Everyone knows that New Yorkers aren’t supposed to be friendly. They’re not going to be helpful, and they’re certainly not going to do things like, oh, hug people they just met on the subway.
Everyone knows that they’re SUPPOSED to be brusque and honest (read: overly opinionated) and assertive and speak their mind loudly and with a thick Brooklyn accent. Never mind that people speak in an unquantifiable number of accents there. City New Yorkers in particular are supposed to be really different from the people in my home state of Montana. Not only are we as people anthropologically different, we are also located on DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE COUNTRY. Speaking of differences, one thing we have in Montana that they don’t have in places like New York City is cows. Growing up, we always joked that in Montana we have more cows than people. It’s actually not a joke! Google reports that there are nearly two—TWO!—cows to every person living in Montana. What a place.
Speaking of cows, on one Sunday afternoon in my teenage era, my dad and I went on a bike ride on the then-unpaved Bozeman Trail road. We stopped to admire a pastoral scene of bovines. Some incidental and sudden movement one of us made caused the entire herd to, in unison and after a delay of 1.3 seconds, jump back. A few seconds later, they collectively moved closer—to each other and us.
Caption: This is not the pasture nor the cows in question. This is a picture I took of curious-cat Drummond cows in Oklahoma. Imagine 60-80 more cows and a cloudless blue evening sky, and you’ve about got the scene.
One of us made another sudden move in their direction, this time intentionally, and the same thing happened: they jumped back. It started to get funny, and we took turns making stomping motions toward them. As their delayed jumps backward continued, only to take steps back our direction, it escalated from funny to hilarious. Excuse me while I wipe my tears of laughter away! The kind of fun we have in Big Sky Country! Broadway might have their famous shows but so do we! And ours are free! I like to think it was fun for the cows too, or they wouldn’t have kept coming back for it, over and over and over and...
It could be that a simple mind capable of appreciating simple things like this just didn’t think she could also appreciate a place as wildly different as New York City, especially with all those blunt, accented people.
But then I went there.
And I really hate to spoil the plot, but I loved it. The sights, the smells, the veritable cacophony of noise, the floods of all kinds of people and the individual people we came across. I didn’t even notice the dearth of cows.
The first time I went, it was for a girls trip and I was supposed to fly into JFK Airport with my sister. We were to be picked up—together—by our hosting best friend. But through a series of unfortunate events which included Carl from American Airlines, I missed my flight by seventy-two seconds. This meant I was rebooked on a later flight into La Guardia which, thanks to Carl, I now know how to pronounce. Amy had already made multiple trips to the airport to pick people up, so I was on my own to Uber or public transport myself to her apartment in the heart o’ Harlem.
I chose the latter, figuring it’d be a better story. And it would cost less. Even if I had to fend for myself, because, you know, New Yorkers. When I finally broke down and asked a local stranger which bus I needed to get on, he was—gasp—helpful. He and other locals seemed to take it as their personal mission to make sure I got on the right bus when it finally arrived, and then off at the right stop in Harlem. Don’t get me wrong, they didn’t coddle me about it and I was not spared the authentic experience of sitting next to a homeless man who my nose told me went to the bathroom in his snow pants as we sat next to each other. Thankfully, there were ridges between the plastic seats.
When my people told me to get off the bus, I did. The wonder of the blind trust we place in strangers! High on the discovery that New Yorkers could actually be helpful and kind, I grinned as I pulled my lime-green suitcase through Harlem. Never mind that it was a freezing February night and I was arriving several hours late to the party. The possibility of this place and its people had quickly enamored me. It was months after Christmas, but there were still vestiges of the Christmas charm New York is famous for. Still no cows, but this was fine; they had arranged for a light snowfall and for locals to be bustling about on their way home.
And it only got better in the subsequent days. I heard lots of accents and saw lots of different kinds of people. Plenty of them were helpful and interesting and willing to take our pictures and accommodate us. I learned there, like a lot of places, that we’re all a lot the same. We all have the same interests in staying alive, being decent with each other, providing, dreaming big, and they even have humor there.
