The New York Bubble

I’m from a small town in Southwestern Virginia where people wave at each other from passing cars, say “Hi” to one another when passing on foot and are generally very friendly.  Now I live in Manhattan.  When I first moved here 10 years ago, I had to make some serious adjustments.  First there was the noise, the ever-present din of millions of people’s activities, conversations and the traffic & machinery of a city equipped to support them all.  Even when it is quiet in Manhattan, it is only quiet in relation to Manhattan.  It is never actually quiet.  Litter was the next issue to which I had to adjust.  I grew up in the woods, in the mountains, on a farm (2 different farms, actually) and have always had a deep appreciation for all things green and natural.  In college I was one of those people who stayed late and helped clean up the parking lot after a Phish/Grateful Dead concert.  Say what you will about hippies but they have a few things figured out.  Leave it the way you found it, maybe better.  Of course, the indigenous people of this land had that, and much more, figured out thousands of years ago.  For me to see, with my own eyes, people shamelessly discard their chip bags, cigarette pack cellophane or soda cans on the street was very difficult.  Adjusting to the noise isn’t especially difficult.  It happens unconsciously.  You just get used to it.  The litter, for me at least, was a different story.  I wanted so badly to stop each person I saw and remind them that the world is not their personal wasteland, that other people share this place and to please stop trashing our home.  Over time, I learned how to deal with the reality that not everyone else likes hugging trees as much as I do.  It also occurred to me that everyone has different sets of principals, ethics, priorities etc. and that it simply wasn’t practical to individually confront hundreds of people a week and attempt to convince them that their way of life was not jiving with my personal worldview.  Homelessness was another matter that was especially difficult to reconcile.  Like the noise and the litter, though, some things just are what they are and, unless I was prepared to dedicate my life to a crusade to address any of these issues, it seemed wiser to simply increase my level of acceptance for the reality with which I was faced.  By all means, I would do what I could to make the world a better place.  I would just have to recognize what was within my power to control and what was beyond.

The cultural difference that I was not prepared to simply accept was the seemingly unfriendly demeanor of the people of New York.  I refused to believe that the people of New York weren’t as nice as people elsewhere.  When you get into a conversation with someone here, you realize the same thing: people are the same everywhere.  Some people are nice - some are not.  Some people are smart - some are not.   And so it goes.  It wasn’t until my Mother visited for the first time that I started to understand the phenomenon that I have come to call The New York Bubble. 

My Mom is a southerner, a gregarious, chatty one.  We were walking through Little Italy/Soho along Prince Street in the early evening when I realized she was saying “Hi” in her sweetest drawl to everyone we passed.  Everyone.  Fortunately, it was a weeknight and the city wasn’t crawling with tourists so the number of people we passed was manageable.  After the fifth or sixth salutation, it dawned on me why New Yorkers were the way they were.  As a matter of sheer practicality, you simply can’t greet everyone you pass in New York.  In your hometown of 5000 people, when you walk down the street, on the way to the bank or the market, you may pass a dozen or so people and would probably offer a smile or a “hello” to each one.  In a place like New York, however, you will likely pass hundreds, if not thousands, on your route.  It simply doesn’t make sense to say "Hi" to everyone.  Rather than choose, then, to whom we ought to offer a greeting, we collectively agree to simplify matters and not say "Hi" to anyone, more or less.  It is the equivalent of suburbanites, on the freeway, on the way to/from work, waving at every car they pass.  You wouldn’t do that.  Yet, in rural places, that is done all the time.  Almost every time two cars pass on a country road, there is a wave or acknowledgement of some kind.

Having started thinking about it in this way, I realized there was even more playing into this perceived aloofness that people notice and/or complain about in New York.  Down south, out west, up north, almost anywhere else in this country, the principle mode of transportation is the automobile.  Everyone who drives can attest that your car is your cone of silence, your personal concert hall or your fortress of solitude.  Everywhere you go you have a climate-controlled protective shell around you, insulating you from the noise outside, the elements and other people.  New Yorkers, by and large, do not have this luxury.  Our fortresses of solitude are our overpriced, undersized apartments.  In most cases, there is just enough space for those who inhabit them.  Very seldom will you find places with outdoor space, let alone private outdoor space.  This means that the only time we actually have any real privacy is when we are at home.  From the moment we leave our buildings in the morning, until we return home, we are sharing space with other people.  We share the sidewalk with other pedestrians, the subway with other straphangers.  The aisles in the grocery stores are narrower and the lines are longer. We are constantly rubbing against one another and, somehow, maintaining our sanity through it all. 

The Bubble is the unspoken social contract to which we city dwellers adhere that makes this possible.  The subway is the best microcosmic example.  On a crowded train, with hundreds of people inches (if that) from one another, it is entirely possible that no one on that train is talking to anyone else.  Each person is in his/her own space and is respecting the space of everyone else.  Sure, there is sometimes eye contact and of course, from time to time, people do talk to each other.  For the most part, however, the bubbles serve their purpose so that no one has to talk to anyone else and can “privately” listen to music, read or zone out.  It is for our collective sanity that we adhere to this unwritten rule.  It stands to reason that people from other cultures, as close as 50 miles or less, would perceive this behavior as unfriendly or standoffish but it is not that at all.  This, like so many other things, is not about you.  This is about how things are in this particular reality.  It works for us and we mean no offense.  It is you, after all, who have come to our home.  Be mindful of that before you judge too harshly.   

To really see what I am saying, try this the next time you visit Manhattan: go to a busy corner and stand there with a quizzical look on your face.  Don’t say anything, just appear puzzled and look up and down the street.  If you have a map in your hand, all the better.  I predict that within 60 seconds someone will approach and ask you if you need directions.  New Yorkers LOVE to give directions.  It is an opportunity for us to connect with other people without breaching the social contract of The Bubble; don’t talk to someone unless they want you to talk to you them.  You may end up with two or three New Yorkers competing over the best route for you to take but that’s just fun.  Once the superficial membrane of the bubble pops you will find, as I have, that New Yorkers are just as nice and friendly as people anywhere else. 

With a little effort to understand another culture, by stepping outside of the box of our own limited perspective, we can very quickly understand why people are the way they are and appreciate them as individuals.  This is as true within our own country as it is throughout the world.  All cultures are different but people, not so much.