Wit and Wisdom of New Yorkers, Part VIII

Had I continued to live in New York City, New York, ever since the mid-1980s, I feel sure that I would have overheard the following comments by New Yorkers speaking to each other at public places in Manhattan:



---"I'm very surprised that I've never heard about a New York City Dutch Heritage Day here as an annual cultural event where the Prime Minister and royalty from The Netherlands are invited to attend. It's the least we could do to show our appreciation to the Dutch people for having founded 'New Amsterdam' here centuries ago!"


---"So where in Manhattan do you find the leading outdoor public monument honoring our city's Dutch heritage? And where in Manhattan do you find the leading outdoor public monument here that honors our city's British heritage? I find it so very odd that we call ourselves 'New York' as if there were no 'York' that came before us! It often seems as if we lack a proper sense of historical appreciation in that way, don't you agree?"


---"Living in New York makes me much more aware of alley scenes in the movies. One of my favorite fantasies as a New Yorker is to compile a new movie that exclusively contains the finest alley scenes from the American cinema of the last 90-year-period. Wouldn't that be great fun, to watch all the bizarre things that happened in dimly-lit alleys in back of buildings in New York City?"


---"There should be a list of special commandments for New Yorkers that includes the commandment that 'Thou Shalt Refrain From Ever Entering an Alley in New York City'. To me, that's one of the top rules for survival here, if you want to achieve a full natural lifespan as a human being. To walk into an alley here is to invite instant annihilation at the hands of the criminal element."

---"You call yourself a savvy New Yorker, but you don't even know the 24-hour-a-day anonymous tip-line phone number to call and report that someone you directly observe here appears to have Mafia ties?"


---"Living in a city with as many skyscrapers as we have, our wedding cakes tend to be a lot taller than the ones you find in a city like Miami. We tend to mirror the man-made scenery here, even in our wedding cakes. The only drawback to our very, very tall wedding cakes in New York is when they collapse if a member of the bride's party actually attempts to slice the cake for guests. A lot of wedding guests look upon that collapsed cake as a bad omen about the future of the newlyweds' marriage."


---"As a home-school teacher here, I thought it would be a fun creative educational project for my 10-year-old son if he would develop a list of all public buildings in New York City that bear a Dutch name. My son's reply, though, was that he is not sure how to identify a Dutch name, so that limits his ability to ace that homework assignment I've given him. Maybe what I'll have to do is provide Tommy with a list of the 100 most common Dutch surnames, which should help him to handle that assignment."


----"She's so embarrassed by the neighborhood of New York she lives in that she always gets off the subway at the nearest subway stop in a neighborhood she is NOT embarrassed by, and then walks the rest of the way home. I told her that her pride borders on vanity, and it could be fatal to her if she's not careful. She has no assurance that all the men and male youths she encounters on her nightly walk to her home will all be honorable toward her."


---"If Horace Greeley's famous advice to New York gentlemen was to 'Go west, young man,' I don't understand why the population of New York City continued to rise during that period of our city's history. I thought Horace Greeley was so powerful  and influential that half of our city's younger men would have evacuated ship for the western half of this country."


---"When you ice skate outdoors here in New York, you try not to curse the person before you who damaged the ice and made it difficult for you to skate over that portion of the rink at Rockefeller Center.  That's an example of what I call nobility here in New York: not cursing a complete stranger under your breath, even when you feel like cursing them."


---"One of the signs that law-enforcement isn't emphasized enough here in New York is that there's no public statue here that honors the finest prosecuting attorney in New York City's history. In fact, if you surveyed New Yorkers and asked them to cite the very finest prosecuting attorney here of the last 50-year period, they would be completely stumped by the question."


---"I thought it would be fun to celebrate New York City's birthday by purchasing a Dutch cake of some type from a local bakery. I find it fascinating that we used to be called New Amsterdam. But I don't even know the name of a first-rate Dutch bakery here, so I'm stumped. What would you suggest? Should I turn to the yellow pages and look under 'Bakeries, comma Dutch?'"


