The Midwest Bystander takes Manhattan

Not actually us.

I always find getting out of my Midwestern cultural comfort zone to be intriguing, and the United States is so big and diverse, I can do it without even leaving the country. After cancellations with other people, one of my besties and I decided to venture off to New York City together for a long weekend. It was so fun to take a little break from the kiddo (thanks, husband), spend some girl time together, take in a Broadway show, walk 1,470 miles and narrowly avoid being blown up. 

I was last in New York City for a college journalism conference 13 years ago. Ground Zero was still a big hole, and the U.S. declared war on Iraq when I was there. (My friend and I got caught in an anti-war protest and were almost prevented from getting to go to Bloomingdale’s by all the crowds and fences. We didn’t have Bloomingdales at home and it was very exotic for us, OK?) I didn’t even own a cell phone then. It was obviously a long time ago, and things in NYC have changed considerably. 

I did have a wonderful time on this trip: experiencing the 9/11 Museum and Memorial, the Morgan Museum and Library that had an exhibit on Charlotte Bronte - to include her original hand-written manuscript of Jane Eyre (eeek!), enjoying “An American in Paris” on Broadway, eating my weight in ice cream and stumbling upon an amazing festival in Little Italy. The whole time, however, I was acutely aware of my foreignness. I thought I would take this time to outline some of the distinct cultural differences between the Midwest and New York City I noted on this trip:

Food

* Cheese, or the lack thereof - About every 10 feet in New York were these food carts selling fried Middle Eastern food (falafel, gyro, etc.), hot dogs and soft pretzels. I love soft pretzels and cheese. In the Midwest, you assume that your soft pretzel will come with cheese. That’s just how it works. This is not what happens in New York. I was stunned and devastated. It’s just, “Here, enjoy this piece of warm, dry bread.” After being handed the soft pretzel at the cart I purchased it from, I was a little perplexed and thought, “Oh, you must pay for the cheese separately. Kind of a racket, but whatever.” So I asked to buy cheese and was told there was none. I went to two other similar food carts. No cheese there, either. Just more dry bread. We’re in Manhattan for God’s sake, not on a ship that’s been at sea for months. 

* Mexican food, or the lack thereof - Excluding some time in London’s Heathrow airport, New York was the most ethnically diverse place I’ve ever been. Different languages and colors of people all around me, and it was amazing. But there is one group New York is sorely lacking: Mexicans. Generations of Mexican immigrants have brought so much to the Midwest and my hometown of Kansas City: a vibrant culture, a skilled workforce and, of course, delicious, delicious food that also is inexpensive. Apparently, not very many people from Mexico have made it up to New York, and that was painfully obvious when we went to a purported “Mexican” restaurant by Lincoln Center. The food was overpriced, seasoned all wrong, trying too hard to be fancy, and there didn’t appear to be a single Mexican person working in the entire place. It made me long for the enchiladas perlas of Mi Ranchito and the street tacos of Silva’s taco truck (which used to be a restaurant but burned down and they found the body of a vagrant in the rubble and it was very sad but they’re carrying on operating out of this big van with a generator and it is delicious and I can get three tacos for less than $5.)

* Italian food - OK, they win on this one. At the restaurant we ate at on Mulberry Street, the waiters were so Italian they barely even spoke English and had names like Salvatore. I like authentic.

* Money - Yeah, everything cost more there, not just food. I am currently with child, so I could not drink a cocktail, but I noted pretty much all cocktails there would be half that price in Kansas City. I want a cocktail. I miss cocktails. A really girly, fruity one where you can’t taste the alcohol and end up buzzed before your know what happened. Argh, pregnancy. 

