As a long-time New Yorker I’m probably among the least qualified to comment on the state of our State manners. After all, rude people generally don’t think they’re rude. And so it is with me and New Yorkers. I don’t find us particularly discourteous, but Friday’s bitchy rant got me thinking a bit more about the topic.
After spending the last three and a half years traveling around the U.S. we’ve come to at least one definitive conclusion: we New Yorkers get a bum wrap. For a long time, most of our lives actually, we assumed the stereotypes must be true. Everyone agreed, after all. New Yorkers are rude. A poll released this week, and The New York Post’s coverage of said poll, both confirmed it. But now, having meandered from coast to coast, from north to south, we’ve come to a different conclusion.
New Yorkers ain’t got nothing on some y’all.
The New York State Capitol Building in Albany
Who knew this stuff was here? Certainly not me, even though I’d seen it all before. Growing up just outside of Albany, New York, I’m confident I toured these buildings and museums on any number of school field trips. I’m equally certain that all of those trips were unmitigated disasters. I remember absolutely nothing about them.
So powerful is my amnesia that I seemed to have forgotten that Albany had anything at all worth seeing. Even as we traveled thousands of miles seeking out similar locations across the country, touring them in my home state never entered my mind.
Not even laying eyes on New York’s State Capitol building could shake the cobwebs. Upon seeing it we still weren’t quite sure we had arrived at the correct address. It looked nothing at all like the kind of building we had come to expect from such places. It had no dome, or Doric columns. It didn’t mimic the U.S. Capitol in D.C., like so many state capitols do. Instead, it resembled an Italian palace.
Everywhere Once 