Travel-size

New Yorkers are thin. If you mention this to a New Yorker, they will most likely tell you that it's because they walk everywhere, or that they're so poor they have to choose between booze and food, and booze wins. These things are true. It is also true that they are very fashionable people, New Yorkers, famously so, and that thinness shows off their clothes better.



But mostly, I think New Yorkers are thin because there's no goddamn room in this city for fat people.



I have been in New York for four days now, and I notice that I have perfected the art of taking up next to no space. Sitting in a restaurant, I fold my huge coat into a teensy bundle at the back of my chair and turn my purse into an armrest, all while managing to ignore the fact that the people at the "next table" are, in fact, sitting exactly three inches from my right elbow. It's not okay to talk to them unless they want you to, you know. And if they want you to, that usually means they're crazy.



Let's have a tangent, shall we? I've been talking to everyone in New York, crazy or no: people in bars, people in stores, people on the street. And I have no idea what anyone is talking about when they say New Yorkers are rude. New Yorkers aren't rude. They're actually really friendly. Now, whether or not they'll steal your wallet after you finish your chit-chat -- that's another story.