---"I'm never sentimental about the parties I attend here in Manhattan. I consider my party experience a complete failure for me unless I'm handed at least five professional calling cards by the other party guests at the event. The more professional contacts, the better--that's my leading slogan as a business person here in New York."


---"I often debate whether to include my middle name on my professional calling card. If I give a first-time acquaintance one of my calling cards at a cocktail party here, what if I was so drunk at the party that I had handed my professional card to the wrong type of guy? In a worst-case scenario, withholding from him my middle name might be the best personal-safety protection I could possibly have for myself."


---"To me, there are really only two types of New Yorkers: Those who DO have criminal-intent toward others, and those who don't. On any given day here in Manhattan, the New Yorkers who don't have 'C.I.' toward others are outnumbered 10 to 1."


---"I find it ironic that Albert Einstein was associated with the Manhattan Project featuring development of an atomic bomb during World War II that was dropped on a foreign country we were at war with.  In my own life, I often feel as if living in Manhattan is a bit like getting nuked on a daily and year-round basis. It's a wonder I'm still alive in order to talk about it with the news media. But I have no assurance that '60 Minutes'  will ever agree to interview me about my tragic case as a victim of daily and continuous felony-crimes here. I believe that Mike Wallace has retired by now, and he was the only guy I knew at '60 Minutes'."

----"As a New Yorker with a heart condition, I should probably carry an oxygen mask with me whenever I ride the elevator to my 30th floor office job here in Manhattan. Holding a job on the 30th floor of a skyscraper here is a bit like living in the mountains of eastern Colorado. The oxygen is so much thinner up in those mountains, and that can lead to heart attacks if you're not careful. My theory is that anyone working on the 30th floor or higher has the same problem: the air is much thinner up there, at that altitude. Maybe I should listen to John Denver music during my coffee breaks, in order to make the most of my Rocky Mountain High workday experience here in Manhattan!"


----"As a heart patient here in New York, I don't believe that my doctor would agree to let me work in an office job situated on the top floor of a skyscraper. It would take the New York City EMS crew too long to reach me by elevator, and by then my heart would have stopped beating. My only hope would be if there's a special mini-helicopter that could fly directly from the Emergency Room of the hospital into the top-floor area where my office cubicle is situated. That would bypass their having to take the elevator up to my top-floor office job. I think every New Yorker in their mind rehearses scenarios in which they suddenly get a heart attack while working on the top floor of a skyscraper. If you're going to have a heart attack, it probably makes sense to work in a first-floor office job. Besides, what if the New York City EMS crew gets on an elevator to try to reach the 30th floor and rescue me, only to find that the elevator stops working in between floors. That would be a complete wipe-out scenario for me!"


----"I know of lots of New Yorkers who are so fond of working and living 30 floors above the ground or higher that they insist that they must do everything up in the clouds, if at all possible. They want to get married on the 30th floor of a church building, which is very hard to find. When they do shopping, they prefer to do it 30 floors or higher in the air. And when they die, they want their body to be buried somewhere on the 30th or 40th floor of some special skyscraper cemetery that matches their cosmopolitan self-image."


---"I think one of the reasons why we New Yorkers identify with birds so much is that we spend so much of our lives up there in the clouds. Think about it. We live on the 30th floor of an apartment building, we work on the 50th floor of a skyscraper, we take frequent commuter plane flights up in the clouds to Philadelphia as part of our career for a bi-state corporation. The only thing I can't decide is which member of the avian species, as I like to call them, is the most like myself. Maybe I should visit the Bronx Zoo this weekend and attempt to focus on each of the birds there, in order to decide which bird on display most reminds me of myself as a New Yorker."


---"I can't decide whether I admire or pity the New Yorkers who flee to Florida for their retirement years. They probably think Florida will be very peaceful, a Garden of Eden type of place, with no one honking at them when they drive on the roadways down there.  Then they suddenly learn that the other motorists in Florida are almost as aggressive as the motorists in New York are.  Plus, they find that if they want to invite a close friend of theirs out for coffee, the friend is up there in Manhattan. So they would have to make a long-distance phone call to their dear friend in New York and then offer to pay for her $1,000 in travel expenses she'll incur in flying from New York to Fort Lauderdale for that coffee-shop outing. That's a very expensive cup of coffee, if you ask me!"

