Why I will always represent for the NYC!

Last week, I wrote a post about why I left my hometown of New York: http://pourtoutpancakes.blogspot.com/2008/08/why-i-left-nyc.html

Some people thought when they read it that I was dissing my hometown and after reading the post, I can see how some people think this.

I even got my first ever response post on another blog courtesy of Red Bull, aka Nicole, on her excellent blog, REDvolutionary Warfare. The post is here: http://aredvolutionary.blogspot.com/2008/08/i-still-love-oakland.html

She made some excellent points about how I should be proud of my hometown and listed the great things about Oakland, a city that I really want to visit.

BTW, Nicole, I'm telling you now. The Raiders will finish 8-8 this season. Keep the hope and trust in McFadden and Russel!

I listed in my initial post the reasons that I left the city, so I won’t rehash them here. The main gist of it was is that I was tired of living in the NYC and wanted to experience a different lifestyle.

For years, I tried to run away from being a New Yorker. New Yorkers have a negative connotation with a majority of people and I didn’t want to be grouped with that. We all know the stereotypes. New Yorkers are arrogant, speak with horrible accents, are mean to people.

Of course, growing up in the area, I knew many, many people who were the opposite of this. However, all stereotypes have an element of truth in them and these were no different.

I used to say that I would never go back to live in the NYC, but I can’t predict that. Furthermore, I should not try to run away from my upbringing and embrace it.

Growing up in Brooklyn has shaped me into the person that I am. My acceptance of different types of people and to not see race or gender when I’m interacting with somebody comes from living in the NYC. I’ve seen almost anything you can see. Gay men dressed in drag, interracial couples, crack viles on the sidewalk next to my home, homeless people begging me for money walking home, alchoholics and so many other things. I’m not trying to glorify these things, but confronting and embracing these realities made me the tolerant person that I am today and I’m proud of that.

I’ve been able to:
-See games at Yankee Stadium,
-See Broadway plays
-Go to the Statue of Liberty, comprehend Ellis Island and realize how fortunate we are as Americans to live in this country
-Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge
-Spend time at the World Trade Center before 9/11
-Attend a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
-Eat at Monk’s the diner portrayed on Seinfeld
-Spend time at Union Square Park, my favorite place back home, and reflect on a perfect evening, seeing the skateboarders and the hip-hop dancers provide an atmosphere indescribable here.
-Go to Central Park and see Strawberry Fields and the Zoo.
-Head to the Bronx Zoo
-Go to Coney Island and eat a Nathan’s hot dog
-Go to the New York Aquarium and see nature underwater.
-Visit the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and see the Mets
-The Guggenheim
-Spend an evening in SoHo, Greenwich Village, Harlem, the South Bronx, Bed-Stuy, Spanish Harlem, Little Italy, Chinatown, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side
-Staten Island. That’s all I need to say.
-See jazz in a shady nightclub and a full concert at Madison Square Garden
-Ah, MSG.
-Eat a New York Style Pizza in New York

I can go on and on, but you get the idea.

However, the reason that I can look back and appreciate these things is that I’ve been fortunate to experience life in different cities like Charleston, Atlanta and now Nashville.

Neither of those cities are perfect. No place is perfect, you just have to accept where you’re at.

My original post was to call out people who have only experienced the NYC and mentally and physically limited themselves to experiencing different cultures in other cities.

I want to travel more and find out more about this country. I want to visit every state and at least spend a day there to get an idea of things go there. The good part about my job is that I get to travel. Granted for every trip to OK places like Jacksonville, Fla. or Kennesaw, Ga., there are trips to places like Buies Creek, N.C. and Johnson City, Tenn. but that’s good.

I will always be a New Yorker and proud of my hometown. I still have family and friends that live there and really want to see them and reexperience them as an adult. I actually do miss living there, but my life path has taken me to Nashville and I’m fine with that.

Finally, I’ll leave you with some music based in the NYC. First, fuck the Strokes. People try to push them as the New York band. They suck.

Give me hip-hop, dance music from The Tunnel or some Velvet Underground, the Bravery, Interpol, Springstein or Bon Jovi (yeah, I know they’re from Jersey but they are in the Tri-State area).

For now, here’s some Talking Heads. David Byrne is the truth and Tina is an underrated bass player. They need to reunite like yesterday. Either you get them or you don't. I'm in between but dig them becasue they were so different. The sad thing is that they wouldn't get played on radio stations or have videos played on MTV if they came out now.

The first video is my favorite song of theirs and the second one is actually appropriate for the times we're going through in America today. See their live concert Stop Making Sense as soon as you can. I seriously recommend it. The second video is from that.

Why I left the NYC...

That picture above was taken at a recent baseball game between the New York Mets and the Florida Marlins in Miami. The Marlins fans were giving the Mets fans who attended a hard time. As a New Yorker living in the south, I completely agree with the sign.

Nothing annoys me more than northeasterners who move down here to the South and complain. There is this cult of people who move from New York, Philly, Boston, Connecticut and other cities who come down here to places like Nashville and Miami and talk about how their original cities do everything better.

I love my hometown and everything but there’s a reason I got the heck out of there the first chance I had.

When I moved to the south full-time back in 1999 after growing up in New York City, I really had many preconceived notions about moving here. I heard all of the stereotypical stuff about people in the South being slow and racist, along with not having stuff to do. I was brainwashed like many other northerners, especially New Yorkers, that the only place worth living was New York. However, I was a unique case before I started college in Nashville.

