There are still middle class people in Manhattan…why would anyone think otherwise? I’m very much middle class and I live in a lovely apartment on the east side. There is plenty of space for the middle class here.
In my experience a lot New Yorkers are people who moved here from other places. I’m from Texas and I moved here 3 years ago. My husband is from Connecticut. We have friends from New Jersey, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, and all sorts of other places all around the country who live here. In fact I think only 3 or 4 of the people we hang out with here were born in NYC. When you reference people in New York ridiculing Middle America through art or other mediums it is probably New Yorkers from Middle America you are talking about. Besides, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone here ever ridicule the rest of the country unless it is defensive on their part because someone from somewhere else has spouted off on how stupid you have to be to live in such a loud, crowded, expensive place.
Forbes actually had an article a couple of years back about the death of the middle class in NYC, and how miserable it was a place to live. I kid you not. It was ranked as one of their Ten Worst Cities to live in or some such.
Not being a NYC resident, I won’t comment except to say, whether it is out of reach or not it certainly gives the impression of being out of reach. I would never even consider whether I could afford to live in NYC, and I’m fairly sure I couldn’t. Of course I’d get a new job, which I presume would pay more, and get rid of the car, so there would be trade-offs…but it does not feel like a friendly city to middle class.
I know a lot of young people live outside the city. I’m attending school and living in Manhattan thanks to the largesse of my parents, but many of the people I go to school with live in Queens or Brooklyn.
One assumes we are defining middle class as people who are librarians and teachers and video producers and civil servants, like me and my friends. I have the impression they don’t live in Manhattan without some serious tradeoffs. (For comparison, we’re essentially a single income household in South Carolina, because he owns his own business and is a money hole. I’m a librarian and make 42 grand a year before taxes. We own our own lovely, safe, middle class home in a desirable neighborhood. Something tells me that would not be the case in Manhattan.)
I bought it in paperback, but bloody hell, I know what what you mean. Such a downward spiral of shit. The man can write though, but a novel seems to be beyond him. Or beyond me.
Back to the OP, I’d like to point out that it’s not just hoity-toity hoi-polloi from the edges of the continent that make fun of the ‘culture’ of the midwest…
Those of us that live here do it too.
And actually, nothing’s quite as satisfying as making fun of a trope that you yourself are guilty of.
Hey, after I mow my lawn with a manual “reel” push mower, I grill some bratwurst and sweet corn on the backyard patio while bitchin’ about The Gubmint over a Brandy Old-Fashioned with my fellow Scoutmasters. Then we go watch the Packer game at the local family-owned bar and drink “Wisconsin Supper Club” beer on tap. If I want to dress up for “goin’ out”, I might put on a different T-shirt With A Clever But Non-Ironic Graphic On It. And we’ll probably get an order of deep-fried anything (even dill pickles and green beans are tasty with enough beer batter and oil on them).
I defy a Cooper Union wannabe film-maker to find more humor/irony/poignancy in my life than I do myself.
Sure, but I imagine you don’t look on your life with the kind of condescending humor I’m thinking of. I mean, you recognize the irony, but it’s not a self-conscious, “here I am bitching about the Gubmint with my fellow scoutmasters, and aren’t I just precious to have such a sense of self-importance as I’m here drinking beer? I’m really actually charming myself in a childish kind of way.”
By any definition, middle class people live in Manhattan. Large swaths of the island are made up of people in household income ranges from $20-30k. (cite). It’s just that people tend to forget that Harlem, Alphabet City, Chinatown, etc., are in Manhattan.
I’ve lived in the northeast almost all my life, and I’ve known a lot of artists. Nothing would lead me to believe that artists, or normal people, in the northeast care about the central states at all, except for the ones who escaped from there. They’ll speak in glowing terms of their simple lives, just before launching into a rant about how close minded and ignorant people were in their hometown, and how they’d never go back.
My own experiences in visiting the middle of the country are mostly positive. People seem to be generally nicer than on the coasts. Their politicians do seem to make a habit of demeaming the people on the coasts. We are apparently all a ‘liberal elite’ who have destroyed this country and have a secret plan to take away their guns, force all pregnant women to have abortions, and make all their children gay.
I am really, really sick of hearing this kind of thing. I am solidly middle class and I live in a lovely neighborhood in Manhattan. I make a smidge more than you do and we have a beautiful 2 bedroom apartment not far from the train. I pay more in rent but I don’t pay for gas, insurance, car payments, or anything else automobile related so the cost balances. I live next door to what appears to be an awesome school where all the children show up in uniforms and the construction workers down the block take off their hats and say, “Good morning, Ma’am” when I walk past. As much as the OP seems to feel that New Yorkers are unfairly biased against Middle America I find the whole “stupid New Yorkers paying every dime to live in neighborhoods where they are going to be shot someday” meme is much more prevalent. The only trade off I am making is that I don’t have a house with a yard and for me that is a trade up, quite frankly. I never have to mow or pay for my own repairs and that suits me and most other New Yorkers just fine. It is really very easy to live here on a middle class salary and most of my friends manage without a problem.
In my experience, people in the south and mid-west spend more time worrying about being insulted then the North East ever spends consciously thinking of ways to insult them.
This meme is kind of a standard in the Anthony Bourdain playbook. I’ve seen him refer to flyover country in semi-serious mocking tones when it comes to the Culinary arts and life in general, which is kind of ironic considering he grew up in New Jersey. But really, I think he believed in the meme more some 10 years ago before he had a chance to travel here more extensively and consider things a bit more, and really it’s more of Bourdain being a stalwart New Yorker at heart rather than him truly being prejudiced of the middlelands. But it does stick in my craw that he thinks there are only “two real cities in America, Chicago and New York” as he has claimed. But that’s his shtick- too cool for school, punk pretention.
