New York, New York

My husband and I recently took a several day trip to New York City. My husband had been there many times, and I, being the sheltered shut-in that I am, had never been there. The closest I'd been was Washington D.C. (which was fab), where we went for our honeymoon (we're dorks). I've always wanted to travel, and NYC was high on my list of places to visit. After seeing it in movies and TV shows my whole life, I'd built the Big Apple up in my mind, and I have to say, it seriously let me down.

Now, I should preface the coming criticism by mentioning that I was about five and a half weeks pregnant when we took our trip. I'd only gotten a positive pregnancy test a week before we left, but I was already feeling tired and crappy. I knew as soon as I saw the two pink lines that I should have had my husband take a friend on the trip instead of me, but that wasn't the plan. My husband is, for some reason that's beyond my comprehension, a New York Jets fan, so for his birthday I bought him two tickets to see the Jets play the Atlanta Falcons at Giants Stadium. He'd never been to a Jets home game, so the gift just seemed natural. My husband has also wanted to take me to New York for quite some time, so we went out a few days before the game to see the sights and get the whole NYC experience. I should also mention that I don't like crowds; blame it on growing up in the Midwest, where big cities are places like Fargo and Sioux Falls, with populations of about 200,000 and 130,000 respectively. It was also a week before Christmas, so the streets of Manhattan were even more crowded than usual (I assume, but since I've never been there any other time of year, this is only an assumption). As if all this wasn't enough to make the trip miserable, it took us over 24 hours to get home, thanks in part to a power outage at LaGuardia...but more on that later. Thus, the following list of What I Learned in New York, is as truthful as possible, but even I'll admit that my perception was terribly skewed from the beginning. Perhaps someday I'll go back to repair my awful impression of the Big Apple, but until then, this is what I learned in New York.

1. New York smells. I'd heard this many times before my visit, but it wasn't until then that I realized people weren't being facetious. According to my husband, the cold winter air dulled the smell considerably, but my hyper-sensitive pregnant nose picked up on the stench nonetheless. When people are burning incense in the street, you know the place reeks.

2. New Yorkers really do have crazy accents a la Tony Soprano. It's cool on TV, when coming out of mobsters like, well, Tony Soprano, but in real life the accents just sound obnoxious and overdone.

3. Advertising is everywhere, and it's disgusting. I knew that Times Square was advertising Mecca, but Times Square is only just the beginning. Advertisements for anything and everything are literally everywhere, from subway walls and trains to buses and cabs, from store front windows to walking billboards waddling down the street. I've studied and analyzed advertising for years, so I found the gratuitous amount of ads everywhere disturbing yet telling. Apparently the items advertised (ranging from Budweiser beer to Calvin Klein jeans...all big market brands, of course) are the things our society values. Ugh.

4. The subway wasn't quite as scary as I'd imagined. Granted, it certainly wasn't as clean and sparking as D.C.'s metro, but D.C.'s metro system is much newer than the New York subway system. Would I want to hang out on the subway platform by myself? Hell no, but again, I imagine that comes from growing up and living in a relatively rural community, one in which we probably don't need to lock our doors at night (we do, of course, but mainly because of the kinds of things we hear happening in places like New York). I even got to see a real subway rat, which was as scary as I'd imagined. I'm pretty sure the rat was bigger than both of my cats...combined.

5. While New Yorkers aren't as rude as I'd heard, they weren't exactly friendly either. Overt politeness is a quality I've grown accustomed to; yet another thing to blame on my Midwestern upbringing. People in the Midwest are genuinely nice. We say hi to others when we pass them on the sidewalk, we wave to other vehicles we pass on rural roads, we smile and mean it. The people in New York always seemed like they were in a huge hurry to get somewhere very important, and in that mad rush they certainly couldn't be bothered to notice anyone else, let alone say hi or wave or even smile. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand the logistics of saying hi, or waving, or smiling to 20 million people; it's just not realistic. However, most New Yorkers just looked grumpy, like they were pissed off at someone for something that was very important. Even the sales associates in the stores we visited seemed cranky and irritable, although I admit that could easily be because of the busy holiday season and the undoubtedly cranky customers they had to put up with. Regardless, I'll take Midwestern hospitality over the rush of New York life any day.

