30 thoughts on “From Downtown Manhattan the Village”

  1. Bunch of damned subversives, the whole lot of you.
    Did you catch TDS last night? Jon Stewart said that the people in New York are acting crazy. They are making eye contact and smiling.
    Amazing.

  3. Did you catch TDS last night? Jon Stewart said that the people in New York are acting crazy. They are making eye contact and smiling.
    Amazing.
    And true!
    I was laughing with my roommate at Stewart’s bit because we had both experienced the same thing! Walking around on Wednesday, everyone kind of looked at each other with this sly, knowing smile like: “Yeah, we just did that, and ain’t it fncking grand!”
    The assumption being that everyone was in on it, and most people seemed to be. There was, also, an odd amount of racial outreach. Randomly approached by an African American woman who commented on my Obama pin.
    It was all so…emotional.

  6. Goosebumps and welling eyes here. That was as authentic a patriotic display as I have ever seen in my life.

  7. I don’t know how long this will last, but this is the happiest and least tense I’ve ever seen NYC.
    The only thing that compares, in terms of significance in the shift of attitudes, was immediately post-9/11.
    Then, people were exceedingly friendly and neighborly to each other. It was like the Midwest for a few months. But that shift wasn’t born out of happiness and jubilation, but the opposite emotions.
    I like this much better 😉

  10. I bet this outbreak of knowing smiles exchanged and furtive glances returned is not confined to Manhattan. Judging by this map, about the only place where public glumness dominates today is the Bible Belt.
    –TP

  11. I can’t recall that song ever sounding better.
    I hadn’t heard that song until yesterday. I knew it was out there but had never taken the time to listen. It was running through my head all day today.

  13. Okay! So commies can sing and stuff: What about the brokers? You won’t catch them doing anything like that unless someone starts a war and they all get rich.
    Buncha bohos.
    But seriously xanax; lovely lovely post.
    & thanks MD. Mailed the link to my kids and closest friends.
    Just wish my dad could’ve seen this day.

  17. I hadn’t heard that song until yesterday.
    And by that song I meant the Will. I. Am. “Yes we can” song. I had, in fact, heard the Star Spangled Banner before yesterday. Sometimes not at a sporting event, even.

  18. Just in case you didn’t catch it the first time, be sure to watch Obama’s last rally:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vlM3x-GoCA
    100,000 people in Manassas, VA!
    I was driving a plumb truck around Manassas twenty years ago, so I remember what it was like back then. The idea that a black liberal from Chicago named “Barack Hussein Obama” would be elected President would have gotten you certified insane.

  20. Who says that New Yorkers being nice is the exception? As Jon Stewart put it recently on TDS, New York is just a lot of small towns stacked on top of each other.
    Actually, in a recent Reader’s Digest Global Courtesy Test, New Yorkers ranked as the most polite out of the 35 cities tested around the world.
    And that’s not a new phenomenon since 9/11. When I lived on the Upper West Side from 1957 to 1980 (before it became impossibly chic and expensive), my neighborhood seemed just as friendly as the small Massachusetts town where I grew up.
    Still, in this historic year, I was glad to be living in Virginia. For the first time since I started voting in 1964, my vote for President actually mattered. I’m one of the many Obama volunteers in “fake” Virginia who helped turn the Commonwealth blue. Was proud to see that statewide, 71% of registered voters turned out. And in my city (Alexandria, just across the Potomac from DC) 72% of the vote went to Obama.

  22. Actually, in a recent Reader’s Digest Global Courtesy Test, New Yorkers ranked as the most polite out of the 35 cities tested around the world.
    Hmm, I think that test seems to be rather flawed.
    It might be true about NY (when I went there half a year after 9/11 people were incredibly polite), but I have no idea how Berlin made it into the top 5 and why London ranks so low.
    Berliners are grumpy as hell by nature and in general have no manners whatsoever, it’s just the way they are, which doesn’t mean that they’ll slam a door in your face or won’t help you if you really need it.
    Conversely, Londoners are for the most part very polite, you step on their foot and they say “terribly sorry” or something, but the pace of the city and the sheer volume of people sometimes doesn’t leave a lot of time for niceties.

  25. January 21: Every Bush Executive Directive repealed. Patriot Act repealed. Domestic spying stopped.
    January 22: Bush, Cheney, et al., sent to Guatanamo Bay and jailed until the “war on terror” is over.
    January 23: Bush tax cuts repealed. Minimum wage brought up to a living wage ~$15 hour.
    January 24: Universal healthcare started.
    January 25: “Fairness Doctrine” passed – No more Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Repeal of Prop 8 in California.
    January 26: United States back to normal!

  26. No Friday night open thread yet? Or were those only during the Ancien Regime? I guess this here thread is as good as it gets, so here goes nuthin:
    All Quiet On the Economic Front
    Bloomberg asks the Fed: what have you got in your pocketses?
     (i.e. what sort of dodgy paper have they been taking in the form of collateral recently).
    The Fed replies ‘that’s for me to know and you not to find out’, so Bloomberg files a FOIA, and in response the Fed tells Bloomberg and their FOIA to Talk to the Hand.
    Hmmmm? Whatever happened to “only guilty people have something to hide” anyways? My guess is that the Fed’s dirty little secret that they don’t want anyone to know about is that they are sitting on a huge pile of McCain/Palin Intrade contracts that they took as collateral back in early October. Maybe they should have hired Nate Silver to evaluate those assets before they booked them. Mark to Market is a harsh mistress.
    also, Don’t cry for me Argentina! …or Iceland..or Ukraine..or Hungary..or Pakistan…

  27. On the video: now, that’s the Real America. As much as every damn other part of America.
    However, it’s St Marks Place, not, as the title at YouTube has it, Street.
    “Actually, in a recent Reader’s Digest Global Courtesy Test, New Yorkers ranked as the most polite out of the 35 cities tested around the world.”
    2006 isn’t recent.
    “Conversely, Londoners are for the most part very polite, you step on their foot and they say
    ‘terribly sorry’ or something, but the pace of the city and the sheer volume of people sometimes doesn’t leave a lot of time for niceties.”
    Same for NYC. People are generally very nice, which isn’t the same thing as being patient with tourists standing in the middle of the sidewalk holding hands in a row during rush hour.

Comments are closed.