New Yorkers hate a lot of things.In no specific order, we hate: the constant hassle of tourists, the heat, the cold, the rain, the traffic, the MTA, the hipsters in Williamsburg, the mutants in Queens, the snobs in Manhattan, their jobs, New Jersey, people from New Jersey, Time-Warner, ConEd, basically anything that walks into our crosshairs. That’s an incomplete list, by the way. You name it, we hate it. It’s a one-stop animosity shop.

That is, if you listen to everything everyone else says about New Yorkers.

But come on, that’s just kind of how the whole town works – everybody knows that, right? New Yorkers, by and large and according to popular sentiment, are rude, harried, hateful, grumpy, unhelpful bastards with no concern or regard for anyone else in their direct area, let alone anyone else anywhere else.

Admit it, you’ve heard that that’s how it is, I have, too. And you know what? It’s fine to think that. It’s fine to think of New York as the worst place in the world – how could you not? I mean, honestly, any place that willingly proclaims itself as the Center of the Universe has got to be filled and run by assholes, right?

Well, I may have a few things to say about that.

After all, I’m a New Yorker, too.

Sure, I might not have been born here, and I might not have been raised here, but that doesn’t make me any less of a New Yorker, and I’ll admit it, there’s a bit of inherent hometown pride there. And it is my hometown, adoptive or not.

But I’m getting off-track. this is supposed to be an introductory column; a mission statement if you can stomach to call it that – I only barely can. This is the first installment, the first piece where I give you a taste of what’s to come, let you get a good feel for what’s coming next. That’s what introductions are, in New York or anywhere else. There’s nothing particularly wrong with them, but tired, gimped, run-of-the-mill mission statements do tend to get a little fucking boring, don’t they?

So here’s how this is going to work: I write about what New York is really like, the little things, the big things, the travesties and the hilarities, the bizarreness and the boring, regular normalcy of it all. You read it, and if you’re so inclined, write me to tell me what a genius/self-obsessed prick/egomaniac I am, and while you’re at it, how in the hell did you get these nice people at Comb to give you a steady writing gig, Lyons? That’s the basic format, okay? But it gets a lot more complicated from here on out. I might even have an actual subject next time – stranger things have happened, kids.

And, this is important to note, I’m writing completely detached from both the saccharine, trite I-HEART-NY bullshit and the popular notion that New York is somehow the ninth circle of hell, filled to the brim with the treacherous damned. Because it’s both and neither. Simplistic proclamations about the city itself are weak, annoying glazes lacquered on thick by people who don’t live here or have never really given it a chance. Or both.

I’m writing as a New Yorker, and as a transplant. I’ll never lie to you, I’ll never put on airs of pretension and sanctimony, and I’ll never give you less than my best. I promise that if you stick with me, we’ll have a lot of fun. And at the end of this first column, I am going to introduce myself and say hello.

I heard it a lot when I first moved here, and no matter how obnoxious and dumb it sounded to me then, the fact of the matter is that New York City is what you make of it. Like the song says, it’s a hell of a town. I love it here and I hate it just as much. There’s an inherent conflict about New York in almost every New Yorker, transplant or native.

And I suppose that that conflict is really going to be what’s at the heart of everything that comes after this; everything I write about is going to have that little acorn of conflict growing on its heart like an oaky little cardiac tumor. Because that conflict is everything that New York is built on, from the Met to the fair-trade thrift shops and flea markets in Williamsburg to the seedy gay sex shops in the Village to the surprisingly comprehensive bodegas in the deepest recesses of Forest Hills. There’s conflict everywhere. That’s kind of what makes the city what it is for so many different people. That gaseous, mucky gray area you feel somewhere between love and hate for the place is a natural feeling, just roll with it – it won’t lead you astray. It’s one of the best things in the city, and I intend to mine it for all it’s worth. See if I don’t.

You probably won’t like some of what I write about the city. That’s okay, I won’t like it either. But you’ll probably like some of it. Some of it is going to be glowing, some of it condemning. But like I said, I’m not going to bullshit you. I won’t claim to know what New York is “really like,” because I honestly don’t know what it’s “really like.” I don’t think any sweeping, overarching truth – least of all about this place – is so simple. But I’m going to write about the little truths that strike me about the city and life here, good or bad. For better or worse.

This is what New York (and New Yorkers) are for me, good and bad, adventuresome and boring alike. Strange and ordinary, loud and quiet, hot and cold.

My name is M. Lyons. I’m a writer and I’m a New Yorker.

Hello.

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