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He hates Manhattan!
Andrew Sullivan has never been shy about expressing his opinion and when it comes to New York—where he's lived for all of two weeks—he's not pulling any punches.
In a Daily Beast post written today—entitled, what else? "New York Shitty"—Mr. Sullivan tells us just how much he hates this horrible city. He hates it a lot. He hates the crowds, he hates his apartment, he hates the internet here and he even hates his cell phone service. Most of all he hates how much he's paying to hate all these things.
"A glance at your bank account shows a giant sucking sound as the city effectively robs you of all your pennies at every juncture. When you're there for a few days or a week, it can be bracing. But living with this as a daily fact of life? How does anyone manage it?"
We've often asked ourselves that same question, but this is coming from a writer who's presumably well paid as one of the prize ponies in The Daily Beast stable?
But worst of all—and this is really unforgivable—Mr. Sullivan compares New York unfavorably to Washington D.C.
Okay, we get it. He just moved. It's hard to adjust to a new city. Washington D.C. has been his home for many years, so it's not like he's making an objective call here. But still.
What does Mr. Sullivan think is wrong with the city besides everything? Well, first off, as a kind of disclaimer, he admits that it was kind of a thrill to be here at first. He loved visiting and the beginning of his residency— his first week? or few days? or day? or hours?—but "after the initial wonderland feel, you get to adjust to a whole new rhythm."
Well, it's been two weeks now and the bloom is definitely off the rose.
For starters, there's the internet, which is so terrible it's surprising that Mr. Sullivan was able to communicate his feelings to us at all. "It's like going back in time," he writes. "We bought the most expensive cable package to expedite my work at home - and it just decides to crawl like dial-up every few minutes. My wifi cannot get a signal that's stable. My iPhone is suddenly iffy - calls are dropped and online access is far slower than in DC. And if you keep your wifi open, it gets grabbed by squeegee hotspots that are hard to get rid of."
Time Warner cable is also just awful. I mean, it made Patrick Stewart lose his will to live. In Mr. Sullivan's case, he had to live-blog the debate, or "Obama's implosion" as he likes to call it, from the Beast offices.
The Beast offices are, of course, located outside Mr. Sullivan's apartment, which involves a harrowing journey on the city sidewalks. "Just to walk a few blocks requires barging your way through a melee of noise and rudeness and madness."
And it's not like he can escape the misery at his apartment, which is one-fifth the size of his place in DC and has scalding hot water that comes out of the cold faucet. He doesn't even have a good couch where he can curl up in a ball and weep because the store delivered the wrong one.
Clearly Mr. Sullivan is just in a really bad place right now (we mean emotionally), but he swears he's trying to like it here because he has a year-long lease and no choice but to remain in this hell hole the rest of us call home. As inspiration, he's even embedded a video of Alicia Keys singing "Empire State of Mind."
Come on now, Mr. Sullivan, sing along: These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you, let's hear it for New York.
kvelsey@observer.com