Transportation

* Subway - Obviously this beats anything Kansas City has as far as public transit. We’ve got a pretty extensive bus system, but I’ve seen enough videos of attacks on the buses I kind of stay away. Our city was built for cars, anyway. It seems everyone rides the subway in New York despite economic status, and they seem way less likely to shoot each other than the users of KC’s public transit. We saw beggars, sleepers, readers, almost-dry humpers, babies (how their parents got those strollers down to the station and on and off the trains I’ll never know - the subway was the most inaccessible place ever for strollers and wheelchairs), and even an impromptu dance/gymnastic performance. After eating a giant ice cream sundae before getting on the train back to the apartment we’d rented, my bowels decided it was time to clear out. The station where we waited for our train didn’t have a bathroom, and I thought I would poop my pants. I told my husband about it, and he comforted me by saying it wouldn’t be the first time somebody pooped their pants at a subway station, and it probably wouldn’t even be the first time that day. I made it back with poop-free pants. Barely. 

* Walking - Everything looks so much closer on the map, so we were just like, “Eh, let’s walk it.” I don’t have a Fitbit or anything because people with them who are constantly talking about getting their steps in annoy me and I don’t want to be them, but I kind of wish I’d had something to keep track of how far we walked. The subway may be great, but it isn’t everywhere, and the station nearest to where we stayed in our cheap but shady neighborhood in Harlem shut down for the weekend, forcing even longer treks. Also, pretty much only the tourists in Manhattan were fat. Because everyone else is walking hundreds of miles a day. (I read a review of the place I had the giant ice cream sundae stating it was a “tourist trap for chubby-kneed Iowans.”)

* Taxis - I felt soooo New Yorkish when I hailed cabs, like Carrie in “Sex and the City” minus all the sex with multiple partners and expensive outfits and heels. Then I discovered Uber a few weeks later and decided it was so much better and cheaper. 

People

* Body odor - It’s probably because the population density is so much higher in New York than in the Midwest, but I felt like I encountered way more stinkies than normal. Maybe just because I was shoved up against them and they’d been walking a long way, but I don’t get near that kind of B.O. exposure in Kansas City.

* Giant bags for everyone - Everyone, including men, carried a large bag with them at all times. Probably because they just walked six miles to get to their subway station and knew they would need everything they would need to survive for the next 12 hours on their person because there was no shot of running back home. 

* Niceness - Nicer than I thought, but still not Kansas City-nice. Everyone also drove so angrily and honked a lot.

* Bombs -  People who plant bombs are decidedly not nice. We were there when the Chelsea bombings happened. In fact, we had been just down the block from where they found the unexploded one about four hours before it all went down. Fortunately, the Midwest has not been a very target-rich environment for terrorism. 

Shopping

* Canal Street - So this is the place in Chinatown where people try to sell you counterfeit luxury-brand purses and stuff. My friend, N, whom I am only referring to by initial to protect her identity given our shady shopping experiences, had requests from two people back home to procure purses on Canal Street. This involves having Chinese ladies walk up to you, quietly say, “Handbags? You want handbags?” Then usher you over to a corner where they quasi-surreptitiously whip out a laminated sheet with all their options. You tell them what you want, then they disappear to an undisclosed location and return with whatever fake Burberry, Louis Vitton or Hermes bag you requested. They only take cash, and it’s all a negotiation. They also will roll up their long sleeves to show you an arm full of bracelets they can get you. They put your purchase in an opaque, black bag and move on to whispering “Handbags?” to the next person. It’s both underground and yet entirely blatant. While N took on this shady market on behalf of her KC friends, I purchased some cheap and beautiful scarves from the regular stalls and a non-name-brand purse. (“This say $35, but for you, $25.” N insisted I could have negotiated cheaper, but I view negotiating as a form of confrontation, and I hate confrontation, so I don’t do it.) 

* The Oculus - This is an amazing feat of architecture next to One World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. We thought it was another museum or memorial or something, and when we went inside, we thought we’d stepped into the future. But it was pretty much just a mall with stores we couldn’t afford. And in the middle of it was also sort of a train station. 

On the shuttle back to the economy parking lot at KCI Airport, N and I were with many of the people who’d been on our return flight from NYC. I heard them saying what pretty much every Midwesterner thinks upon returning home from New York:

“We stayed at this apartment that was like a closet. And they pay $2,000 a month in rent for it. Ridiculous.”

“I can’t believe how much I paid for a beer.”

“The 9/11 Museum was so well-done and touching.” 

“I wish we had a subway system.”

And the most resounding sentiment:

“It was a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”