I started walking down Seventh Avenue, happy to be relieved at last from unpacking, and enjoying the beautiful, almost-springlike weather. I came upon a slow-moving mass of people, several of whom were pushing strollers. Oy, the strollers. I knew this was a permanent feature of this particular neighborhood, and I'd been prepared. Or I thought I'd been prepared. As I squeezed past the stroller herd with a forced smile at the collective of fashionably dressed parents, my gaze was drawn up the busy street and my mouth dropped open. It was like a sea. A sea of strollers.
Big strollers, little strollers, three-wheeled strollers, covered strollers; all different makes, models and colors, rolling up and down Seventh Avenue. I sighed and hunkered down. Hands stuffed in my pockets, I weaved through another wave of strollers, and noticed how the shops and cafes I had found so charming before had suddenly taken on a slightly pretentious air - Eco-this, organically-grown that, local, sustainable, responsible... By the time I passed the food co-op on Union Street, I was aghast. What had I done?? Had I moved into the epicenter of a New Age, over-intellectualized, proselytizing nuevo-Yuppie enclave? I do consider myself a liberal, and I try to lead a socially and environmentally responsible life (yerch, even writing that made me a little nauseous), but I think there's a difference between practicing and preaching. And quite honestly, the whole scene was sort of overkill for my taste. As much as I find the careful tastefulness of the Old Monied women of the Upper East Side, with their fur coats and nannies, tiny dogs and immaculate manicures, unpalatable, I found this tableau of babies in unbleached, organic cotton onesies and parents sipping soy chai lattes (organic! local!) equally lacking in charm. What was I, a happily child-free, usually-recycling, sometimes-exercising, "normal" person doing here? I don't have a degree from a fancy college. I read the NY Times, but mostly just the Travel section.
The thought rose like a bubble in my chest, "I don't even like Sufjan Stevens".
I reached the grocery, finally. By now I was seething with contempt for this place, and walking in there did no good for my already sour mood. It was like a caricature of everything I had found irritating on my walk over - children running amok ("No, Charles! You know you can only have soy yogurt!"), long lines for overpriced, fancy (organic!) food, expensive gadgets (including a sea salt grater. You know, for your sustainably, um, farmed sea salt) - I barely made it past the local, organic jars of marinara sauce before I turned on my heel in full retreat. No Bloody Mary in the world could entice me to fight that crowd.
As I stormed back to my apartment, now in a full-on snit, I desperately looked for some redeeming quality to this neighborhood. By redeeming, I mean something real - some signs of actual life, beyond what the current issue of "The Atlantic" or "Organic Parenting" is prescribing. Some personality, if you will. As a stroller rolled over my shoe on Seventh Avenue, I shook my head and mumbled, "Fucking strollers, man!" A middle-aged woman sitting on a bench drinking a (soy?) coffee scowled at me in disapproval. Like an angst-ridden teenager, I rolled my eyes in response and stomped myself into the nearest deli, where, with no small feeling of rebellious delight, I bought a pack of cigarettes and a Diet Coke.
Extra chemicals, please.
