This is a map from 1660. I of course had to combine my internet research skills with my I-temp-in-an-architects' office-skills and figure out exactly where my house is. It would have been beachfront property. And it would have been inside the wall. That's how old my patch of Manhattan is. 
Friend is waiting for the subway and some guy tells her she looks good, or something. So she says "Thanks!" and puts on her 
earphones. Then, the guy starts following her - onto the train, down the length of the car, trying to talk to her, keeping close by. So the next time she sees a cop on the platform, she asks him what she should do if a guy on the subway is harassing her. He says, "I don't know, he probably just wanted to talk to you. I mean, you're pretty good lookin'." So she asks again, and he says, "Well, you could move to the conductor's car, maybe. Or look for a cop. You also gotta carry pepper spray. Every woman in New York should have pepper spray. What's your number - I'll buy you some."
You know what's nice is episodes of Corner Gas online and CKUA over the internet. With the two hour time difference, I actually make it to work in time to hear the morning news. Holy crap Alberta news is boring. I mean, New York news is no less provincial, except that it's shootings and things. Very few, considering the number of 
people and the fact that shit is always going on. Speaking of which, New Yorkers are so nice it's almost nerdy. Like on the subway last night this woman - I couldn't figure her out: 40s or 50s, nice dress, ugly shoes, purse, gaudy (fake?) gold jewelry, busted-looking feet, but overall middle-class-looking (old hooker?) - anyway, she was bobbing and weaving on the train, and didn't notice when a seat opened up, so this huge rapper guy took his headphones off and pointed it out to her in this geniunely empathic way, unlike me who thought "Get this drunken weirdo the eff away from me".
On the weekend, all the trains are diverted away from Lower Manhattan, I know not why. Of course, taking the diverted train over the Manhattan bridge at sunset is not a bad thing. Neither is walking home from Canal, on account of which you will run into a crowd of black cowboys from New Jersey (I know this because there were several horse trailers with Garden State plates and the 
guys had printed shirts that read: "Cowboy"). But my fave was the 50-something couple from Staten Island who had come into the city to shop and were trying to figure out how to get back to the ferry terminal (recall: no trains). Because Staten Island is this great, great irony - a NY borough but totally parochial. They were both so New York and suburban, middle class, boring. I really want to go to their house for dinner.
I went to Park Slope to study, to get free mochas from Grace, and to grow ever more annoyed with the way people here "raise" their children. I can't wait to see what kind of affected high-hats this city is going to breed. Dads, it is not appropriate to take your 9-year-old kid out for a latté. I don't think I drank coffee until Grade 12. Sometimes, when I was a kid, my dad would let me have a small sip of his instant. About as often as he would let me have a small sip of his beer. You know, so that I could satisfy my curiosity, and stop bugging him about it. Moms, don't take your kid on your two-hour-long coffee date/sales pitch/whatever the hell that was, with only a blank journal to entertain her. Don't worry - when she's a 22-year-old lesbian artist living in the Lower East Side, she'll have plenty to journal, and she'll even look proudly back upon her eccentric upbringing by Bette Midler in Beaches II (I read it), but right now she shouldn't have to be making witty conversation in both French and English, she's 11.
I know the disorienting experience of arriving at a city in the middle of the night, and I can imagine that the landscape of hobos and cabs and litter and hoers and MTA Mobile Wash Unit trucks outside of Penn station last night would have disheartened someone who still had to find their hostel and how to get there, but to me it just felt like I could stop thinking.
So I left for three weeks, on the day there was a tornado in Brooklyn and the subways flooded out, missing the evacuation of my neighbourhood as the Deutsche Bank asbestosfest on Ground Zero burned up, and returned to find New York finally had its shit back together, with nice mid-20s temperatures and iced coffees what you can't get anywhere in Canada. Booo - only a few days of summer left.
Who will vacuum the cockroaches out of the kitchen cabinets of your new apartment and pull up the disgusting lino in the bedroom and carry trash bag after trash bag of crap to the curb.
I started a new job today. My job is to file files in a filing system without a system.
I moved today. The Russian movers tried to shake me down for more tips. I refused.
I broke my full-length mirror when lugging my boxes out of my upper-tier storage compartment. Pray for me.
Fleet Week!
Also: thought those uniforms only existed in gay 1940s Broadway musicals.
Four girly heads of hair, showering at least once a day. This happens. The city throws its angriest muck back at you, up seventeen stories (probably more than twenty, once the pipes make room for the 2/3 train). This is not nearly as bad as the other time, when we had to buy a new shower curtain.
P.S. This always happens on a Friday after 5pm.
People in New York can be eccentric, obviously. And it's no much hobos setting the bar as the crazy ladies on the Upper East Side with big fur coats and orange lipstick way outside the corners of their mouths. In fact, a lot of what would be considered eccentric elsewhere (Saskatchewan, say) doesn't even qualify here, what with all the actors and the gays and the Hasidic women with the mandatorily fake-looking wigs. But there's, I don't know, a containment to it. Like a courtesy or something.
