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Good Evening,

I am in Manhattan, New York City, New York, this evening and will be traveling back to my home in Granite Bay, California tomorrow afternoon. So tonight I will offer my impressions on the city known as 'The Center of the Civilized World'. Yeah, right....

New York is an interesting place, I saw a guy, (whose look is now referred to as a Metrosexual) today, wearing sky blue capri pants, with a short white leather jacket walking with his FEMALE companion. This was a man clearly in touch with his feminine side and happily comfortable showing it. He was also wearing shiny black boots with zippers up the sides that reached the hem of his capri pants. I suppose his shiny boots were worn to keep his legs from getting cold. (It was after all, 30 degrees outside.) This was a look that I tried to imagine me, an 41 year old who is 6'3 and 250 lbs wearing.... After I regained consciousness, I reflected that compared to Manhattan, California is a sane place. That is wrong on so many levels.

My scintillating, and strikingly beautiful wife, Lindsey, as well as my soon to be overwhelmingly handsome son, Taylor and I went to Ground Zero last night around 12:00AM to pray at the suggestion of Taylor. (Is that cool or what, a son who when first told of his upcoming trip to Manhattan, offered as his first suggestion to have us go to Ground Zero to pray for our country). This is something I think every American should do. The hole where the World Trade Center stood prior to 9/11 is currently still, a hole. There is building going on but you can see things like the remaining scraps of the shattered underground parking area. My wife commented that New Yorkers appeared to have forgottenor lost their outrage over 9/11 along with most other Americans.

I won't, And neither will my wife and son. My sons prayer was to hope that other cities around the world would not have anything like this happen and to protect the families of the people lost in 9/11. It made my heart ache so deeply to hear a prayer like that come from the heart of an 11 year old boy who usually prefers talking about things like dogs, dragonball z, and hot wheels. Afterward, we silently drove back to our hotel and went to bed.

Now to reflect on life in Manhattan:

The primary sport in New York is obtaining and then flaunting wealth. Love of self is taken to a level that even I, a California native find shocking. Another interesting thing about New York is that people here love health food even more than Californians do.

The activity I enjoy most is driving in Manhattan. I rented a beige Ford Crown Victoria and proceeded to drive as fast and as obnoxious as cabbies here do. It makes me feel alive.

My wife on the other hand is now bedridden at the hotel with lower spine and brainstem injuries that came from the constant stopping, mashing the accelarator, swerving, and then slamming on the brakes again. This is great fun and sport for me as well as my 11 year old son, Taylor, who sits in back and continously laughs hysterically like an adolescent hyena. My wife on the other hand has become deeply traumatized and now will always ride with both hands grasping the handhold next to the passenger window and her feet jammed against the firewall providing a rigid position that looks darned uncomfortable to me and resembles a really lifelike, well dressed, and very attractive store mannekin.

The other things I found out while driving in Manhattan are,

1. Older people can run really fast when you gun your engine as you approach the intersection they are crossing and swerve towards them at the same time.

2. The horn is a weapon.

3. Never make eye contact,

4. There is no such thing as too close while driving in Manhattan.

And last, but not least,

5. Size does matter. Especially when two vehicles are trying to fill the same space at the same time. An action that I've found that consistently proves several laws of physics like mass, velocity, inertia, and gravity.

That is all for now.

Good Night From New York.

If you don't like it, don't come back. How dare you make casual observations of New Yorkers and accuse us of not grieving properly. How DARE you?! We are picking up the pieces and moving on. Going to work, going to school, and doing those things that make us free, living Americans. 3000 of our friends can't do that anymore. Haven't you ever heard of honoring the dead by living? We, not you, WE are the ones who have to keep going, every day looking at a the jack-o-lantern smile of a skyline missing two teeth. We are the ones who have to worry every time we get on a subway, a bus, a train. We are the ones who sometimes just have to call our brothers and hear their voices, because we remember all too clearly the day we thought we might never hear them again. So you can take your incorrect, arrogant and unfeeling observations, put them in your suitcase, and get out of our city.
As for the driving, and all the other useless crap you complained about ... Why don't you take a look at LA traffic? NYC has a 100-year-old, fully functioning and ever improving subway system. It is safe and efficient. It's easier on the environment, and frees the roads for those who really do need to drive. NYC boasts the lowest cab fares in the country, too. I'm glad you had fun being a swerving tourist driver in a giant rental car. That's another reason why we New Yorkers love you tourists so much. As long as you are making generalizations, why don't I make a few of my own? Many of you tourists don't rent cars, and instead walk everywhere. In theory, I support this. However, you insist on walking 4-abreast, very slowly, maps in hand, eyes skyward. The rest of us are NOT on vacation, and are hurriedly trying to get to where we need to be. You and your family are taking up the entire sidewalk, and it's impossible to get around you. When we do finally mange to squeeze by, we are accused of being rude and huffy. Now, despite the ginormous maps you all carry, you are ALWAYS lost. Manhattan, for the most part, is a perfect grid system. You can't go more than a block in the wrong direction without knowing it. Yet somehow, you manage to stand in front of giant landmarks, such as vast Central Park, and fail to pick out which way is North. Why don't you spend 10 minutes in your hotel room looking at your map and getting the lay of the land? Below 14th street, you are welcome to get lost. We all do. But in midtown, please, get a clue.
Now, on to your comment about our drive to amass and display wealth. It's called consumerism, it's good for the economy, and it's one of the reasons New York's economy didn't totally implode after the WTC did. So what if we choose to spend our hard-earned money on trendy clothes? Are we hurting anyone? If nothing else, I'm sure we look a thousand times better than all of you overall-clad tourists. When people visit foreign cities abroad, they don't have a problem obeying local customs. Shorts, for example, are not acceptable in many countries. Well, here in NYC, looking like you just rolled in from the fields isn't acceptable either. Go ahead and call me a snob, but you are wrong. It's about looking sophisticated and put-together. We have fabulous discount stores, like H&M, that sell very stylish pieces at lower prices. Maybe we'll be nicer to you if you don't look like a bunch of country bumpkins.
You know, when I first noticed tourism picking up after it dropped off following 9/11, I was happy for New York and happy for the economy. I was proud of my fellow Americans for coming to support us. But if you are just going to show up here, make fun of all of us and think that going to Ground Zero makes up for all that, well then you can just take your sanctimonious attitude, climb up on your high horse, and go home.