---"The biggest mistake you're making when you attend art exhibits here in New York is that you're spending 60 or fewer seconds on each featured artwork that you are studying. To do justice to each of the artworks on display, you should allow yourself at least five minutes to totally immerse yourself in that artwork from every conceivable vantage point. Some art patrons like to squint their eyes as they gaze at an artwork, as one way to get a better idea of which images in that artwork are the most dominant from a distance. Other people like to gaze at the artwork from each and every angle, in order to view it from the far-left side, the far-right side, and then from standing directly in front of the artwork."


---"I'm from South Florida, and I need to find out as soon as possible the section of Central Park where shuffleboard is being played. Is that in the northwest quadrant of Central Park, the southwest quadrant of Central Park, the southeast quadrant, or the northeast quadrant? I'm assuming you guys use a grid system for guiding visitors at Central Park. Back in Florida, as you know, we use the grid system quite a bit for identifying streets, to make things as simple as possible for our tourists and new residents. So tell me, which quadrant of Central Park is the right quadrant for what I want to do this morning? Also, where do I find the signs giving me directions on how to find that quadrant of Central Park?"


---"I sometimes wish that Central Park were shaped like a rectangle, rather than a square. I've always been intrigued by rectangles, ever  since I was a little kid studying geometry in Public School Number 136 here in New York City."


---"It would probably be more strategic if you called the Mayor's Chief of Staff and asked that individual to meet you for lunch. It would not be good form to directly invite the Mayor to lunch. You need to first invite his Chief of Staff to lunch. Then if the Chief of Staff thinks you might be good PR for the Mayor, the Mayor's appointments secretary might contact you on her own initiative and invite you to meet Mayor Bloomberg himself for lunch."


----"With all the cosmetics being sold and promoted here in New York, I find it surprising that our mayor hasn't expressed concern about the increased risk of skin cancer from over-use of cosmetics here. To me, it would make a perfect headline in the 'New York Post' if Mayor Bloomberg were to declare that he wants to 'Save New Yorkers' Skin' as his next health crusade. Can you imagine what a field day the headline writers for the 'New York Post' would have, when they turn that into a headline? It might go something like: 'Bloomberg to New Yorkers: "I'm Here to Save Your Skin!"'"


---"I don't blame the tabloids here for pursuing photographs of Mayor Bloomberg caught eating junk food in the middle of his workday. Mayor Bloomberg has portrayed himself as being the 'Healthy-Living Mayor', so that invites the news media of New York to find factual evidence linking him to the very same junk-food addictions that everyone else in New York suffers from!"


---"To me, it's very fair to evaluate Mayor Bloomberg's tenure as Mayor by asking yourself, 'Has the natural longevity or lifespan of municipal employees in New York increased significantly during the period ever since Mr. Bloomberg was first inaugurated as our city's mayor?' If the answer to that question is 'no,' then it's fair to say that Mayor Bloomberg may be a quack."


---"I would definitely recommend that you do some research to identify the most healthy-foods restaurant in New York City before you invite the mayor out to lunch. It would be a major insult to Mayor Bloomberg, after all he has done to promote healthy living here, if you asked him to meet you for lunch at a Pizza Hut  restaurant."


---"I admire what Gloria Steinem says about the aging process being a source of fascination for her as she grows older. What I don't find so fascinating to look at on my own face, though, are all the signs of unnatural scars and wounds inflicted on my body by members of the criminal element here! The gangsters of New York are trying to punish me for being virtuous, and they do that by frequently inflicting on me the types of unsightly scars and wounds that identify me as a crime victim, no matter where I go. This isn't a natural aging process---this is slow-motion murder I'm being victimized by here in New York! What makes it doubly degrading is that when other New Yorkers look at the unsightly scars on my body, they often comment that I must have done something to provoke the gangsters, or otherwise the gangsters would have all left me alone!"


