New York City--Encomia
The Sanity Inspector
capitals of Europe put together, with all the lesser towns of America,
save perhaps one or two, thrown in for good measure. Is wealth merely
flamboyant and stupid? Not necessarily. It may also be luxurious and
beautiful. There are more beautiful things in New York, in all
probability, than in Paris and London combined--and I am not
forgetting beautiful buildings. Is the new Telephone Building a crib
from the Germans? Then were is the match for it in Berlin?
-- H. L. Mencken, _The Baltimore Evening Sun_, July 26, 1926
It costs a great deal of money, but New York is filled with
people who seem to have it. Are they rooked? I am inclined to doubt
it. They pay huge prices, and out of those huge prices come huge
profits, but they actually get something for their money. They get a
kind of luxury that is unobtainable in Europe, save as a sort of
miracle: the luxury of being surrounded by perfect and unobtrusive
slaves, human and mechanical. Nor is all that luxury for the body
alone. There were more orchestra concerts in New York last winter
than in Berlin. The town has more theaters, and better ones, than a
dozen Londons. It has at least five times as many good restaurants as
Paris. It has at more night clubs, cabarets and other such gilded
dens than hell itself.
-- ibid
I do not go outdoors. Not more than I have to. As far as I'm
concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You
want greenery? Order the spinach.
-- David Rakoff, _Fraud_, 2001
--
bruce
The dignified don't even enter in the game.
--The Jam