Top 10 Things New Yorkers Hate about New York

10. Cab stealers

Even though we are all guilty of doing it, there is nothing worse than someone who comes out of no where when you’re trying to hail a cab – especially when it’s cold or raining – and snags the only cab with their light on for miles before you. This usually happens to me on a Saturday night after work when I’m exhausted trying to hail a cab on 50th and 7th at midnight and tourists with fanny packs just walk out in the middle of the avenue and grab that cab I just thanked God for sending my way. We mother fuck these people as they pass us by – going to some overpriced late night, over hyped restaurant that Bobby Flay owns when all I want to do is go home and put sweatpants on. However, I have no problem being “that girl” when it’s raining or snowing and it becomes an every man for yourself situation. I am cunning and I will speed walk ahead of you to the next corner and jump in with no hesitation. It’s New York City. If you can’t hack it, buy a scooter.

9. Times Square

Working around that area at Christmas time is like trying to push your way through a heard of grazing cattle. People who seemingly have never borne witness to a tall building, or a man in a ghetto Elmo suit, lights, or a TGIFridays just stand there looking up. I once walked from 5th Ave over to 7th past Radio City just after one of the 47 showings of the Christmas Show let out. People didn’t move, they just stood there looking at the sign. Late for work, I began pushing my way (while somehow still saying excuse me) toward the crosswalk. I pushed past a man who then grabbed me – GRABBED ME – and said “hey hey, where are you going that you have to push?” like he was my father reprimanding me for being unnecessarily rude or cutting in line, to which I responded “work, where the fuck are you going?” I – like most New Yorkers – do not have time to stand and wait for tourists who take up the entire sidewalk with 15 strollers and 17 bags from Magnolia Bakery to start moving. We have places to go, things to do, and I am not entranced by the lights on the Barclays Capital building or the sketchy man selling pashmenas on the corner. Times Square is the plague of New York City and the people who flock there like it’s some fanny pack wearing mecca annoy the shit out of me.

8. People with no subway etiquette

Commuting sucks. I am not a fan of crowds or subways, and most days of the week my work schedule helps me avoid the former. But on Thursdays when I have to take the 6 train to 59th and get on the NRQ at 8:30 in the morning, it makes me understand why people stab each other on the subways. Look, here is the simple rule. The train pulls in, and you stand to the side of the doors – you let everyone off, and then you get on. It’s like a well oiled machine. This isn’t rocket science. To the assholes who stand right in front of the door, then push their way like a salmon upstream against the four hundred people already pushing each other to get out of the car, fuck you. You make commuting miserable and the train isn’t going to get you where you need to be any faster when you are pushing old ladies out of the way to get a seat next to the homeless guy. And don’t you dare give me a dirty look or call me a bitch when my bag hits you on the way out. Maybe if you weren’t picking an entire train of people like you were on the New York Knicks, my laptop bag wouldn’t slam you in the groin. You deserve it.

7. Livery cabs

Beyond the fact that sometimes they lurk along streets moving so slowly you can’t stand in the crosswalk to hail a legitimate cab, livery cabbies have major attitude. They remind me of overzealous guys who don’t take no for an answer. I’ll have my hand up trying to hail a cab, they’ll pull up next to me, taking up room that an actual cab could use, and ask me where I’m going. When I ignore them, they keep asking me. “No,” I’ll say simply. Then they’ll say, “fuck you” and speed off. Fuck me? No, fuck you dude. I am not paying you thirty five dollars to go ten blocks. Stop harassing me. Is it Halloween or St. Patty’s Day? No? Okay, then there will be a regular cab along eventually. I do not have any reason to not wait another four minutes for a cab that will not charge me a kidney in order to get to the Upper East Side.

6. Slightly raised sidewalks

We’ve all hit them. Doesn’t matter if you’re in six inch heels or a pair of sneakers, there is nothing worse than being mid conversation with someone and hitting the edge of that slightly raised sidewalk square and looking like a competitive ice skater who completely blew a double axle. Legs go up and back, arms go out, whatever you’re holding in your arms goes flying across the pavement, and people wonder if you’re on some kind of drug or drunk in the middle of the day. Then you turn around and give the sidewalk a dirty look like it’s an asshole who pushed you.

