Close all the windows in your bathroom. Re-plumb the pipes so your sewage heats up and shoots from your shower head. Turn on all the taps releasing full-heated doodoo water. Throw up a few times and leave some old Ethiopian food and fried chicken to fester.
Is it hot? Is it disgusting? Does it smell bad? Good, you're almost there.
Midtown reinforces every single negative stereotype. Kiss your liberal bullshit bias goodbye. Now cram your bathroom full of people probably too crazy for the nuthouse, too smelly for the homeless shelter, and too rude to work at the DMV. Tell these cretins to bump into you, pump up shitty music on their iPod earbuds, glare at you as if you were an Easter ham, and mutter Satanic verses to themselves.
Welcome to New York City in the summer.
Sure there are glamorous points to the Big Apple: lots of people make it big here and there are things in NYC that you can't find any where else. For instance, you can walk down the block and see random celebrities. Or take a stroll around the block and sample food from around the world. Or grab the newest fashions before the schmoes catch wind.
That's all great stuff.
If you're armed with a college degree, a résumé and a few bright ideas, you're effed in the A my naïve friend. Good luck affording anything.
I know. You made it through college drinking $1 drafts, eating ramen, and sleeping in the same room as your best friend. Guess what? You'll be ever poorer in NYC.
Don't forget to purchase your MetroCard/iPod Subway Adventure Pass.A cool grand a month will barely get you a closet in Manhattan. But wait, there's less. You also will probably have to pay a realtor's fee, which could be a month's rent or more. Then you have to get your stuff here, which is going to cost you even more money. Or, you can just buy new stuff when you get here, and fork over a buttload to get it delivered.
You don't get a single amenity when you're starting out. No pool, deck, skylight, courtyard, or in-house laundry.
Cleaning up will be a cinch in your new apartment. Mostly because you only have about 179 square feet. You'll be able to open your front door, crap and grab a beer from the fridge at the same time. Talk about high living.
Even if you live alone, you'll have roommates. Hundreds and hopefully not thousands of them. They're called cockroaches, and they vary in size, shape and aggressiveness. Pray they're just in your kitchen and not in your room.
Friends from home will call you while they're playing beer pong or about to hit the bars. You'll be sitting in a chair you found on the street. You're trying to figure out how to pay all your bills. They'll pretend they're jealous of you and the amazing life you must be living in NYC. You'll pretend not to be close to tears.
Dating is nothing like Sex and the City. You'd think with a population of eight million, people would develop some social skills. Nope. This town is full of the kids that sat by themselves during lunchtime in middle school. I think the main reason people start fucking their Labrador retrievers is because they're just sick of going on dates with psychos. At least mid-coitus a dog won't say crazy shit like "God is an animal" or "I like shooting stars made of cake."
Walking around Midtown reinforces every single negative stereotype in the book. Kiss your liberal bullshit bias goodbye. After five minutes you'll want to personally drop cluster bombs everywhere people live. You'll be thankful for restrictive gun laws because you can't imagine this pre-evolutionary scum owning weapons, but you secretly wish you owned a machine gun to chlorinate the gene pool.
Chinese people will elbow you to force their way into the subway. A Eurotrash guy will make your eyes bleed from all his cologne, then he'll ridicule your clothes in his language and later comment about "Ugly Americans." A Fortune 500 businessman will talk about how important he is while walking on the street. Bike messengers will nearly crush you. Mouth-breathing tourists from around the globe will stand in your way and wonder where they can find an Applebee's.
Then there are the homeless people. I bet your college has one or two interesting characters that hang around campus begging for change. Crazy Pete may do a jig for some beer money. Maybe you'll get a guy who can quote Dante's Inferno. Not here, guy.
Here we have people that look like they were transported straight from Kosovo, then kicked around. Disfigured people. People still bleeding or vomiting. A bum may watch you and you'll look into his eyes. You walk away. Three blocks later, he's still looking at you. Shudder.
Well, after all that shit, hit the bars! Maybe you'll run into Lindsay Lohan or find some rich dude to pay for the rest of your life. Nope. You'll just find the wackos clean enough to get kicked out of government housing. Or, you meet douchebags that make the world's worst frat boy in the world seem like Mother Teresa.
There are no specials. There are no deals. The bartender doesn't like you and would rather shit in your mouth than give you a decent pour. Then you get the bill. Curses. I guess you won't be eating next week, or using electricity. Oh well.
When you finally land your first job, you'll probably be doing the same shit you did as an intern but your boss will treat you worse. You'll be yelled at and forced to take on stupid work janitors are overqualified for. Finally your paycheck comes. You think maybe they misplaced the comma. Nope. You officially make less than the average pizza delivery boy.
Oh lord it's so hot here. I know it's hotter in the South and in Arizona, but they don't have people that smell distinctly of ballsweat, falafel and turds. They don't have the garbage stacked up ten feet high. They don't have the subway packed with stagnant air.
Want to experience the Big Apple in the winter? This time strip naked, cover your body in dry ice and stand in a wind tunnel.
Only the strong survive, but you've learned from speaking with meathead jocks that maybe you don't want to be strong. If you can make it here you can make it anywhere. So do your psyche a favor, make it somewhere else.
 Weekly Drunk Text: More floor peeing in the forecast. I wouldn’t be surprised if zac does the same. I don’t know how he even found his way home. -Sara |