Immigration problems, sanitation problems. Bridges crumbling, roads crumbling. Guns. Bums. Pot-heads.
Potholes. Statewide unemployment, citywide election.
New York. Where people from all walks of life, run.
New York. Where your welfare check buys mutual funds.
New York. Park your car, walk two blocks, buy back your hubcaps.
New York. Drive, marry, vote, fornicate, procreate, serve in war — but don’t smoke.
New Yorkers. Eat salt, sugar, soda, fat, fried, suet, no. Broccoli, which George Bush hates, yes. Spinach, which only Popeye likes, sure.
New York. His and Hers muggers.
New Yorkers are even anti-listening. Boomboxes must shut their booms. Co-op residents mustn’t play loud music.
As New York slides into Detroit, no pirouetting in genuine fur or PETA gets you. Real dog hairs on a supposedly faux fur coat gets you five to 10.
Overweight? If your butt or gut spills onto a second seat, you’re blacklisted as a frequent fatter.
And civility’s a felony. On a bus, a young slouch sits while a pregnant lady stands.
Nasty roaches live in your house. Geriatric citizens? Nursing homes.
And easy on phraseology. A matron in the john? Uh-uh. Restroom attendant.<
Chambermaid? Room attendant. (Or DSK attendant).
Secretary? Personal assistant. Garbage man? Sanitation worker. Pencil sharpener? Intern.
But a CEO or hedge-fund chairman? Still a jerk.
For Realtors, a cramped apartment’s “cozy.” Four flight walk-up’s “got views.”
A man’s not an “atheist” — just someone who’s never had a tax audit.
A charitable financier? Dude who gives publicly and steals privately.
A woman who bore you inside her is no longer “Mother, dear . . .”, she’s now, “Hey, Estelle . . .”
And always, Big Brother’s watching. Cameras, cells, iPads, iPods, iPhones, electronic movie tickets, e-banking, customer loyalty cards, passbook apps, E-ZPass, GPS, beepers, walkie-talkies, high-tech equipment, tie pin that doubles as a wire, machines that scan your breasts, behind, eyeballs.
Orthodontists requiring your mother’s maiden name. Banks making you fill out a privacy form. Pedometers checking how far you’ve gone. YouTube tells everything you haven’t told elsewhere.
My own superintendent checks our lobby security device while sitting in his own living room. I know it’s for safety. But I’m now insecure. I have to book my hairdresser before I take out the garbage.
Our brains are sending out waves. We’re checked with credit cards, ATMs, IDs just to return a scarf at Saks, Social Security numbers to make travel arrangements, sensors, alarms, cell cameras, texting, Google storing your information, closed circuit in elevators, hallways, supermarkets. Internet, e-mails, chat rooms, Twitter, social media, electronic railroad tickets. There are earbuds, headsets, phones that read fingerprints. A guy wants privacy, he has to romance a girl in a forest.
Mommies spy on nannies. Husbands spy on mistresses. Only politicians don’t get watched.
Today if you don’t have your own sex tape, you’re considered backward.
Don’t recycle? Oy, this infraction could go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Teenage anchors reading headlines off a prompter pronounce the Pakistan city PESH-a-war. Having been there, I know it’s P’SHOWER.
Our Sicko-Khan bicycling lady commissioner looking high and low for improvements is still looking lower. She now claims biking reduces traffic. Right. Because we’ve run out of victims.
We’re God-blessed America’s A-1 city. Leaders of any part of this world that really is. Lilliputians from towns where a hot night is painting the town beige and a back goes out more than they do look to pick up their coloring books and move here. This town’s so crammed, our mice are hunchbacked.
With patriotism old-fashioned, once situated here they organize protests. They march to Washington just to find warmth in congressional hot air.
We’re big with politicians who have rare gifts. Very rare. Many have none.
Big with do-gooders who work for miseries in far away places. One, to whom a photo op beats a sex act, raised $2 million but hasn’t yet found the misery.
However, it is New York. And where else would millions of us want to be. . .