NYC’s New Year’s Resolutions

Millions of New Yorkers are making resolutions that could improve our quality of life (losing weight means more seats on the subway!) but could go the other way (“Work on my dance routine on the D train,” “Be a more assertive panhandler.”) Let’s cut out the middleman! Here are New Years’ Resolutions for New York City.

City Life

• Reporters who refer to the “Avenue of the Americans” should surrender their press passes.
• Allow roommates who steal food, hog the sofa, don’t clean up after themselves and don’t pay for anything to be declared “pets” and sent to a farm upstate.
• Movies or shows set in NYC  must display a warning like those pharma ads that tell you prolonged use will turn your gall bladder into a hamster: “This is not a real New York apartment.”
• Don’t participate in ‘rudest city” surveys.  New Yorkers aren’t rude, no matter what those survey jerks say.
• Legalize taking the top copy of a newspaper at a newsstand.
• Designate sidewalks with “Local” and “Tourist” lanes so we can avoid the family of five holding hands and looking up.

Getting around

• Install ejector seats in buses for drivers sit inside warm and dry before starting their route while their customers wait outside in the winter cold and wet or the summer’s heat and humidity.
• Make ‘out of service” buses sit there till help arrives instead of zipping past waiting passengers at speeds approaching the sound barrier…or at least do something that makes the buses look like they’re out of service.  Can’t they limp?
• Mandatory car air fresheners in all taxis, Lyfts and Ubers. Some are so bad the stench actually has color.

(Un)Real Estate

• Give new businesses reversible “Grand Opening” signs so they can just flip it over to “Lost Our Lease” the next year.
• Only one nail salon per block. Very few New York women dig ditches with their bare hands all week.
• Any person or business drawn to a neighborhood that clings to its local traditions shuts the hell up if those traditions are inconvenient. I’m talking to you, chichi Little Italy boutiques who think the San Gennaro Feast is too down-market.
• Deputize the makers of scaffolding and construction sites in the city. If they have a license to kill, make it official.
• Switch the phones in the Department of Buildings. Tenants and pedestrians get the direct line, “Bat Phone” now used for developers and construction companies.  Construction companies and developers get the tin cans on a string now reserved for ‘civilians.”

Despite all its flaws, though – and there are many – and the accelerated changes the city is going through, it still remains beautiful and savage, frustrating and challenging, with unexpected rewards and hidden pitfalls, with all the compelling magnetism of a great three card monte player.

You know it’s rigged, but boy is it fun to watch the show.  And don’t get me started about that.

Do you have any ideas for NYC resolutions?  Let me know in the comments!