Tuesday, January 09, 2007

New York stinks. Literally.

I couldn't help but laugh when I read about the unusual smell that Manhattan residents have recently noticed in their air. You know, It's no secret that when you live downwind from New Jersey, things like this are going to happen occasionally... it's just that Manhattan normally isn't the one stuck downwind of it at all. Usually it's Staten Island, where I grew up.

Dats right, mon... I'm from de island. Now pass the duchie on de left hand side.

All you whiney Manhattan residents: suck it up and deal with it, like you've been telling Staten Islanders to do all these years when we would complain not just about the smell of Jersey, but the smell of the Fresh Kills Landfill that you refused to allow us to close for so many years. After all, those refineries in New Jersey are a nessacary evil produced by the port that turned your city into one of the richest on the planet.

Or, at least that's the line you've been feeding me since I was in grade school. Now that it's the air on the upper east side making your eyes water, is it somehow different? All it takes is a shift in the damn wind and our problem is suddenly yours.

See, folks... stuff like this is why I moved. At least here in New Orleans, the classism and hypocracy is right out in the open where it can't sneak up on anyone, and people recognize that a neighborhood's problems can be everyone's problem if left unchecked.

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