An Englishman in New York

Joe Thwaites sends us his Eye-view

Some of what you hear about America is true. Things are big.

The cars are big. Ridiculously big, very shiny and a deep black, and with shaded out windows, of course. They are imposing monstrosities. In most British cities, the number of pedestrians attempting to cross a road can force the flow of traffic to stop for them whether it’s their right of way or not. In New York, there are plenty of pedestrians too, but none dares to try their luck. The traffic moves at such speeds (particularly taxis) that you have to be sure that there’s a ‘walk’ sign alight or that you can see a good few blocks down the road that nothing’s coming. Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York, proposed a congestion charging system for downtown Manhattan similar to London’s, but it was dropped before it even got to a vote. This is a place where the car rules.

The buildings are also huge. You expect that with New York though, don’t you? But what is interesting is that the sheer number of them has actually diminished their impact. Take my office building – it’s twelve stories high, which in most British towns and cities would be quite a landmark, but in Manhattan it is one of the smaller buildings. When you walk down the street, no-one (except tourists) looks up at the concrete and glass spires towering above. To New Yorkers, it’s just an ordinary street. The high rise mass is a separate world from the street level below. Looking straight ahead, the only thing that indicates that you’re in the depths of a concrete jungle is the fact that, despite 30°C heat, you’re very well shaded from the sun.

Much of what you hear about America, though, is not true.

Contrary to what you might expect after watching excerpts from Fox News suggesting, among other things, that the NHS supports terrorism, much of the media is surprisingly liberal. The New York Times is, on most issues, on a par with the Guardian in its editorial line. But it is the TV news networks that have proved the biggest revelation. No sense of BBC impartiality here! While that means that you do have moronic offerings from some channels, I now see how short-sighted I was to assume they would all be like that. MSNBC in particular is remarkably liberal.

In writing this column, I’ve realised that my impressions of America are skewed in several ways.

Firstly, I am judging the country against well developed preconceptions (perhaps prejudices) about what American culture, people and politics would be like. This means that when I am surprised by how small an impact the skyscrapers have, or by how liberal the media is, I am measuring it against a fictionalised version of America based on exaggerated stereotypes. I had prepared myself for tall buildings so they lacked impact. I had expected conservatives, so liberals surprised me. It may well be that the buildings are really tall, and the people and media are actually quite right wing, but when juxtaposed with my expectations, they don’t seem so.

Secondly, I have never lived in a big city before, so it is difficult to separate what is specifically New York or American from the characteristics that all cities have. Some aspects just come with cosmopolitanism. I have to sort out what is definitively New York from what is just ‘big city’.

But perhaps most important is to note is that this is New York City. As everyone keeps reminding me, the rest of America is different. Out of state visitors are conspicuous by their size, volume and tendency to congregate around tourist attractions. Of course New York has organic whole food stores and people tend to be more liberal! East and West coasters are well known for their more tolerant, outward looking attitudes, partly due to the simple fact of their geography, which gives them greater exposure to the rest of the world. Other parts of America are different from New York and each other in turn. This is hardly surprising in a country more than double the size of the EU – think of the cultural differences between Britain and Spain and Romania.

Joe is working for a year at the Quaker UN Office in New York.

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