There are certain reasons why New Yorkers believe that they are the center of the world. Or at the very least, the absolute center of the United States. New York Magazine felt the need to elaborate with "Reasons to Love New York Now." Some of them are funny, some of them are bizarre, and some of them like the ones below, I just completely agree with:
Yes, L.A., your stunning, supernaturally toned, and eerily tanned actresses may demonstrate their range by playing a midriff-baring dance instructor, a midriff-baring scuba diver, a midriff-baring stripper, and a leotard-wearing superhero (Pomona’s Jessica Alba). But our stunning, quite-often-pale-but-still-drop-dead-gorgeous actresses can actually act. In fact, it’s becoming obvious that the world’s best beautiful actresses either speak with funny accents—Winslet,
Kidman, Blanchett, Mirren, et al.—or they’re New Yorkers: Streep, Moore, Portman, Connelly, Johansson, Mary-Louise Parker, and Thurman, for starters (Gwyneth, a New Yorker in London, and Rachel Weisz, a Brit in our Soho, diplomatically bridge the gap). Here, Streep is our undisputed queen (long may she reign!), but Maggie Gyllenhaal has shown that she may one day inherit the mantle. A politically outspoken, Columbia-educated fashion plate who just happens to be engaged to one of the city’s classiest young actors (Peter Sarsgaard), Gyllenhaal has always been one of those Über–New Yorkers you’re proud to call “neighbor.” This year, she proved she could be a starEvery day, impossibly gorgeous girls (and BOYS) are plucked from midwestern malls and Russian cafés, Brazilian beaches and small Eastern European towns, and hustled to Manhattan. The burning hope is that theirs will become The Face, and its bearer the new belle of New York—and from here, the world.
In the rest of America, people crave human contact. Buying a quart of milk may be one’s only conversation for the day, and clerk and customer stretch out the transaction with pleasant chat. In Manhattan, by contrast, the relentless crush of humanity makes solitude into something not to be rejected but to be embraced, even defended. When out-of-towners see us pass each other by with barely a grunt, they mistake our lack of small talk for coldness. Really, we’re exchanging a small, invisible gift: a moment’s silence. Strangely, solitude can be nicest in public. Walking down a sparsely populated New York street is downright therapeutic, especially upon release from a bleeping office or a packed subway car. The solo walk clears your head, lets you pace off the day’s frustrations, turns you back into the person you wish to be. (Sometimes an iPod helps, but private silence, over a nice bass line of traffic, can be the best part.)
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