About a year or so ago, I wrote a little tirade here on The `Pab about how the Union Square Greenmarket sets my teeth on edge. In astonishingly short order, the traffic level on this weblog quadrupled and my inbox was flooded with nasty e-mails (as it turned out, someone at Gawker got wind of it and posted a link to it). In a nutshell, I was raked over the coals by Gawker nation not so much for my ire towards the Greenmarket, but rather for admitting to have pushed a stroller through it....let alone for procreating to begin with.
In the latest issue of Time Out New York, the cover story postulating how "Manhattan has lost its soul" continually cites "stoller-pushing Yuppies" as a particularly virulent strain of the virus that is sucking the lifeblood out of Manhattan's character. Oh that's right -- I had children, therefore I'm the one that's killing the cool of NYC. Ever notice how the pejorative terms "stroller-pushing" and "Yuppie" always seem to go hand in hand? It's as if to suggest that only insufferable douche-bags who work as investment bankers, drive BMW's and listen to John Mayer discs are audacious enough to have children. Last time I checked, Patti Smith, Thurston Moore, Jon Spencer and at least two out of the three Beastie Boys all had children -- no one's calling them fuckin' Yuppies!
Feeling neither young nor especially upwardly-mobile, I push a stroller through the very crotch of NYU here in the `Village every damn day (and believe me, no one has less time for little kids than earnestly hipper-than-thou college students). I'm continually met with glares from chinless stick figures in ironic t-shirst and sniffy Carrie Bradshaw-wannabes who stop just short of barking, "JUST MOVE TO THE SUBURBS ALREADY!"
Well choke on this, Miss Thing: I WAS HERE FIRST! AND HERE I'M STAYING!!
....or as long as I can afford it, at least.
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