6. New Yorkers seem to lack an inner monologue. At the Jets game, we were surrounded by two groups of people who felt it necessary to give a play-by-play of the game, complete with their own commentary on everything from coaching decisions to play calls. All that in those obnoxious accents mentioned earlier. It seemed like if they thought it, they said it, without any sort of filter in between. I didn't just notice this trend at the game; when we went out to eat, I was amazed at the dinner conversations of the people around us. Given that most of the tables at the restaurants we went to were about four inches (or less) apart, it was pretty hard not to overhear other people's conversations. A pair of women one night discussed a friend's problems with her therapist, while a couple another night (obviously tourists like us) talked about how expensive everything was In New York. Yet another night, a group of people debated the differences between New Yorkers and Bostonians. Now granted, none of these conversations were racy or torrid or anything, but the conversations were clearly audible to anyone within a 20-foot radius. I assume that this is a result of living in such a densely populated area; after living with so many people for so long, I imagine one just eventually tunes most people out, turning others into a kind of background noise. Again, living in a sparsely populated area has spoiled me into having a certain expectation of privacy, even in public. Out east, privacy doesn't exist, especially in public.

7. Giants Stadium is a shit hole; no wonder why they're building a new one. I mean, they don't even sell nacho cheese with their nachos! Sacrilege, I tell you.

8. The city does not do snow removal very well. This could simply be logistics. It can't be easy trying to remove over a foot of snow when it falls over a major metropolitan area, but on some streets they didn't even try. No wonder why my socks were wet before we even sat down at the football game.

9. LaGuardia Airport is a shit hole. After standing in line for two hours to check our bags, we found out that over half of the Delta/Northwest self check-in kiosks were down due to a power outage. Fine, but it would have been nice to know that while we were waiting. As a result of the massive lack of organization and lack of communication on the part of the Delta/Northwest employees, we missed our flight by 10 minutes and thus had to spend the rest of the day at the airport. The only reason we got out when we did was because they managed to get an extra flight out to Minneapolis at 11:00 that night (our original flight was to leave at 11:00 am). We had to spend the night in the Minneapolis Airport, as our flight home to Sioux Falls didn't leave until 9:00 am. All that is never fun to deal with, but it's especially not fun to deal with when newly pregnant and on the verge of vomiting all day. Because of this horrible experience, I barely left the house for three weeks after we got home. And it will be a long time before I fly again.

10. Celebrities apparently have to go through the same crap the rest of us do. Once we realized we'd be at the airport until 11:00 pm, my husband suggested we find something to eat. Once that was accomplished, my husband wandered off to the bathroom, which was right across the hall from the "restaurant." When he came back, he told me to watch the men's room door. So I did, and a few minutes later, Stephen Colbert walked out of the men's room. He looked at me and my jaw dropped, so I'm sure I looked like a freak. My husband said he was equally as shocked when he realized Colbert was standing next to him at the urinal, but unlike me, I'm sure he managed to contain his excitement. Given their location, that's probably a good thing.

Now I realize that most of this is negative, but it wasn't all bad. The Statue of Liberty was truly cool, and even though I was freaked out, being atop the Empire State Building was breathtaking. The food was good, and the fact that there's a Rite Aid on every corner is certainly convenient. It was awesome spending one-on-one time with my husband, especially since soon we'll have two kiddos fighting for our attention. Overall, though, I think it was just a big culture shock for me, a girl from the Midwest who's lived in a town of about 18,000 people for the past 10 years and who's never travelled much. If nothing else, the trip to New York made me realize how much I love South Dakota, even if it's the last place I ever thought I'd end up. South Dakota is my home, and it took a trip to New York to help me realize there's no place I'd rather be.