lousy things in NYC

I just had an awesome vacation in New York City, and while it’s my second favorite place to be (after my hometown, of course), like any other place, it has its problems. And traveling, no matter where, always causes its own problems. So, without further adieu, a grab-bag of NYC complaints:

1) The fact that you can’t walk around drinking. Growing up in New Orleans, I think it wasn’t until I was 15 or 16 when I learned that people in other parts of the country can’t walk down the street with an alcoholic beverage. I was pretty shocked when I found out. What’s the harm? And New York would be the absolute perfect city to allow public drinking. No one ever drives; you can take the subway (the public transit there is the practically the 8th wonder of the world) or a taxi everywhere you want to go, so you never have to worry about drunk driving. Wouldn’t it be great to walk around Times Square as if you were walking down Bourbon Street? NYC needs to get on this, stat. And while they’re at it, how about a casino? NYC and the state lose tons and tons of money to Atlantic City and Connecticut, and the underground games there are perhaps the busiest in the country, what with people like Alex Rodriguez frequenting them. NYC would be able to print money in tax revenue.

2) The 1 train. It sucks. There’s a reason Duke Ellington told people to “Take The ‘A’ Train.”* The A train is pretty awesome. It’s an express train, so it’s fast, you can get from JFK to Midtown Manhattan to Harlem and lots of other places. And there’s a local subway, the C train, following most of the same line in Manhattan, so it doesn’t get too crowded. But the 1 train sucks. Back when there was a 9 train it probably didn’t suck so bad. But the 2 and the 3 trains split off at 96th, so anyone north of that has to get on the 1 if they want a subway on that line. I tried to ride it on a Saturday from Lincoln Center up to 145th and it was horrible. Slow, crowded, just plain terrible. At least when there was a 9 train I assume it took some of the burden off the 1. None of that now. I’d happily walk a few extra blocks to take the A instead of that pathetic excuse for a subway line that is the 1 train.

3) The noise. Maybe this just goes with living in an apartment building no matter where it is, but do people in NYC ever shut up? Blasting music at 2 in the morning just isn’t cool, folks. And it’s even worse if you stay in Midtown, as I usually do. Cars and police sirens and people and so on…no rest for weary ears.

4) Public urination. I saw a guy pissing up against a school building. Stay classy, Harlem. Of course, I guess NOLA has its fair share of this problem. But at least it’s understandable, since we do allow drinking in public.

5) The Archdiocese of New York’s lousy website. You can’t figure out which times each parish has Masses unless that parish has a website. And most of them don’t. How hard is it to have Mass times in the listing when you search for a church? Also, while you can search by ZIP code, you can’t enter an address and have it spit out a list of churches sorted by distance from that address. And if you try doing that on google, you get a whole bunch of non-Catholic churches, which isn’t much help for me.

6) Okay, this isn’t strictly New York-related, but I hate when the playbills from a Broadway show have covers in black and white instead of color. Sometimes black and white is fine, but when a show like Legally Blonde, whose entire promotional campaign was an extravaganza of pink, enough to make your eyes explode, prints a drab black and white cover, something is wrong. Same thing with Xanadu. After a brief search, apparently some shows open with color covers and then switch to the cheaper B&W later in the run. And I don’t get why people just leave playbills in their seats when they see a show. Hell, half the time I grab extras to bring to friends or keep in my collection. But I guess I’m a horrible pack rat.

* Note for the jazz pedants: Yes, I’m aware he didn’t actually write either the music or lyrics for the song. But he did make it famous.