Manhattan: Someone's Always Better Than You
There's a real doozy of a Young Manhattanite interview today, with tech guru Clay Shirky. He has a great story about how one free beer kept him a New Yorker for life, but here's Shirky on Manhattan's culture of envy and competition:
No one gets up in the morning thinking "Today, I'd like incontrovertible proof that I'm not the smartest one here, or the sexiest, or the funniest, or..." but that's just what happens, every day. You a painter? So's Chuck Close — take a number. Got a gig at a salsa club? Tito played there. Want to be a banker? The guy at the head of the line is Henry Kravis.
Dancers can worry about Twyla or Darci or Savion as the mood strikes them. The transgendered lie awake at night because they just know that someone out there is more transgendered than they are.
That's New York — you're rollerblading along, grooving to some Foghat on the iPod, and you get lapped by a gyrating speed-demon in a special lycra rollerblading uniform who is clearly The Greatest Rollerblader in the History of the World.
