What are some frustrations that you have with the New York? by Kyle Phoenix

Crowds And Tourists

It is the top reason why, unless there’s a terrorist attack against….classrooms or Barnes & Noble, I will live here long enough…to move. I’ve been fortunate enough to have lived outside of the City in Pennsylvania and commuted for awhile, to have lived upstate and in several other states, to have traveled a lot of the country and internationally. My life plan includes moving perhaps west, definitely internationally, one day. I often look at my checking account and calculate how long I could pay all of my bills off, buy a plane ticket and go to the Caribbean or Fiji, find a job—-counting coconuts or maybe go to Bartender school here for $300 and go down there and make drinks for a year or two. No, I’m serious. Almost 90% of my business I can do from my laptop, it’s just school/teaching that keeps me tied here.

Be happy, even if your running water is a little brown, that there are less people wherever you live.

I have redesigned my entire work/school/life schedule for at least 12–14 years now to be on the off hours of peak rush hour times. The earliest I’ve been due at work was 10 am about a decade ago for 6 months and then we switched it to 2pm to 10pm. Then about 6 years ago I was due in at 11 AM I think to teach a morning class.

Occasionally I am caught in “rush hour” and it is like concentrated madness too me, too many people, too many people who can only perceive their cell phones, too much noise, too many fucking tourists—-yeah, I said it (I’m debating making a video for my TV show about all of the insane tourist shit I see), too many competing cultural ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies and ideologies about reality. Particularly while driving.

Too many assholes, ASSHOLES, saying the word LIKE. LIKE. LIKE. LIKE. LIKE. LIKE. LIKE.LIKE. LIKE. LIKE.LIKE. LIKE. LIKE.LIKE. LIKE. LIKE. Due to the fact that they don’t have any WORDS to explain what they MEAN not what the object, experience, person was LIKE.

I often sit in a seething silence when trapped next to one of these LIKE monsters and I will hold out my hand and finger count off how many times they say LIKE. Occasionally someone across from me will catch on and laugh.

Heat. I am not a heat/summer person. I went to Nassau, Bahamas for 10 days and spent the first 2 in the hotel room, sleeping contentedly with the A/C up high and would journey out at 10pm for gourmet dinners. It took days for me to get to the beach. And I like the beach. But I hate the heat. So crowds WITH heat. Oh, I’m ready to go Terminator. I try to meditate, relax, relate,breathe, calm myself, play my music (did I mention that in crowds there’s always so brain surgeon who will see you with not just earbuds on but I have large headphones because I use them for work and personal listening and come over and ask ME, me, among dozens of ear naked folk for information.

I have now graduated to yelling, in a completely oblivious way: “I can’t hear you. I have these headphone on. The headphones are playing music too loud for me to hear you.!” We then get to have a staring moment as I smile brightly, helpfully. Two can play the idiot game. I also resent the implication of hi, Kyle, STOP what you’re doing and remove your headphones, put down your book and attend to me a STRANGER.

I have asked people when I was both headphoned and reading a book on the train/bus—-”What makes you think you have the right to just interrupt people who are clearly COMPLETELY occupied with something else? Why won’t you ask some of the others on here?”

This is America! Trust me, I’m one of only a handful of people with headphones AND a BOOK.

Tourists

I have been trampled on, stepped on, shoved pushed and had what I can only hope was white colored spittle dribbled, dripped, splashed onto my arms and legs and face. I have had one or two explosions—-yes, again tourists (something happened—-it’s me, I include traveling to midtown more than I used to) where I have been shoved aside by tourists to get that all important shot of a lamppost.

I politely asked: “Have you lost your fucking mind? Where the fuck were you raised that you would shove someone aside for a goddamn picture? Don't you understand I’m one of the nice New Yorkers? The rest of them are hair trigger from violence. You need to pull your manners together!”

The tourist replied: “You don’t need to use that kind of language with us.”

I replied: "When you put your hands on me, be happy it’s all language and not me kicking your fucking ass!”

Tourist replied: “We’re not from here!”

I replied. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Well since you’re not from here, you need to get your fuckity manners in order because I’ll kick your fucking ass, you dumb fucks! Oh, by the way, fucking welcome to New York. ”

Kyle Phoenix Answers: Should I be upset at my son’s mother who put my 8-year-old son alone in a Cadillac Uber? I live 1 hour away and she was returning him after the weekend.

Yes…..no, wait upon childhood memory reflection I mean No.

I agreed first in like this adamant way….and then I remembered living on Staten Island and wanting to go to the artsy cinema to see Gallipoli with Mel Gibson about the Australian World War 1 involvement, God I was weird. My mother just looked at me. But I had my allowance money so she shrugged and called a cab and the cab took me t the theater where she’d called the theater, I paid for my ticket, saw the movie and then waited at the Optimo store, I remember looking at the paperbacks and buying candy, next door until my call back to her and she sent another cab to pick me up. Not an hour but maybe 15 minutes each way.

I’m thinking though when your pre-teen insists on using the money from their small business enterprise to go see a foreign film at the faraway theater you weigh as a parent telling them all the rules of strangers against the fact that if your kid is this weird, a stranger will return them.

Then a few years later my mother was in a leg cast, having been hit by a car….driven by my father. It was an accident. We’re all going to just settle on it was an accident. Anywho someone had to go get lobster dinner and hair supplies for her to do her hair so she would stuff a $50 in my underwear and then cab me to Fordham Road in the Bronx, to the fish market for steamed lobster platters then next door to the beauty shop for hair supplies—-everyone tracked by notes and pre-phone calls and then I would wait for my appointed cab back.

