Tag Archives: New York City

Top Ten Tuesday! Ten Stereotypes about New York & New Yorkers

backdropsbeautiful.com

backdropsbeautiful.com

10. New York City is all there is to New York: Although residents of New York City would have you believe this statement is true, it’s not. Believe it or not, the state of New York is fairly large and contains lots of mountains, rivers and lakes, none of which are in Central Park.  There’s even Amish in many parts of New York state. I may have mentioned them here once or twice. I’m not ashamed to say I may run off to join them.

9. New York City is just Manhattan: While Manhattan is what you see in most movies, NYC is much more with the other four boroughs each having distinct differences and personalities. Manhattan however thinks it’s better than everywhere else, and it’s right.

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8. All New Yorkers speak with a Brooklyn accent: Fuggedda boud it! Dat ain’t true, and if you say it is I’ll punch you in da nose! You know who speaks with a Brooklyn accent? Some of the people from Brooklyn.

7. New Yorkers are rude: Only the jerks say that, so shut up.

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6. New York is the biggest city in the world! By population it’s actually the 8th largest after places like Jakarta, Manila, and Karachi. It is however the largest by geographic area. If you think New York is crowded, imagine how crowded those other cities with smaller geography but larger populations are!

5. New Yorkers talk fast: Ok, this one is true. I’ve traveled to other parts of our country and other countries in the world and New Yorkers, both from the city and upstate seem a little more tightly wound than others. Admittedly, I can barely stand to wait for other people to finish their looong, slooow sentences.  If a I were to read my blog aloud this whole post would only take 12 seconds. That’s why I don’t do a podcast.

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4. The City That Never Sleeps: That’s why New Yorkers are so irritable. They’re exhausted.

3. New York is the Concrete Jungle: Yeah, a lot of New York City does not have a lot of vegetation, but then you’ve got lush, green Central Park which is larger than Belgium and Lichtenstein combined. The rest of the state north of New York is practically a giant Amazon rain forest.

2. Everyone in New York always drinks $6 lattes: That’s not true. Sometimes we drink the $8 ones when we’re really thirsty.

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1. New York is full of violence and crime: When I was younger and I’d meet people from other places they would ask, “Do you get mugged a lot?” These were the people who assumed New York was just ‘the city’. Actually I’d bet that New York has less crime than a lot of other places if only because you never know who might decide to kick the crap out of you at any given moment. In fact, the only people ISIS is afraid of are New Yorkers, (and maybe a few biker gangs from Texas).

These are only jokes. Like I said, I live upstate with the Amish and the trees. If you want to follow a real blog about life in New York City check out Mary Lane Townsend’s New York Cliche.  It’s a great blog and she also posts some awesomely spectacular pictures on Instagram.

Have a great Tuesday! ~Phil

Throwback Thursday! If I Can Make It Here…

(2/8/14) Have you ever been in a moment or a situation where you think to yourself, “I wish I could take a photograph of this and remember everything about that exact moment forever?” I rarely have my laptop handy in one of those moments, so usually I take a mental picture. Today, right now, I have my laptop, so I’m going to write about it until I feel like I’ve captured that moment, that feeling.

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It’s 10:45 pm in New York City and I’m in a hotel bar with a glass of wine and my laptop. It’s a very cool art deco, Great Gatsby era type of hotel.  I’m sitting at a table near the window so I can watch the street. The sound of sirens is fading as the ambulance that just passed gets further away. Outside the window, a woman just walked by with a dog in a dress. The Westminster Dog Show starts Monday and many of the contestants and their dogs are staying in my hotel. I met a beautiful, enormous but shy dog in the elevator today. He wouldn’t look at me when I tried to take his picture with my phone. One of my dogs does the same thing. How do they know we’re taking their pictures? They might as well let us because they can’t take selfies.

To my right is an odd, to me, Swedish guy who either knows the waitress or is trying very hard to hit on her. He has a full beard, and kind of shaggy, straight, almost greasy looking hair and is wearing a black leather jacket, black wool hat, and what I’m guessing are skinny jeans. I think he knows her. She keeps returning to talk to him. He still seems a bit odd to me. He’s clutching a piece of paper and glancing about furtively.

I’m here for a work conference. About six and a half years ago through a set of miraculous and extraordinary circumstances I landed this job, which has taken me to many places I never would have gone, including this weekend trip to the Big Apple. A woman who seems to know me from work somewhere just walked by and said hello and I feel badly that I don’t remember who she is. I regularly meet a lot of new people in my job, so it’s possible that I’ve forgotten who she is, but I think she’s mistaking me for someone else. At some point I’ll crack and ask where I know her from.

