pickup day. Extra bags? Pile them on? Refrigerators? Rolled up carpets? The garbagemen will take anything! The downside is there is always loose trash on the streets, and slimy stains on the sidewalk. Oh, they basically don't recycle here, either. You technically can recycle paper and cans, but it's hard to find receptacles. On the plus sides, street scavengers go through your trash all the time for the cans.

You stand "on line" here, not "in line".

I have never seen so many confusing, poorly-worded parking regulation signs in my life. The entire parking setup here is desinged to extract a constant stream of money from you in the form of fines. Big fines. That is, until you finally wise up and sell your car.

I saw two big, fat, dead rats on the sidewalk today. And, there was a dead cockroach in the breakroom at work. I don't work in a dump either - this is on the 53rd floor of a tower downtown.

People generally seem to be more friendly here. It's easy to get directions - just walk around looking confused and someone will ask where you are trying to go.

I found a place on the west side of Manhattan where I can park my car for $150 a month. That's the cheapest so far. Did I mention that on-street parking is a joke? Right now I'm parking on 81st (and I live on 46th). Luckily the subway gets me back quick. The parking lot pric emight sound ridiculous, but in the month previous, Renee and I racked up $140 in parking tickets. So basically you can pay either way.

Houston street is pronounced howston, not hewston.

Jewish Delicatessens always advertise Roumanian or Rumanian beef. Haven't figured out what that is, or where, for that matter, Rumania is.

Last week I watched two teams of Hasidic Jews playing baseball at McCarren park in Greenpoint. They took off their black jackets, but they were still all wearing black dress pants, white shirts, and broad-brimmed white hats.

I'm starting to get tired of eating pizza all the time. Oh well.

There are a lot of manual revolving doors in this city. It's actually a pretty efficient way to get into a building: lots of people can go through, and the amount of heat lost to the outside is minimal.

A little old woman in the subway was carrying a backpack from skateboard maker DaKine.

I saw Melanie Griffith on my block last week - she's starring in Chicago right down the street.

My dog Annie doesn't like to walk on subway grates. Other than that, she does great in the crowds.

At the bottom end of Times Sqare in the big NBC screen with the news ticker below it. Above that screen is a giant (I mean giant, this is Times Sqare, remember) 3-dimensional Cup Of Noodles. Why? Update: the sign is actually flat and uses clever shading for the 3-d effect. Also, steam comes from the top.

H&H Bagels at the end of 46th St. (by the USS Intrepid museum) has tasty bagels. That's a scummy street, though.

Columbus Day is on Monday, and there are big plans - exhibitions, parades, etc. That struck me as odd - then I realized that's because there aren't any native americans here... It seems that Columbus Day is a sort of celebration of Italian culture.

When you use a credit card at the subway ticket vending machines, they say, "Please dip your card. That's weird.

Convenience stores in Brooklyn sell ketchup flavored potato chips.

In New York they call a subway sandwich a hero. In White Plains they call it a wedge.

The backs of garbage trucks always have a brown lake of the most disgusting liquid in them. When the trucks compact the garbage, sometimes a jet of this substance squirts out the back as the bags burst.

I was walking my dog in front of my house one morning, and all of a sudden WHAM we both fell on our asses. Someone had spilled restaurant grease on the pavement and not cleaned it up. There isn't a back alley, so all the garbage, etc. has to be hauled out front. Thus, the gutter can get pretty interesting...

Wyclef Jean's motorcycle was parked on my block today. He owns the Spiderman bike built by Orange County Choppers (the comapny on the Discovery series American Chopper). I know it was his bike because it says Built for Wyclef by Paul on the fender.

Speaking of Spiderman, we took the tram from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island on Saturday. Good little tourist trip, and cheap ($4 round trip). It's part of the subway system, but you can't use your metro card on it. I believe the tram is the only part of the system that still takes tokens. This is probably to discourage non-Roosevelt Island residents from using it.