What got me thinking about this was a conversation I had with a person from LA who, having lived both here and there, is a regular eccentricity connoisseur by now, and he said that the LA brand has this insufferable obnoxiousness to it, like every eccentric thinks he or she invented personality. And we chalked the city difference up to the fact that whereas people in LA drive e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e, people here have to take their Me roadshow on the subway. And there's only so much shit your fellow F train passengers are going to tolerate.
Before I moved to New York, I asked anyone I ran into who had lived here - because this was my main concern about housing - whether they thought I would have to deal with rats where I lived. Rats or cockroaches. I figured there weren't any in those pre-war apartments on the Upper 
East Side, but in a student dorm downtown, you know, I thought it might be an issue. So I would ask this, and they would always laugh and condescend and say, "You're so cute." And I would say, "No really, I'm honestly asking, because I don't know." And they would laugh again and smile and pat me on the head. And I would say "So will I?" And they would say "I dunno."
Well, the other day I watched a gaggle of my male neighbours in the dorm try to catch a rat (probably just a mouse, actually), with, let's see, there was a broom, a tupperware container, some books, a bottle of whiskey... They eventually got a sheet of that mousetrap sticky paper, and the next morning found the ratmouse on it. The sticky paper doesn't kill it, of course, just traps it. None of them wanted to kill it, so eventually one of them just threw it out the window.
My favourite new website being www.overheardinnewyork.com.
Patron: I'd like a grilled special.
Waiter: We don't grill 'em.
Patron: Yes, you do. I had one last week.
Waiter: You got lucky.
-- Katz's Deli
Middle schooler #1: Yo, is there, like, a gay country?
Middle schooler #2: Hell no, son!
Middle schooler #3: Naaah. There is. I think it's called 'The Village,' but I don't know where it is.
--Brooklyn Middle School
Conductor: This is a downtown C train making all stops. Spring Street, World Trade Center, we go there. We do all the stops. Get on this train! [Pause.] Hey, you, still on the platform -- did you not hear what I said? Why didn't you get on?
Man: I'm waiting for the A.
Conductor: I'm going wherever the A's going. Get on my train!
--C Train
Preppy guy waiting for walk signal: Hi there.
Hot girl: Um, do I know you?
Preppy guy: No, I was just being friendly...
Hot girl: Oh, yeah? Well then why don't you say hi to her, too? [Points to fat chick nearby.]
Preppy guy, to himself: God, I hate New Yorkers...
--Central Park
Mom to toddler screaming in stroller: That's it, sweetie. Let it all out. Doesn't that feel good?
--TJ Maxx, 19th & 6th
Mom to two small children struggling to get through the crowd: Just push them all as hard as you can! Use your fists and elbows, too!
--34th & 6th
Kid: Dad, what's a novel?
Dad: It's a story written down in a book.
Kid: What's a short story?
Dad, staring at kid: Are you freakin' kidding me?
--Father Demo Square
Screaming hobo: ... But you know she was artificially inseminated by aliens!
Suit: Wait... Who?
--NYU
Hobo: Go shorty, it's your birthday...
Drunk black woman, joining in: Yeah! Go, go!
Hobo: Shorty, it's your shorty...
Drunk black woman: You singing it wrong. It's, 'We gonna party like it's your birthday.'
(Passerby gives hobo two dollars.)
Drunk black woman: You need to give me half of that, I helped you out with the words.
--E train
Mom to toddler: Joseph, stop walking like a tourist!
--51st & 5th
Ghetto mom to lady with cigarette: Bitch, you just ashed on my baby!
--Outside Times Square Toys 'R' Us
Hobo singing: Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten. From the Battery to the top of Manhattan. [To transit worker] 'Scuse me, sir. Where we at right now? Brooklyn? Queens? Manhattan?
Transit worker #1: We're anywhere you wanna be, brother.
Hobo: What borough is this?
Transit worker #2: This is the Bronx.
Hobo: The Bronx?
Transit worker #1: The boogie down.
Hobo: The boogie woogie? [Walks away singing] Boogie woogie oogie 'til ya just can't boogie no more...
Transit worker #2 to #1: If you just hopped into that train and drove it on time we wouldn't have to watch him wander around the platform.
--1 train platform, 242nd St
Sexually ambiguous guy: Yeah, Natasha is having a party tonight, but I didn't want to go because she has bedbugs, and I was afraid that I'd get bedbugs and bring them home. Everyone who's going has to wear plastic bags.
Female companion: Why is she having a party?
Sexually ambiguous guy: It's a bedbug party.
--St. Mark's Pl
Granny: Be careful!
Man jaywalking with several bags in hand: Ma, I know how to walk the streets in New York. [Car comes to screeching halt in front of him and honks. Man yells to driver] Fuck you! [To granny] See, I'm fine.
--Main St, Flushing
Bus driver who wouldn't let anyone pay to get on, claiming she'd won the lottery: Nice day today, huh? Y'all wanna go to the beach? Bring a blanket? Three p.m. -- meet me at a secret location. MTA going your way! They won't mind if I take it for a few hours. Madison is next.
--M79 bus, 79th & 5th
Girl: This has got to be the hottest station in New York.
Guy: It's good for you. It's like a sauna -- it will open your pores.
