Garments On Hangers By Air

Home movies of New York City in 1976.

I don’t have fond memories of the 1970s. The vibe was downright soviet, with extra litter. Of course ’76 was far from the low water mark for NYC. The early eighties were much worse. It turned around after that, and almost got livable, I guess. How would I know? I always avoided the place like a plague city, even when I had to work there for a stretch. I always got in and out as lickety split as possible. I remember distinctly the feeling of driving into the city for work, though. I felt like it was eating me and everyone else on the highway.

I’m originally from Boston. Boston and NYC have healthy competitive dislike of one another. It goes way back when Boston didn’t seem so lilliputian compared to the Big Rotten Apple. Boston used to matter more than it does now. To someone from say, Los Angeles, there probably doesn’t seem like a lot of difference between a New Yorker and a Bostonian. But the two factions always cherished the distinctions between them. Both used Rhode Island as a kind of no man’s land where you couldn’t tell which accent you had, New York or Boston. If you’ve never heard a true Vo Dieland accent, you haven’t lived.

I’ll always fondly remember the first day I showed up in New York at an office I’d been placed in charge of all of a sudden. It was the main office, and I’m sure the New Yorkers couldn’t countenance being lorded over by some dimwit from Boston. God, anywhere but from Boston.

I don’t have a Boston accent. Not really even a hint of one. I can get into one for comedic purposes, but it’s no better than my Cockney imitation, which isn’t even a three on the Michael Caine scale. Anyway, I entered the big lobby of my new New York digs and explained to the receptionist at the big, semicircular welcome desk in the two-story atrium who I was, and who I wanted to see. She never uttered a sound, just cocked her bouffanterrific head a bit sideways and looked at me with a puzzled expression, the way that the dog on the RCA Victor label used to look at the big cornucopia speaker on the windup record player. And then came out with this, finally:

“Yew toik fuhnny.”