Which is not to say that there aren’t several things New York can learn from us…
Iced coffee: Yo: if I see one more idiot New York waiter step up to the drink station, fill a glass with ice, and pour in still-piping-hot coffee…well, I dunno what I’ll do, but it won’t be pretty, and it might involve paprika. Hot coffee on ice isn’t just nasty, people; it’s a sacrilege on par with serving oysters en brochette to a rabbi during a Passover Seder, or bringing sushi into my dad’s living room. Iced coffee is made with a goddamn coffee toddy. Somebody please give Dean & Deluca $30 so they can save the city’s apparently clueless tastebuds.
Public restrooms: The sun is shining and the air is crisp as you step onto the sidewalk, ready for a full day of shopping. You grab a coffee from the place on the corner (hot, not iced, ’cause you know how that’ll go) and head to midtown. Then, after about 30 minutes in H&M, you start to feel it. Another 15 minutes, and you’re leaving clumps of potential goodies in the dressing room because your bladder has swollen to the size of an 18-month-old child. You ask the sales clerk if the store has a restroom. No. Instead of getting sassy and asking whether she and her fellow employees have to do their dirty work in shoe boxes in the basement, you rush down the street to Starbucks, only to learn that their restroom is for customers only, so you buy another coffee (bad idea, as you’ll later realize) and ask for the key, but you’re told that the toilet is out of order. Repeat this scenario at McDonald’s, Macy’s, and Toys R Us. Finally, after 20 blocks, you find a hotel, bluff your way into the lobby (“I lost my key”), dash up an escalator to the banquet rooms, and find an open restroom. Of course, by the time you schlep back to H&M, the process starts over again.
Neighborhood bars: As much as I hated Cheers (having featured not only the loathsome Ted Danson but my personal nemesis, Kirstie Alley), there was something comforting about the notion of a corner bar where you could go for a quick after-work cocktail or to meet friends at the start of a long evening out. Someplace kinda fun and cute, without the attitude of a club or the skeeze of a dive bar. New Orleans’ neighborhood bars excel at walking this fine line–and as an added benefit, they also have public restrooms (see above).
Charming homeless people: The Bead Lady, Ruthie the Duck Lady, the Disco Preacher, the Woolworth’s Preacher: say what you will about our homeless people, but at least they know how to market themselves to an often-indifferent public. We may avoid giving them handouts, we may try to look the other way, but who can truly ignore a guy in a rainbow-striped umbrella hat high-stepping to music only he can hear and singing gospel songs to a flowering pear tree?
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