---"You call yourself a true and authentic New Yorker, but you can't tell me the architectural style of our City Hall! I find that very disturbing, that you can't immediately tell me what our City Hall's architectural style is!"

---"One of the reasons I fear snowstorms in New York City is that I know for a fact that the snow here hides dead bodies. Call me morbid, if you like, but everywhere I go in New York during a snowstorm, I'm thinking to myself, 'What if there's a dead body under that snowdrift that NYPD hasn't found yet?' I think all New Yorkers look upon snowstorms here as a man-made conspiracy by the criminal element to hide their victims' dead bodies! The murderers are stalling for time. They are hoping the frozen bodies will somehow lose their DNA when NYPD finally gets around to doing forensic exams on those murder victims! The criminal element here is hoping NYPD will conclude that no homicide occurred, since it was just another case of a foolhardy New Yorker who didn't wear enough clothing on a frigid day, so they simply froze to death during a snowstorm! Our city's thugs celebrate with glee whenever NYPD rules out homicide for the most recent dead body found under a foot of snow.  Can you imagine how many pizzas those gangsters devour in their smirking tribute to the latest false findings by NYPD?"


---"There should be a law requiring that all of the elevators here in New York must be high-speed elevators.  If a New York City EMS crew is trying to get to a heart-attack victim who's on the top floor of an office building or apartment complex, the high-speed elevator could save that person's life. Every second counts when it comes to rescuing a heart-attack victim here in New York!"

---"I need to find out whether City Hall here features a special helicopter landing strip on top of that building where Mayor Bloomberg can fly directly back to City Hall after he's gone on a fact-finding trip in an outlying borough of New York. To me, that's the least we can offer our Mayor, since his job obviously demands lots of urgent fact-finding trips to outlying boroughs of New York City."


----"George is a big pessimist. His favorite hobby is pursuing research on occasions when one or more boroughs of New York City were declared a Natural Disaster Area. Those occasions prove that New York City is very vulnerable to natural disasters, George says. I hate the way George smiles when he announces that finding of his about New York City!"


----"There are days when I miss Phyllis Diller, that comedian whose hairstyle should have been declared a human-made disaster area. She always made me feel proud that my own hairstyles at their worst were always a lot better than hers were. She was the walking antonym of the word 'fashionable'. Her unfashionableness always made me feel chic, elegant, trendy, and ever-so-coveted."

----"I had one of the biggest insults of my entire life as a party hostess last weekend when one of my party guests walks up to an original masterpiece painting of mine in my living room and begins to fondle the painting with her fingers! I asked her what she was doing, so she says: 'I couldn't tell if this was an original or a replica, so I decided to find out using the finger method!'"


---"Mayor Bloomberg saves our city's taxpayers a lot of money, since he's a Surgeon General and a Mayor all rolled into one, and he doesn't charge the City extra for his role as our very own municipal Surgeon General.  I should check to find out if he ever attended medical school, with all the good advice he's giving everyone about how to live longer."


---"All of the vases on display in my living room are purely ornamental. I wouldn't ever think of actually putting a bouquet of flowers in any of my vases! That would turn my vases into something practical, and I'm very opposed to that!"


---"I'm embarrassed by your praise for my collection of books in my home. I have read only 1 percent of the books I keep on display. I guess that makes me one percent smarter than before I bought these books."


----"The type size of 'The New Yorker' magazine is so tiny that I bet even the staff members who work there have to use a magnifying glass to read their own publication!"

---"Can you imagine what it's like to be a delegate in The United Nations here, yourself representing a foreign country in the General Assembly, only to find when you entered the United Nations Cafeteria as a lunchtime customer that NONE of the featured side dishes or entrees were inspired by the native cuisine of the foreign country you represent? It would feel like a kick in the teeth, if you ask me!"


---"Personally, I feel that the United Nations Cafeteria situated at the UN headquaters complex here in New York should sponsor an 'Icelandic Day' one day of every year. On that one day, at least 10 of the side dishes or entrees on display in the UN Cafeteria would be inspired by the native cuisine of Iceland."


