There is a storefront space in my apartment building that is for rent by owner. Every day as I come home I have to dodge hip twentysomethings with cool t-shirts and haircuts ogling and writing down phone numbers. It's news to me, but apparently the singular ambition amongst my compatriates is to own a really cool store. I hate this. I hate it the way I hate watching the RNC on cspan on a Sunday night or stores that make you spend $10 to use a credit card. It's a quick spike of adrenaline, followed by an unnecessary asshole grimace and occasionally verbal exclamation.
This is the at the crux of my problem with large cities' production/consumption ratios. I feel guilty living here because the entire purpose of Manhattan seems to be to assimilate, commodify and consume. I'm not even that liberal, and I'm certainly not a marxist, but this pisses me off. On top of this, you have to deal with sanctimonious NYers drop comments about "producing" culture. News flash: polishing, repackaging and adding spin is the same definition of "production" that people use when they use the phrase "over-produced."
These people may be a bit silly and pretentious, but they are not on the whole stupid. Why do they want their job to prove how great their taste is? Why must everything go into proving that your life is on the crest of something? What's wrong with the interior spaces carved out by thousands of cresting waves, deep loam that grows out of layer by layer of fallen detrious? Screw this city.
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