Columns

A New York jolt does wonders

The city that never sleeps never stops complaining, but try looking a little deeper.

By ROBYN BLUMNER
Published November 5, 2006

The Broadway hit The Drowsy Chaperone opens with a man sitting in an easy chair in a large, shabby apartment that has the bones of a once-grand room. The apartment has towering ceilings and Corinthian columns that have been laid low by flaking paint, helter-skelter decor and a metal security gate across the large windows. This besweatered man, who evokes the image of an adjunct professor with a bad day job, will be our guide, excitedly explaining the record album (yes, the kind on a turntable) that he is about to play which will, of course, come to life before our eyes.

We know this Man in Chair as a quintessential New Yorker. No one else would wax with such unbridled glee over a silly 1920s musical, even while dissecting its many faults and apologizing that it is not the best musical in the world. He is almost as adoring of and entertained by its failings as its triumphs, which is about as much a New York point of view as you can get.

I was born in New York, in the borough of Queens actually, and while I've lived in Florida since 1989, it's true that you can take the girl out of New York but you can't take the "don't even think about parking here" out of the girl.

My credentials as a New Yorker were renewed the night of the show when I was nearly the last one to join the rest of the audience in what has become the obligatory standing ovation. I object to this theatrical grade inflation. The Drowsy Chaperone was a fine, anodyne show deserving of unreserved applause, but it didn't rate the ultimate approbation which should be held for true genius such as Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out, Idina Menzel's star turn as Elphaba or anything by Tom Stoppard. As I reluctantly stood, because continued sitting was making an unwanted statement, I grumbled to myself about those obvious out-of-towners around me. The Man in Chair would have understood the gripe.

New Yorkers are famous complainers. Even when they're not complaining out loud they're doing so in their head. It's because they see things more clearly. If your eyes are open and you're not kidding yourself, there's really quite a lot to complain about. Just think of Woody Allen and the late Spalding Gray, iconic New York complainers, who used their autobiographical angst and tribulations to illuminate the injustice, oppressions and arch irony of the wider world. It's a gift.

The rest of the country thinks people from New York have a superiority complex, but it's really a highly refined inferiority complex that few others can compete with.

It is so easy to feel inferior in New York. On my recent visit, my husband and I went to the Duplex, my favorite open-mike bar in Greenwich Village. This tiny, roughed-up place, which can barely fit a few tables in addition to the piano, allows anyone to come up and sing. Except, everyone who does has been on or belongs on Broadway. The bartender, Joe Ardizzone, a large, heavyset man who says he has "reverse gaydar" because every man he's attracted to is straight, belted out a song from Hair that made even this hard-bitten theatergoer want to stand up (yes, stand) and cheer.

Even in the city's modest corners, select denizens have more talent than almost anyone, anywhere else. So "superiority" for the rest of the residents isn't much of a danger.

In the political realm, New Yorkers are unfairly characterized as either woolly intellectuals steeped in armchair liberalism or beer-guzzling hard-hats who reflexively vote Democratic because their union tells them to. But a pragmatic streak runs long and deep in the city's politics. When the poor live one block from the fabulously rich and when people of every language and nationality share the sidewalks with the establishment elite, the electorate comes worldly wise.

Business tycoon and Republican Michael Bloomberg won the mayoral seat in this decidedly Democratic city because he's really smart, loves the city and isn't much of a grandstanding ideologue. If only more places in America followed that lead. You know, when it's between two candidates, vote for the smart one.

I am lucky to be able to return to the city regularly to visit my parents and other relatives. It is always like a shot of adrenaline, being around New Yorkers and enjoying the city's cultural offerings. And I know if we sat down together, the Man in Chair and I would have wondrous things to discuss and even more to commiserate about.

[Last modified November 5, 2006, 01:15:21]