Foreign Love

Overseas for a couple of weeks now, I’ve discovered the difference between perception and reality where New York is concerned. 

In the sleepy tourist office in the romantic French town of St. Remy en Provence, when the helpful and friendly woman behind the counter found out I was from New York City she said, “ah New York, I visited in 2007 and I get goosebumps just thinking about it.”  

Ha, I thought to myself, I too get skin reactions when I think about NYC, but goosebumps ain’t one of them.

When the earnest young waiter on the glamorous French Riviera was told I was from New York, he said he couldn’t wait to visit around holiday time.  

I thought to myself, hey pal, enjoy the tree in Rockefeller Center but keep your gold chain out of sight.

When a doe-eyed, twenty-something saleswoman in a Sicilian mall heard I was from NYC, she wistfully said she’s been dreaming of visiting since she was ten years old.  

I thought to myself, I hope your dream doesn’t turn into a nightmare. Please make sure you wrap your arms  around the nearest subway platform pole as the train screeches into the station.

These scenes of foreigners’ romantic perceptions of New York were played out over and over.  When asked where I was from, eyes gleamed and smiles widened.

And it got me to thinking about how others, outsiders, people from other lands, imagine what NYC is like versus what residents know what it’s like.

Maybe, I thought, I’m the one with the misperception of our great metropolis. Maybe the jerky New Yorker in me sees the glass half empty when the glass is really half full.  

Maybe, I thought, being away from Gotham for an extended period and hearing what others said about my city, would squeeze the negativity and pessimism from my urban-calcified bones. 

The people of France and Italy I encountered still perceive New York as the safest big city in America.

They still perceive a New York where the strong scent of urine and weed doesn’t invade your nostrils at every turn.

They still perceive a New York free of the epidemic of illegal handguns and where deodorant and shampoo aren’t under lock at key.  

They don’t know that in New York innocents are being randomly killed and armed bandits are marauding citizens on our streets and dashing away on unlicensed motor scooters.

No, they do not. They proudly wear their baseball caps emblazoned with the big N-Y, on their quaint streets and in their picturesque piazzas. They believe in fantasy New York, not in reality New York.

I didn’t want to be an ass and tell them what it’s like to actually live in the belly of the beast.  Where unproven and unworkable social ideologies have wormed their way into our laws and policies and have taken the fun out of Fun City.

We have only ourselves to blame for allowing livable New York to turn into laughable New York or should I say lawless New York, for allowing the crackpot politicians to toss our blueprint of urban success into the overflowing trash bins on our city’s corners. Hey, it’s happened on our watch, right before our very eyes.  We can’t shirk our responsibility. 

Sadly, the recent August primary elections don’t augur well.  More radical New York State legislators got elected or re-elected.   The center continues to cower and crumble.  The Mayor, who we prayed would turn things around, prefers to party more than perform.

But I say we keep hope alive.  That same hope that the tourist lady in Provence, that the waiter in Cannes, that the saleswoman in Sicily still have. The belief in the city that has always figured things out and will do so again.

Sometimes it takes a trip far away from New York to slap me out of my depression that the city is as doomed as doomed can be.  The world hasn’t given up on New York and neither should we.  

Not yet.