DISCLAIMER: If you're looking for a Bills Recap, that will be forthcoming. Right now I have to get this off my chest. Cheers.
"Jesus baby, you're a mess. Relax."
40 Minutes before Sunday's kickoff, the girlfriend had to tell me those reassuring words as I stood sobbing in our living room over a State Farm 9/11 commercial. The commercial showed a firehouse I know personally, and I completely lost my composure and started bawling. Not the quiet, manly, distinguished red-eyes behind the sunglasses quiet emotion of a funeral, but the mouth opened drooling wail of a bereaved seagull. I actually shook. I haven't cried like that since I was a child (I learned quickly that crying was not a virtue of the men of my family and have attempted to carry the banner ever since).
Is it unfortunate that it took a commercial from a giant insurance corporation forced me to lay my psyche bare and examine all of my emotions related to 9/11 and being a New Yorker and one of the first members of the "9/11 Generation"? Probably. Do I give a shit? Not a chance.
- I love that on any given day, I have absolutely no fucking clue what I'm going to encounter in the city. 8 million people packed into what increasingly seems like a space slightly larger than a football field has its massively interesting turns.
- I love that if I take a cab on a Sunday morning at 4:30 AM to get home after a night of "socializing", I can hit a traffic snag an hour long and fall asleep and its light out by the time the cabbie boots me from the back.
- I love that a homeless dude asked "Excuse me?!" in a very put-off tone the other day as I stared in horror as he relieved himself in the stairwell of our tony Brooklyn neighborhood Subway station....at 7:45 AM on a Tuesday. "I'm sorry sir, didn't mean to intrude on your morning routine".
- I love that a $1.50 cup of burnt grote-ass deli coffee (clearly laced with crack) will cure a hangover far better than any $5.50 tutti con latte punto pazzo what have you from Seattle will.
- I also love that if I am in a particularly twee mood, I can go to a coffee shop that sells a $15 cup of coffee made from beans harvested from bat poop. Because apparently that is a delicacy.
- I love that if the lady and I wake up on a Saturday and decide to go to a Museum, we can go to the MoMA, the Whitney, the Museum of Natural History, or the Brooklyn Museum, or any of the countless awesome museums in the 5 boroughs. I always pick the Natural History Museum because I am 8 and still love Dinosaurs. And GI Joes.
- I love that for whatever sport I want to watch, there's a bar for that. Including but not limited to Sabres Hockey, Liverpool Soccer, and oddly enough, Cricket. (I don't watch Cricket because I can't count that high)
- I love that I used to hate bike lanes but now desperately cling onto them now that I have a bike.
- I love that I can live, work, play, grow, strive, and succeed in the world's biggest craft beer market. Because there's a GD craft beer bar every 10 steps here.
- I love that I can run a blog about my hometown with 2 guys I met here and the Apologist. And by "blog" I mean literary used toilet paper.
- I love that I hated Brooklyn and now live in it and love it. Although I still hate hipsters. Sweet Mother Christ I hate hipsters. "You look like you stepped out of a shaving chair timewarp from 1853 what the fuck is wrong with you?!?!" - Marc Meron
- I love that I can be told 11 times during a 12 minute subway ride by a computer to keep my belongings with me at all times. If the train decides it will go express for the next 7 stops so I'll be late for work, I have to discern the garbled human-speakers heavily accented shouts to receive pertinent information. And she/he only ever shouts/mumbles once.
- I love Central Park and the ridiculousness of maintaining a park on a TRILLION DOLLARS worth of real estate. That's Trillion with a T.
- I love that there's a "guy" for everything, and if you don't know a guy, your friend does, and he can hook you up.
- I love that "random bag searches" double as an excuse for young cops to talk to girls on 14th Street.
- I love that I pay a fairly exorbitant amount of money to live in a small apartment next to a canal that recently tested positive for Chlamydia. YES. THE WHOLE CANAL.
- I love that a subway station can be closed for literally half a decade and then all of a sudden just reopen like nothing happened. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE CORTLANDT STREET!?! I LOOK FORWARD TO BEING IN YOU.
- I love that I cracked the code of where all of our recycled cans go: the brigade of Asian bottle ladies who patrol the streets with shopping carts every morning throughout the 5 boroughs. YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT NEW YORKERS. FEAR THEM FOR THEY ARE WELL ORGANIZED AND EFFICIENT AND ARE GOOD AT SCOWLING.
I could keep going on like this but I won't. This was but a small smattering of why I love this city. I re-lived that shyte day about 9 times over the past 24 hours, and finally realized (with the help of the lady), that it's not worth it to sit around and lament all day. Instead, the best way to honor the memory is to celebrate the present.
New York, I love you. You don't bring me down.