This was all pre-Uber.

Boy, I was just sent out and about, wasn’t I? I was between 8–13. Maybe it’s different for NYC kids—-I was a latchkey kid, home from school, the key around my neck, no company allowed, had to call—-212–393–69— my mother’s job number, my God I still remember it by 330pm. Sometimes she would put money under the phone and would give me instructions about grocery shopping to have done by the time she got home or she’d tell me to go buy a token and meet her at work—-at least a half an hour train ride away—-we were going out for dinner. My mother could cook, she just didn’t like to so she and my father did a lot of restaurant hopping and as an only child it was cheaper to take me than pay to have someone babysit me.

You know I’m beginning to think that a lot of my childhood where I thought I was being treated as a big boy, as responsible was both servitude and dangerous by non-NY standards.

Ok, three weird points.

I’ve never been in an Uber. I downloaded the APp and then was about to put in my credit card number——but I was on my phone so it doesn’t automatically fill in——and my wallet was you know———-in the other room……..this was about a year ago. I’ll get to it.

Just when you think you have a firm grip on all the ways you were abused as a child someone brings something up that reminds you that what happened, looked at in a different was probably against Child Protective Services guidelines.

A few years ago, I was about 30 years old and going somewhere in Queens. So I was taking a cab from mid-Jamaica to Flushing, I think. The driver asks me did I have a preferred route and I was like no—-like I knew one. Then he asks me did I live in Queens. I say yes. Then he asks had I always lived in Queens. I’m like no, why? Had I lived in the Bronx? I’m like no….well, there was a year when my grandmother was dying that we took care of her that we moved in. Then he says Jerome Avenue by Moshulu Parkway and I’m like….yeah. And he;’s like I remember you!

That mofo remembered driving me somewhere, probably an errand from my mother, 15 years prior to that!

Curiously after undergrad and Tony Robbins, Personal Power my big pie in the sky NYC dream was to drive to and from work in a Corinthian leathered Town Car. A month in, from my new job, I was! Then later on law firms sent me to and fro. My big dream is actually to have a car and driver.

See what passive, odd errand based abuse can do to your children!??!

Smile, Kyle
KylePhoenixShow@gmail.com

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Kyle Phoenix Answers: How do New Yorkers feel after moving to a much more rural town?

I've lived in size descending areas. Born in NYC, university in Buffalo, city of maybe a million. It felt like Long Island all the time, I had to get a car by year two because it was residential,malls, distance, small city area (downtown). I live on both campus's, and in two apartments, between downtown and campus and then eventually I lived downtown, twice. With the exception of cold, snow and hills due to midnight train an buses ending, you could walk or cab everywhere. It was inconvenient without a car.

Lived in gated private community in Pennsylvania mountains. House became a bubble and you would both plan and look forward to trip to small town about 15 miles away. It was isolated, constant quiet, a mile walk to general store, five miles to roadside restaurants, gas stations, stores. I walked it once, down three stacked"mountains". Towns claim to fame one year was escalator to second floor of mall. Front page news. Maybe a million people but scattered throughout and across maybe 50 square miles so there were people but on pockets. Small businesses and organizations littered by happenstance. It was like a small town to year round residents, crowded during tourist/ski/summer season. Perfect place for me, an introvert, writer with a car and online business. My parents /family from NYC hated it.

I moved to Brookhaven, wealthy community. Very quiet. I walked around a bit. It was a place where you went to peoples houses /events more that found stuff spontaneously. It was more cliquish but safe, pleasant, very "our town" full of Mercedes.

Bellmore, LI. Big as maybe 4 square miles. Took me a couple of weeks to realize that I was one of a few brown folk in town and the others left after work. It was odd to be racially spottable constantly but I can say while I felt White Gaze constantly I didn't feel....offended...just "oh, there he is.". While I did get into an argument with a neighbor (I admit I was a young hot head), even the police were fair, kind, professional as they squelched argument...five times. Stores were nice and it was quiet. It was like the fact that I wasn't a pack of brown folk, dressed all hippity hoppity, sagging pants, etc---stereotypes and trends---educated, well spoken, polite, had money....i was accepted., not just tolerated. It demanded that I confront my internal feelings of racial self consciousness, hyper anxiety, real racism and just rude people. Perhaps it also had to do with living in previous places that were racially dominated, non-brown folk, that I don't give off as high an uncomfortable vibe as others might. I'm used to being surrounded and also heard and respected in spite of prejudices.

Ironically I feel more self conscious about walking in more urban areas because of the desperation that leads to crime. White people demonize or feel anxiety about men of color to the point where if you're smart, subtle and confident you can deal with them deftly but other minorities aren't as intimidated.

Funny...Buffalo, Bushkill, Brookhaven, Bellmore...then Charlotte. (like a southern Buffalo) with more Black folk but areas are social economically segregated. I worked in affluent area, more White folk in purpose because I knew I presented as safe, useful, good to them while ironically to brown folk I was dismissed because I presented as educated competition.

Guerneville, California a cross between Bellmore and a hippy commune. I felt a hippy White gaze that's inspired me to write a trilogy of novels about white reaction to black arrivals.

Next Europe, Australia and Brazil!!!!

Kyle Phoenix

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