Reasons to Love New York.

New York Magazine's year-end double issue arrived in my mailbox yesterday! The cover story marks the Fourth Annual Reasons to Love New York feature. I absolutely devour these snippets- partly because when you get the joke, you know you're acclimated- and more so: it reaffirms that love is all you need in this complicated, frustrating collision of a city.

Within this year's content, I'd like to highlight:

#5 "Because a legally blind, formerly adulterous onetime recreational coke user can be governor."

#8 "Because people will do really crazy things to live here."
($100 to sleep in the corner of your living room, via craigslist). I admitted to a coworker today: that if he did all the things he offered, I'd let him pay me the Benjamin.

#16 "Because in addition to charging me like crazy every month for electricity, the fine folks at Con Ed also dispense cooking and entertaining advice. After I called in response to a notice of 'irregular gas reading' (i.e. never turning on my stove), the Con Ed rep asked if I lived by myself and ever cooked. He then went on to advise me, 'Invite some people over, or at least make a cup of tea once in a while.' Gee, thanks, Con Ed."


#20 "Because these sentences were published about New York this year:

'At three-thirty in the morning, the scene in front of 27 Eldridge was fairly typical: the last of the last-call stagger-zoo, many of them walking as if it were their first time on ice skates; a kid in the back of an open-doored taxi staring at the knot of damp cash in his hands as he tried to make sense of the meter; and up the block a shirtless, bearded man sticking the top half of his body out of a sixth-floor tenement window and screaming at everybody to the shut the fuck up and go back to New Jersey, then slamming his window down so hard that it rained glass, the people below whistling and applauding' -Lush Life, Richard Price

'You know: where are the baby pigeons? It's the burning quetion on every New Yorker's mind. 'They're everywhere. You just have to look,' says Ralph, who seems not to have heard the urban myth that pigeons arrive on earth full grown and ready to be despised- or that the perform a backward version of human migration: raise babies, then move into town.' -I See You Everywhere, Julia Glass."

#33 "Because everytime you visit another U.S. city, you instantly realize how attractive and sophisticated you really are..."

#34 "Because I moved to LA almost two years ago, and I've read maybe six books in the time since. In New York, I'd read on the subway and finish a book in a week (at least!)..."

#49 "The MTA (riding the subway) is like working at a bar; you learn everything about human behavior."

#55 "Because it's the best place to earn one-sentence stories to amuse friends and family back home. Like: 'I was as a hipster dance party and some flailing NYU student accidently punched me in the eye.' "

#57 "Because I can leave my apartment and be immediately told 'I hope someone punches you in the face when you turn the corner.' Because the corner deli doesn't sell Diet 7-Up but there is a plethora of bootleg Bollywood DVDs. Because no one gives me a second glance when I'm working out at the gym and tears are streaming down my face as I was Dr. Phil a meth-addict intervention."

"Because every once in a while, there is dancing in the streets."


Check out the full list at New York Magazine's official site.