Girl: I don't want my pores open down here!
--5 train, Fulton St station
Janitor: I'm sorry, ma'am, you can't wear boots on the equipment.
20-something woman wearing Uggs on elliptical machine: But these are orthopedic boots!
Janitor: I'm sorry, but it's against policy to wear the boots on the machines.
20-something woman wearing Uggs: Why are you doing this to me?
--Dodge YMCA, Atlantic Ave
Hobo: Hey, you got any money?
Nice lady: I don't have any change, but I can give you some on my way out, or get you something to eat.
Hobo: I'll take the money. But don't worry, I ain't gonna use it to buy booze or drugs.
Nice lady: As far I am concerned, you can use the money for whatever you want.
Hobo: Whoa, lady! That's way too liberal for me.
--Outside health food store, Brooklyn
Hyper bus driver playing with overhead marquee while driving: I can set it to police bus, training bus... It's like a microwave -- what do you want? Corn? I like to change it to 'Harlem.' Then people get really confused. [Changes sign to 'B6 Limited' and comes up to bus stop. No one gets on bus.] What do you need, the B6? No? [Keeps driving.]
--B4 bus, Sheepshead Bay
Well, I didn't get much any reading done today, but I did manage to fill out a bunch of grant forms.
"I've produced nothing, give me more money." Harharhahrarhahrhahr.
I went to the Museum of Natural History yesterday, though. Tick.
There was more to this post. I was going to do a Baconian table of presences and absences to determine whether, after six months, I'm a New Yorker (gym membership, Duane Reade fob, therapist, favourite vitaminWater flavour). But I don't know how to do tables in html. Also: not that funny.
Now, readers of this blog, you only score minimal NY-savoir points if you know that you can order all of your groceries online from Fresh Direct and have them delivered to your house at a time that is convenient for you. But guess what else? Oh my god, I can hardly say it, it's so cool. You can go to their site, browse recipes - including vegan, or kosher, or home-schooled-Park-Slope-celiac-child-friendly recipes - and then, like, click "buy", and it has already put all of the ingredients in your virtual shopping cart, except that it's so smart that it didn't put "olive oil" or "salt" in there because it figures you already have those things in your house, but they're also listed right there at the bottom of the page in case you are out, such that all you have to do is tick them off.
So last night I took advantage of all this and cooked dinner at a friend's house, who has a blender and a stove and a food processor what I don't have. Lamb and Lentil soup with Walnut and Rocquefort Butter. Says friend: "You know the recipe's fancy when it's asking for the outside of the lemon." Hee.
Apparently, Catholics in New York really represent, cuz yesterday was an ashcrossstravaganza. And of course, it took me a dozen or so foreheads before I put two and two together. Two being the postcard I got from Kate about Carnivale, and the other two being the fact that I was raised Catholic.
And it's still the weekend, cuz it's President's Day. (Buy a mattress.)
1) Went to PS1, which is a branch of the MoMA out in Long Island City, Queens. It's in an old public school, obviously, and a bit edgier than the MoMA, a bit less ikea. My faves were an installation piece where you and another person climbed up tall ladders and poked your head through a just-big-enough hole in the ceiling (I won't tell you what you saw), and a blurry, foggy b&w photograph of a house that seemed to come in and out of focus as you looked at it.
2) Finally had an egg cream. It was seltzer and chocolate and something dairy. This was at Eisenberg's, which is a very old, long and narrow Noo Yawk diner. Food was great. Stools and bar were great. Cheeky Mexican cooks were great.
Last night I went to a reading of a play - Jean Anouilh's verson of the Greek tragedy Antigone - by a small group of young actors in the very early stages of putting together a production. It took place after hours at a place called Manhattan Bistro in SoHo, what neighbourhood I rarely venture to since I'm more of an Anarchist Forum Meeting on the Lower East Side New Yorker than a shoe-shopping between cocktails one.
The reading was green, enjoyable, overwrought, endearing, uncomfortable, all of the above. 
Add:
a) Antigone being paged on the intercom/phone from the kitchen mid-scene.*
b) A young woman in the audience periodically leaving her barstool to sob loudly outside the restroom.*
c) Creon competing to be heard over the owner and a manager, who are arguing heatedly about unexplained suppliers' bills.
d) Another woman in the audience snickering, heckling, guffawing, suggesting throughout much of the second act.*
So here's the question. Which one was the real play, people? Oooooooo....
*Note: everyone in New York is an actor.
Hey, I've finally put my finger on that what I've been trying to describe to all of you about how people relate to each other in New York. Here it is: in most places, if you were to ask a person a question or talk to them for whatever reason, you would need to preface that with an "excuse me" - you would need to break into their little personal privacy sphere, and apologize for doing so, before getting to the point. Here, if someone wants to say something (e.g. "Are they allowed to jackhammer like that at one in the fucking morning?" or 
"Is this train running local?"), they just come right out with it. Because we all already know that each other is there.
Exception: hobos still deferentially use the "excuse me" before asking you for money. Like the guy who solicited some change from me in the subway station the other day, and when I turned him down, looked directly at my Dragonfruit vitaminWater.