Why is this particular moment one I want to hold onto? In my life I’ve only had the opportunity to walk around New York City three other times. It really is an amazing city. As you drive into it the iconic skyline looms and you get a sense of specialness. As if just being there is something. It’s one of those places that you see on television or in movies so often that it seems to be more fictional than real. But here I am, sitting right in the middle of it and it looks just like it does in the movies, which is ironic because last spring when they were filming Spider-man 2 they came to my much smaller upstate city to film some of the New York City street scenes.

Tonight I went to the New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. That was pretty cool. It’s one of those places that seems larger than life because of its history and how often I’ve seen it on television. I got a free bobblehead of the teams star when I walked in. Then I got some popcorn and a beer and found my seat to watch the game. Periodically throughout the game they showed the celebrities in the front row; Kevin Bacon, Seth Myers, Christie Brinkley, and Katie Couric as well as a few others that I didn’t know. I doubt that Kevin Bacon is blogging about me right now, but I had just as good a time as he did. Maybe better.

MSG

After the game I walked the bustling New York City streets with hundreds of strangers, “Real New Yorkers!” I thought to myself.  I tried to act normally and blend in so that I wouldn’t look like the bumpkin rube that I probably am. I turned a corner and there was the iconic Empire State Building. When I got back to my hotel I decided that between eating in a diner, walking the streets, going to the Garden and staying in a hotel with dog show contestants, I was having a pretty nice night.

As always, if you enjoy #ThePhilFactor feel free to share by one of the social media buttons below or just leave a comment or click like. Have a great weekend! ~Phil

Capture the Moment: If I Can Make it Here…

Have you ever been in a moment or a situation where you think to yourself, “I wish I could take a photograph of this and remember everything about that exact moment forever?” I rarely have my laptop handy in one of those moments, so usually I take a mental picture. Today, right now, I have my laptop, so I’m going to write about it until I feel like I’ve captured that moment, that feeling.

It’s 10:45 pm in New York City and I’m in a hotel bar with a glass of wine and my laptop. It’s a very cool art deco, Great Gatsby era type of hotel.  I’m sitting at a table near the window so I can watch the street. The sound of sirens is fading as the ambulance that just passed gets further away. Outside the window a woman just walked by with a dog in a dress. The Westminster Dog Show starts Monday and many of the contestants and their dogs are staying in my hotel. I met a beautiful, enormous but shy dog in the elevator today. He wouldn’t look at me when I tried to take his picture with my phone. One of my dogs does the same thing. How do they know we’re taking their pictures? They might as well let us because they can’t take selfies.

To my right is an odd, to me, Swedish guy who either knows the waitress or is trying very hard to hit on her. He has a full beard, and kind of shaggy, straight, almost greasy looking hair and is wearing a black leather jacket, black wool hat, and what I’m guessing are skinny jeans. I think he knows her. She keeps returning to talk to him. He still seems a bit odd to me. He’s clutching a piece of paper and glancing about furtively.

I’m here for a work conference. About six and a half years ago through a set of miraculous and extraordinary circumstances I landed this job, which has taken me to many places I never would have gone, including this weekend trip to the Big Apple. A woman who seems to know me from work somewhere just walked by and said hello and I feel badly that I don’t remember who she is. I regularly meet a lot of new people in my job, so it’s possible that I’ve forgotten who she is, but I think she’s mistaking me for someone else. At some point I’ll crack and ask where I know her from.

Why is this particular moment one I want to hold onto? In my life I’ve only had the opportunity to walk around New York City two other times. It really is an amazing city. As you drive into it the iconic skyline looms and you get a sense of specialness. As if just being there is something. It’s one of those places that you see on television or in movies so often that it seems to be more fictional than real. But here I am, sitting right in the middle of it and it looks just like it does in the movies, which is ironic because last spring when they were filming Spider-man 2 they came to my much smaller upstate city to film some of the New York City street scenes.

Tonight I went to the New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. That was pretty cool. It’s one of those places that seems larger than life because of its history and how often I’ve seen it on television. I got a free bobblehead of the teams star when I walked in. Then I got some popcorn and a beer and found my seat to watch the game. Periodically throughout the game they showed the celebrities in the front row; Kevin Bacon, Seth Myers, Christie Brinkley, and Katie Couric as well as a few others that I didn’t know. I doubt that Kevin Bacon is blogging about me right now, but I had just as good a time as he did. Maybe better.

MSG

After the game I walked the bustling New York City streets with hundreds of strangers, “Real New Yorkers!” I thought to myself.  I tried to act normally and blend in so that I wouldn’t look like the bumpkin rube that I probably am. When I got back to my hotel I decided that between eating in a diner, walking the streets, going to the Garden and staying in a hotel with dog show contestants, I was having a pretty nice night.

As always, if you enjoy #ThePhilFactor feel free to share by one of the social media buttons below or just leave a comment or click like. Have a great weekend! ~Phil