Melodramaticism in Downtown New York

Filed under living in new york sucks so hard

Things that are great about working in downtown New York City:


The view from your boss’ corner office, which you secretly consider your own,


watching the Staten Island Ferry roll in and out from the conference room
as you take the afternoon off to play your Nintendo DS

Statue-of-Liberty-gazing in Battery Park,
pretending you’re Patrick Bateman in American Psycho at Harry’s Steakhouse,
watching tourists cup the bull’s balls near Wall Street,
and so on and so on.

Things that are not great about working in downtown New York City:

Giant planes flying two millimeters from your office building and your security department coming over the loudspeakers to tell you that lots of other nearby buildings are evacuating but that you should sit tight and hope to not get smashed into.

Even not greater is that you happened to be downstairs at the building’s Starbucks getting your expensive iced coffees when the announcement was made, and you didn’t understand why all of these businesspeople were crowding the sidewalks until you came back upstairs to mass hysteria.

Also: your company’s facilities department is ordering facemasks and hand sanitizer for everyone in the office due to the swine flu outbreak. You’re trying to keep it a secret that you both were raised on a pig farm and had pork for dinner last night.

16 Comments

  1. Emily says:

    Melodrama for real! While I totally agree that it was a stupid idea to fly a ginormous plane over the financial district for a photo op, I also think your mayor’s a bit of a grandstander. I love all the finger-pointing, though. It’s comedy GOLD. Think SNL will do something on it?

    • He also has these commercials running right now where he walks the streets of the Bronx and shakes hands and gives a dollar to every single black person in the whole borough. He’s truly a humanitarian and a man of the people.

      4 realz, though, the ex-president of our company used to cry whenever someone brought up 9/11. Apparently it was sort of a big deal.

      • Emily says:

        In the meantime, all the people receiving the dollar bill are thinking to themselves, “What the eff am I gonna do with $1 in NYC, cracka?”

        P.S. I can’t believe 9/11 was already 8 years ago. That’s almost a decade ago. THERE ARE CHILDREN IN SCHOOL WHO WEREN’T BORN YET WHEN IT HAPPENED. Effin’ creepy.

  2. megan says:

    oh, to live in the big city. *sigh*

    • Doesn’t Austin have approximately ten fewer people than NYC does? And, like, ten more music venues?

      • megan says:

        god no. austin’s TIIIIIIINY.

        but yeah, we’ve got the most live music of any city in the US, at least. maybe even the world. so, at least we have you beat there? probably have more mexicans too.. and taquerias.

      • megan says:

        and, i had to compare populations.

        nyc: 8,274,527
        austin: 743,074

        • Emily says:

          Ok, first of all, KATIE IS NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE MORE THAN ONE FRIEND IN AUSTIN. Sorry, you must leave. I was her Austin friend first.

          Just kidding. :)

          But secondly, I read somewhere that there are as many people in the suburbs of Austin – Cedar Park, Round Rock, Pflugerville, Lakeway, Oak Hill, etc. – as are in Austin proper, so the Austin Metro Area actually has close to 1.5 million. Which is still just a tiny fraction of NYC’s population, but I still wouldn’t characterize that as tiny. Let’s not sell our city short.

  3. Jessica says:

    Glad that I had chicken last night. But does it really matter when there’s a great chance that I might die anyway soon when a plan crashes into my head the next time there are flying low in the FiDi and our building is NOT evacuated?!?

    • I thought you had pork and cabbage last night. ARE YOU TRYING TO LIE TO THE BLOGOSPHERE?

      Oh, no, that’s right; you had “yardbird”. What a great word.

      Also, I can’t believe you said “FiDi”. You’re so badass.

  4. Tracey says:

    How many cases of swine flu do you think you and your family indirectly caused by breeding pigs?

    An even better question: What mysterious hand gesture do you think we would we have used to “give” swine flu to annoying people in high school?

    • What do you mean–indirectly? We’ve been bottling this virus for years out on the Ett Farm and only recently released it on the public in the form of gas from the mouth of Susan Boyle every time she sings. GOTCHA, BITCHES!

      Your second question made me laugh out loud (LOL). Can we make it two palms pressed together and then flapping apart to mimic the wings on the pig in the Flat Earth commercial? I love that little guy.

  5. natalie says:

    swine…i don’t dig on pig, man…and now i have to worry about some deadly flu from the split hooved creatures.

    someone pass me a face mask and some purell (and a BLT, because we all know that bacon isn’t REALLY swine).

  6. spaghedeity says:

    Ha, as if the terrorists are targeting German software companies.