Lots of years later, I ended up in New York City again as I always knew I would. My transatlantic boat journey culminated there, and my dad flew in from Montana for some of the New York City Christmas magic we’ve already talked about.
You should know that in the intervening years, I’d spent time in loads of big cities around the United States and Europe, and wasn’t quite as doe-eyed about them. Navigating a 90-minute series of trains from Jersey to meet my dad at La Guardia Airport now felt almost humdrum to me. Except that it was still New York and I’ve decided nothing can ever be humdrum about that place.
As I jaywalked—see how at home I feel in cities now?!—I passed a burly black man who was also jaywalking. He was wheeling a dolly which let me know he was a local, and as we passed, he spoke his mind loudly: “I LIKE YOUR HAT.” For weeks, I’d been feeling ridiculous in that blue hat and wearing it purely for warmth but decided that very day that it was dumb to waste any more energy on that train of thought. So I’d pulled it on how I liked, and forgot about it. So when my jaywalking friend commented on it, I felt extra seen.
That night, Dad and I rode another series of trains and subways to the neighborhood of the Church of the Ascension. I hate to brag, but we had tickets to a sold-out candlelight Christmas concert. Actual candles were involved in this concert which is just the sort of dangerous thing we do in Montana, but not the thing a big city like New York is supposed to be okay with. And yet, there they were—flickering sticks of wax, front and center.
We stashed his luggage at a 7-Eleven where the clerks were very helpful. We ate a quick and delicious dim sum dinner where a server not our own came out of her way to tell me I looked like the grown-up Cindy Lou Who from The Grinch. I am 98.6% certain she meant this as a compliment, but will never know whether she meant that:
a) I look like what she IMAGINES what a grown-up Cindy Lou Who would look like.
b) I look like the actual actress grown up.
Please review these photos and let me know what you think.
Caption: Dad and I and my blueish-green hat, cold but happy, somewhere in our New York adventures. Including a windblown-hair-mustache photo of me pointing at a significant rock in case it helps you make your decision.
And we found what proved to be an out-of-this-world Christmas concert where the ushers couldn’t have been kinder. Despite a man’s hair partially obstructing my view of the concert, it goes on my list of Top Five Most Special Concerts.
This even though a shocking number of these incredibly talented choir members were wearing face masks causing some muffled effect. Nowhere in my travels around Europe and the U.S. had I seen so many people wearing masks and I couldn’t help but think, “If they sound THIS incredible with some of their voices muted, imagine what they’d sound like without them.”
You could say that, for a city that’s supposed to be full of blunt, brusque people, they’re doing a crummy job of it. A final example from many possible contenders will demonstrate that even if they have no cows in those parts, New Yorker City-folk have way more in common with Montana and Montanans than I once thought.
The morning after what I’ll call The Concert From Heaven, Dad and I rode the train into Manhattan. I sat and he stood across from me. As is his way, he started chatting about books and life with a younger guy near him. And as has become my way, I began chatting with my seat neighbor. When Dad’s buddy departed the train, they shook hands, and he joined Amanda and I in conversation—about the shoe line she is designing, about families, about my book, about travel, about all kinds of things. When we all got off at the same station, she had a hug for each of us. It’s like she doesn’t even know that she’s not supposed to be so dang friendly, helpful, and welcoming to tourists like us.
Before you go, I would love to know:
Was the dim sum server right, and if so, which version of Cindy Lou Who do I look like?
Who’s been your favorite “rule”-breaking New Yorker?
In 35 words or less, what are your current thoughts on cows?
Isn’t life cool, and aren’t people interesting? See you in the next one…
New Yorker here (who has also been to, and enjoyed, Montana several times). Here is the ironclad rule of crossing streets in NYC that all locals follow whether they articulate it or not:
1. If I cross now, will I die?
2. If no, cross. If yes, wait.
Nothing else comes into consideration unless you reach the edge of the street, but a parent is there telling a toddler “we have to wait for the light to turn green.” Then we wait to set an example.