Long Island is pronounced Lawn Giland.

Celebrity sighting this week: Bernadette Peters, exiting the theater where she is performing in Gypsy.

I was walking to work today and saw somw workmen shoveling something out of a dump truck into wheelbarrows and wheeling them into a building. Couldn't figure out what it was - the stuff was all shiny black embers. Then I realized - they were delivering coal! I have never, ever seen that before.

A constant problem on the subway is people trying to force their way onto a subway car as the door is closing. The doors are under the control of a conductor who generally sits in the third car. When the train is in the station, he or she watches out a window to see when it's ok to shut the doors. There's nothing gentle about the doors - they slam shut hard (although the edges are rubber). So, the conductor comes on the intercom and yells, the usual is "stand clear of the closin doors!". One time I had a conductor who was a bit more colorful. His words were, "don't block the doors, you're holdin up the rail-road!"

I can't think of the last time I saw a bird that wasn't a pigeon.

The whole hooker thing is pretty weird. The area around my house (west of Times Square) is traditionally a pretty seedy place where you would expect to see prostitutes. However, things have been cleaned up quite a bit over the last few years, so it's not obvious. Typically you'll walk by a normal-looking girl in a doorway and she'll say something like, "hey sugar", or wink at you. Sometimes they'll come up and walk beside you as you walk down the street and start talking to you. That really stands out because you just don't talk to strangers out on the street in the city. I never know quite how to react.

Two neat things in my neighborhood: Troma, a famous low budget horror movie company (Toxic Avenger) and the home of the Guardian Angels.

The act of being towed down an icy street by a car is called hooky-bobbing where I come from. Here it's called skitching. Fun on a bun, either way!

Two things I've noticed during our first real snowsnorm:

• Lots of people walk around in the snow with umbrellas. To keep the snow out of thir faces, I guess?
• They put blades on garbage trucks and use them to clear the roads. Makes sense, as the garbage trucks are big and heavy and have to be out anyway.

Two things I've noticed now that the storm has come and gone:

• Boy, do they ever love to use salt on the streets and sidewalks of New York.
• It gets seriously dirty quickly as the snow and garbage mix.

The hot fashion footwear this season? Ugg boots. Can you believe it? Those damn floppy, ugly sheepskin boots have followed me to New York. I may have to move back to California to get away from them. At least the pleated skirts are gone - although Uggs do actually work pretty well with short skirts. Not on me, of course.

People often call my dog Annie Rin Tin Tin when I walk by. Nobody ever did that back in California. I'm familiar with the movie dog of the same name, but I don't think I ever actually watched any of the movies.

Women in New York aren't afraid to wear fur coats. Thankfully men are.

Neighborhoods are an integral part of the New York experience. In a lot of ways, Manhattan in particular is really a collection of small, tightly-defined neighborhoods, each with a very different style and "feel". However, a lot of goofiness goes on with neighborhood definitions as developers and/or residents try to bend neighborhood definitions to their own ends. Some info I've colected about neighborhoods:

• TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street), a very trendy area, used to be the Meatpacking District.
• The Lower East Side originally covered the east side of Manhattan up to 14th street. Now, it stops around 1st street, and the East Village covers the rest. Kind of a neighborhood attempt to compete with the West Village for hipness. I like both areas.
• My neighborhood is Hell's Kitchen, but the name was officially changed to Clinton in 1959. Whatever.
• NoHo (North of Houston) is a recent developer's attempt to capitalize on the cachet of SoHo (South of Houston). NoLita (North of Little Italy) is a similar attempt at coolness.
• The best neighborhood name (besides Hell's Kitchen) is Dumbo, Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. That's in Brooklyn.
• Battery Park City (the western shore of downtown) sprang into existence when they needed somewhere to dump all the fill created by the building of the World Trade Center.

Roast chestnuts are pretty tasty (kind of a meaty flavor), but they are a lot of work to get out of the shell.