The entire mother side of my family is from South Carolina so I would spend my summers as a youth in that state, incorporating myself into the culture. My big incorporation into the South came in the early 1990’s when my brother moved to Atlanta from Washington, D.C.

My brother Troy and his wife moved to Atlanta back in 1991 or 1992. Now, this was Atlanta before the Olympics in 1996. That city has changed so much from back then to what it is today. I would go there in the summer and it was a great time. I loved being out in nature, sitting in the back yard, just relaxing. It was so different then New York, where there was so much stress.

The biggest difference was the people. In New York, everyone stayed to themselves and never looked at each other. People were scared to make eye contact with another person in fear of pissing them off and causing a problem. New Yorkers were also rude and would shove each other in the street to get somewhere. I would do this too.

However, in Atlanta, it was different. I would be at Kroger or Home Depot and people would just walk past me and say hello. The first few times this happened freaked me out. Why were strangers coming up to me to say something? Was I supposed to ignore them or talk with them? I wasn’t sure.

Eventually I learned how to communicate with the people properly and truly enjoyed myself. I had the feeling that I wanted to stay in Atlanta as long as I could. However, I had to go back to New York and was sad.

By the time I started high school in 1995, I was over New York. The pace of the city wore on me. I liked the cultural aspects of the city and my family was there, but I wanted to move on.

When I started applying to colleges, all of my friends were trying to stay in the northeast, but I was having none of it. I was looking at schools like Emory, Duke, Georgia Tech, Miami, Virginia, North Carolina and of course, Vanderbilt. Everyone was questioning me for looking at these schools, especially Vandy because it wasn’t a known commodity in the NYC at that time. I did my research, saw that it was close to Atlanta and applied.

After getting accepted to Vandy and getting rejected by Duke and Emory (those bastards! Just kidding, it’s been nearly ten years. I’ve gotten over it), I made my first trip to Nashville and loved it. Nice weather, clean air, grass, I was all over it.

So I’ve been down here ten years and have no aspirations to head back to the northeast anytime soon.

There are really no differences between major southern cities like Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Tampa, New Orleans, Cincinnati and northern powers like the NYC, Boston and Philly.

1) Technology and job expansions. There was a time where all of the major corporations and jobs were located in the Northeast. However, starting in the mid-1990’s companies were going into the southeast because of cheaper land, lighter taxes and weaker expenses. Then with the development of the Internet, especially e-mail, has made communication so much easier. Instead of having to be in the NYC for all of the meetings, you can set up calls, e-mail exchanges and video broadcasts and get the same things taken care of.

2) Sports expansion. Back in the olden days (1980’s), the only southern teams that were truly acknowledged were the Atlanta Braves and Falcons. However with the inclusion of teams like the Carolina Panthers, Atlanta Thrashers, Tampa Bay Rays, Tennessee Titans, Nashville Predators and several others, people have more chances to see their northern, Midwestern and west coast teams.

Say you’re a New Yorker in Nashville like me. I can see my SUPER BOWL WINNING CHAMPIONS (sorry!) Giants play the Titans or the Bengals and Falcons, each three hours away. I can see my Mets play the Reds or Braves. I can see my Rangers play the Predators or Thrashers. I can see my Knicks play the Hawks. You get the idea.

To further expand on this point, cable broadcasting and internet coverage of sports has made it possible for anybody, anywhere to follow the team. I haven’t been to a Mets game in nearly ten years but I can watch every single one of their games if I wanted. That wasn’t happening 20 years ago.

What I’m saying is that being a Knicks fan in New York and in Tampa is really not that much different.

From a dating prospective, it has been a pleasure dealing with southern women. This may have to be a subject for another post, but northeastern women can be a bear to deal with. I used to joke that you needed a resume to get a hello out of a New York girl. That may not be far from the truth.

The one thing that I do miss is the food. I was speaking with the leader of the Demon Deacon Movement, Mr. McMahon, and he talked about his recent trip to the Northeast and the good food he had there, including pizza.

He asked me if I’ve had a good bagel in Nashville.

The one thing that the NYC brought to me was great food. I loved heading to the bakery and getting bagels, rolls and other types of bread. New York just has so many options in that regard.

Another thing that I was a big fan of was the butcher. This isn’t a New York thing, but my mother and I would head out there and get different cuts of meat. It was a great thing.

Anyway, in the NYC I could get bagels, knishes, Chinese food from Chinatown, Italian food from Little Italy, great Mexican food, soul food from Harlem, Jamaican food in Brooklyn and so many other examples. I was even down with some Kosher food in my neighborhood which had a majority of Jewish people.

I just can’t find a place to get some of these things.

BTW, if you live or are familiar with getting some of these foods in Nashville, hook a brother up.

I will say that I haven’t found that perfect piece of pizza here. If I don’t find it, just like love, I’m OK with it.

Screw that! If it came down to eternal love with a special lady friend or a perfect slice of pizza, I would have to think about it for a while.

For now, here’s some Janet Jackson videos I came across today. These three songs are probably my favorite songs from her, but the list is long. The first video features an appearance from a future star in her own right and was the jam to try to get girls closer to you when it came out. The second song has a rock feel to it, so you know I'm down. The third one came out when I was a young boy and I watched it and was silent. I never saw such a beautiful woman in just a simple top and jeans.

Songs that missed the cut were Miss You Much and Rhythm Nation, Escapade, I can go on for days on this one.