---"It's always fascinating to observe the Italian delegation in the General Assembly at The United Nations complex here in New York. Half of the members of the Italian delegation appear to be very southern and swarthy in complexion. The other half of the Italian delegation are fair-haired and could easily pass for Austrian based on their physical appearance and demeanor. I don't know of any country here where the delegates identify themselves in terms of a north or south polarity as dramatically as Italy does."



---"I'm in the midst of my debut as a soon-to-be published poet here, and I thought I'd start out with a poem featuring 'New York' at the end of my first line, followed by the word 'fork' in the next line or two.  I'm assuming that most of my readers will agree that 'New York' rhymes with 'fork'.  I know there are many here who pronounce our city's name as 'New Yawk', instead of 'New York'. But I can't think of anything poetic that rhymes well with 'Yawk'. So tell me, where in New York City do you see a forklike image that's poetic? If I'm going to devote an entire line of my poem to a fork image, I need to come up with something profound and sublime. That's my specialty, now that  I'm a poet here."

----"I keep a list of all of the formerly famous persons who still live in New York, and then I make a point of inviting each of them to have lunch with me in a local restaurant. My thinking is that these formerly famous New Yorkers might offer me valuable professional contacts if I give them the impression that I'm talented and I take them seriously despite their current status as 'has-beens'. I need all the letters of recommendation I can get, and many of these former celebrities could still open doors for me here if they praise me enough as professional references for me. I'm not worried about any of them feeling used by me. I'll pay for their meal,  and I'll shower them with praise regardless of whether they agree to write a signed letter of recommendation for me or not. There won't be any quid pro quo, so I'm sure they won't complain."


---"Maybe there's a need for a Formerly Famous New Yorkers Association. It seems to me that one of every 10 New Yorkers fits that description these days, and they might enjoy holding annual meetings to discuss and celebrate what it's like to be formerly famous here. Maybe they could hold their annual banquet at the least-publicized and most obscure first-rate restaurant in all of Manhattan. Otherwise, we could meet in a once-great restaurant that is no longer great or famous, but is at least good in quality. Either way might match the theme of that new civic group."


---"I'd love to host a party in honor of New York City's finest artists and actors and entertainers and professional athletes. The only thing I'm worried about is that some of them might object to the drug-sniffing dog I plan to hire to greet each of my invited party guests at the front door of my Manhattan condominium. If a guest fails the drug-sniffing test, he will be automatically denied entrance into my party. To show that I still care about him as a human being, I'll hand him a list of recommended drug-treatment programs and urge him to register with any of those treatment programs ASAP if he wants to qualify to attend next year's annual party in my condo unit."

--"My idea of a Heaven on Earth experience is owning my own condo unit outright here in Manhattan. I can't imagine anything more blissful than to experience life without a monthly herculean struggle just to make rent."


---"I take pride in having a guest bedroom reserved for friends of mine from out of town that's larger than the bedroom I myself sleep in. All of the friends of mine who visit me in my condo unit here are impressed that I give them the bigger bedroom to stay in when they're here. 'So this is 'New York-style Hospitality!', they'll say with an astonished look on their face. Then they will add that if they were in my shoes, they would offer the SMALLER bedroom to the guest from out-of-town. So what I'm doing is proof that New Yorkers are actually more generous than most Americans are. How unfair the stereotypes about stingy New Yorkers are, they will then hasten to add."


---"When I host friends of mine from out of town, they always ask me if I will take them to the top of the Empire State Building . I used to always say 'sure' to that, but lately I've gotten more assertive. I will flat-out ask my friends why they are so hellbent on traveling to the top of the Empire State Building during their visit? I have been to the top of the Empire State Bulding as a tour guide for friends of mine at least 20 times in the last three years.  I feel dizzy whenever I think about it. I've even had recurrent nightmares during my sleep in which I'm up there attempting to point my finger toward a major tourist attraction down below, only to lose my balance and fall off the edge of the building. My nightmares always feature me shouting at the top of my lungs to throw me a parachute, for God's sake, if you want me to show you more of New York!"


