A Tourist Speaks

Sheryl Zettner, a young lady from San Antonio, visited our little town and was not altogether happy:

Went over to the Museum of Sex. It was good in a pornographic way.

Then headed towards 9th street because there are a lot of restaurants there. I managed to trip and my knee was all bleeding. I was kind of disgusted that no one stopped to ask if I was ok. What an uncivilized culture!!! Someone always stops when someone trips in San Antonio.

I think I will be glad to leave New York. The food is overpriced and inferior to San Antonio's and a lot of people are crabby here. I'm also sick of people demanding money for the poor. I have no way of knowing where the money would go. Have they never heard of taxes? You could actually allocate tax money to deal with homelessness. I know it's taxing on the brain to consider it. God knows they spend tax money on other less humanitarian things in this city.

Sheryl seems like a nice person and I’m sure she means well, but I feel compelled to respond to a few of her comments.

First, I would like to assure her that New Yorkers have, indeed, heard of taxes. Had she purchased anything, she might have noticed the 8+ percent sales tax, but I doubt if she would have had the opportunity to truly feel the state and city taxes, which altogether add up to about a gazillion dollars per annum for a family of four. All of those cops on the street and the god-awful construction noise do not pay for themselves.

And personally, I was actually surprised that there were so few beggars when I moved here from Tucson. Arizona, and the west in general, seems to me to have a much higher per capita beggar population than New York. Off the top of my head, I would have thought the same would be true of Texas, being mostly warm and all, but then I remembered what a terrible lawless, immoral place it is. I guess they just chain the beggars to the back of a pick up truck and drag then across the county line, letting the coyotes clean up the mess. Though I’m sure that’s only for the black and hispanic beggars. The white ones no doubt get a bus ticket to Tucson, if not New York.

But it’s true that people can be indifferent to those who are hurting in the street. On one of my first days here, I held open a door for a woman in Grand Central Terminal and she looked at me with disdain and said, “you’re not from here, are you?”

Still, I find New Yorkers to be at least as polite as people in other parts of the country. It’s just that a megalopolis breeds a different type of politesse. When I passed through Texas on a motorcycle, a long, long time ago, I remember taking a detour to see the hometown of Robert E. Howard, who was one sick, twisted, individual. I remember how everyone I passed on those back roads smiled and waved and how good it made me feel. Yet Howard committed suicide in his thirties. It’s the same where I’m from. People wave when they pass a car on the back roads, but inside they are mean, despicable people, for the most part. And in Texas, I also remember how, on the freeway, the wind caught my sunglasses and how a pickup truck swerved to purposely run over them and how the stupid hillbilly laughed and gave me the finger as he drove on by. That wasn’t so far from San Antone.

Different places have their different ways. In New York, it’s generally considered rude to speak to strangers on the street or subway, though I have more often than not seen people stop and ask if they can help when someone falls or otherwise is in need of help. I’d say that odds are, the people ignoring the poor girl were fellow tourists, not New York residents, most of whom are probably not native New Yorkers anyway. And she’s talking about a trendy part of Manhattan at that.

So I’m sorry Sheryl had a less than wonderful time, but I’d encourage her to come back when she can stay awhile. Is the construction noise and honking taxis really worse than the crickets in Texas? Well, yes, but they can’t beat our Sex Museum, now can they?