5. Bodegas that have a ten dollar minimum for credit cards

First off, did you know that was illegal? You can’t put a minimum on credit card usage. So when I walk up drunk with a thing of ramen noodles, a Gatorade and some Tylenol and the bill is $9.70 and I only have a credit card, and the man behind the counter says “ten dollar minimum” I freak out. Money is money dude, if you don’t want to pay to swipe a credit card, don’t accept credit cards.


4. Zig-zagging slow walkers

Unless you are elderly or are blind, there is no reason you should be creating a line of pedestrian traffic behind you. I feel like this is more of a problem with women – women tend to have their head down texting, and they automatically slow down on a street because apparently texting and moving is like, a really difficult thing to do simultaneously, and then they start going diagonal. You go to pass them on the left and their body starts leaning so you can’t pass them. Is it that hard to walk in a straight line when you’re sober? Sometimes when I walk to my pilates class ten blocks down Lexington, I get stuck behind two girls who are so immersed in their conversation they don’t realize they are taking up the entire sidewalk and not moving. And don’t get me started on people with strollers. It’s not my fault you got pregnant and had a kid, please stop giving me a dirty look if I don’t stop my entire life to wait for you to readjust your screaming child in the stroller while holding on to the other kid with the icecream cone and taking up the entire sidewalk like it’s your apartment while doing so. Moving forward in a straight line shouldn’t be this difficult. I’d hate to see you people in a car.

3. The drunk train on the LIRR

When I lived at home on Long Island, the 2:57am train was the bane of my existence. If I went out in the city and didn’t get so drunk that all my senses were totally impaired, this train was the seventh circle of hell. Obnoxious drunk girls who are clinging to each other as their too-tight dresses ride up and show their underwear screaming, drunk hyper masculine guidos with more hair product than their girlfriends and matching untucked button down shirts soaked in Axe and vodka sloppily eating McDonalds and talking about that guy they totally would have kicked the shit out of in their thick Long Island accents. Shoot me in the fucking face, please. It’s like three hundred drunk Michael Lohan’s running to get a seat. I was usually coming home from work or not crazy drunk and by myself on these train rides home, and witnessing that made me embarrassed to be from Long Island. The worst of Long Island seem to stay at home until they’re 45, and you can catch them all going home to their Mustang GTs and awesome condos in Babylon on this train. Avoiding this train has been one of the best parts of moving into the city.

2. “Please swipe again” when you swipe a Metrocard

I get this weird anxiety when the train is pulling in and there are three hundred people mulling outside the turnstyles rushing to make the train, and I run my card through the slit. Is it going to work? Is it going to work!? You go to push through the turnstyle and get jammed up and get an awkward punch in your stomach. Then the guy behind you slams into you and you get stuck and all these people start giving you a dirty look like somehow it’s your fault your Metrocard didn’t work and there's this huge pileup of people behind you. ”Please swipe again” comes up and that horrible beeping sound reminds you you’re holding all these people up. You swipe furiously ten more times before it finally goes through and you run to the train only to have the doors close on your face. Then without fail, the next train is delayed. Mother fucker.

1. Mariachi/jazz “bands” on the subway.

I always worry that if there was ever like, a bomb or gunfire in the subway, I would never know because I have my headphones blaring most of the time to avoid hearing the stupidity that abounds among commuters. In the morning, I try to find a seat on the subway and close my eyes for the last five or six minutes I can relax before work. So the absolute last thing I want to encounter is five Mexican dudes with guitars singing in Spanish while I’m trapped in a subway car, or a bunch of old men singing acapella and asking for money. Why are you forcing me to listen to you? It’s like fucking torture, you’re just about to fall asleep and then these guys in costumes come in screaming and strumming the guitar. I feel like they use that tactic on prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, I have no escape, no choice. If your musical skills are so bad that you have to trap people in a moving vehicle to get them to listen to you, then you should probably find something better to do. I am not going to give you money in a hat if you are blaring music in a language I DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND at 8:30 in the morning. Why would you deserve money for cornering me in a subway and playing so loudly I can’t even block you out with my iPod? That’s like paying my older sister for giving me wedgies as a child, or playing the “stop hitting yourself” game.

 

Follow Stefanie Williams on Twitter here