 ---"My friend Carol has had this ridiculous fantasy about wanting to get married to her fiance in Central Park. I told her the idea sounds nice, but the minute they actually turn that into a reality, there will be repeated shouts and cries of 'I've just been mugged!' by invited guests throughout that entire outdoor ceremony. That would be a very traumatic start to a new marriage, if you ask me."


---"I never describe weather in New York City as 'muggy', since I have a mental block against that word. I think my mental block began for me the day five years ago when my wallet containing the winning ticket in the $6 million New York State lottery suddenly got grabbed and stolen from me by a mugger during a visit of mine in Central Park. I would like to eliminate muggy days from my life. I'm also allergic to the term 'coffee mug.' To me, there is no such thing as a coffee mug. I drink from a coffee CUP, but I NEVER drink from a COFFEE MUG! I feel a lot better for having banished the term 'coffee mug' from my everyday vocabulary."


---"I would welcome a factual documentary film explaining to me why muggers are the way they are. I have never understood the social psychology behind muggery here in New York. Maybe I could become more empathetic toward muggers here if I watched a documentary film explaining to me why they are the way they are. It may well be that the tendency toward muggery is a genetically inherited trait. That's one theory of mine, at least, whenever I am trying very hard to avoid staring with hatred at the muggers of New York City! There are so many muggers here that I sometimes sense there's a 'New York Muggers Pride Association' that sponsors regular meetings in Central Park. At those monthly meeting, ideas on how to mug innocent people more successfully are exchanged among the various members of that civic group."

---"Do you know of any factual-information website that exclusively profiles each and every building in New York City that is 10 stories tall or taller?  Tall buidings are an obsession of mine, so I'd love to browse that type of website on a year-round basis. In fact, I'd welcome the opportunty to enroll in a continuing education class at City University of New York that's eentitled, 'History of Skyscrapers in New York City.'"


---"So tell me, which city in the world has more total skyscrapers than New York City has? I had always thought we were number one in the world in that category, but recently someone mentioned to me that maybe Tokyo, Japan, has more total skyscraper buildings than we do. You have to think that the Japanese must be obsessed with trying to outdo us in that category!"


---"If there were an International Skyscraper Cities Association, I would gladly represent New York City at that group's annnual convention. Come to think of it, I guess I'd have to be appointed by Mayor Bloomberg before I could  officially represent our city at the annual meeting of that group. Maybe if I could convince Mayor Bloomberg that I'm an expert on skyscrapers, he would then hold a press conference to announce that I had been selected for that  honor.  So the question is, how to I convince our mayor that I'm an expert on  our city's skyscrapers, when I haven't taught a college course on that subject at CUNY and I can't claim to have written a dissertation on the subject of skyscrapers. Maybe I could bribe the mayor into appointing me as our city's official representative at a Skyscraper Cities convention?"


---"If you could select any animal on display at the Bronx Zoo to take home with you as your personal pet, which animal would you choose?"


----"To me, the New Yorkers who  rely on mass transportation and never drive a car should carry a Mass Transit Passenger photo-identification card. Personally, I feel that mass-transit passengers in our state should be charged a lower fee for getting an ID card of that type than the New Yorkers who get a driver's licsense. The ones who never drive a car are doing our entire state a favor by helping to protect the ozone layer."


----"You ask me when was the last time I was RAPED in New York City. A better question, it seems to me, would have been: 'When was the last time you WEREN'T raped in New York City?' The answer to that second question is easy for me. September 10, 2011. It felt great that morning to wake up on my bed inside my bolt-locked one-bedroom apartment unit and immediately sense that no one had molested me during my sleep. This year, I wanted to celebrate my first anniversary of that wonderful morning, but I  lost my appetite for celebrating when I woke up on my bed on September 10, 2012, and immediately sensesd that I had been molested again during my sleep inside my bolt-locked apartment unit in Manhattan!"