Moody NYC

The New York Times recently published a big article about ... how people are feeling.

About how they feel about NYC and their lives in it.

The "paper of record" wanted to gauge the "mood" of a city of 8.8 million people by speaking to a number of folks you could literally count on your hands and, from their anecdotes, come to a striking broad-based conclusion about the "mood" of all the residents of the nation's biggest metropolis. (Oh, they spoke to people in each of the five boroughs so I guess that makes it more "broad-based.")

The "mood" appears to be that everyone is freaking out about crime, everything is terrible, and no one can afford to live here. This attitude is so completely at odds with the reality of the evidence and facts on the ground -- crime remains at historic lows and more people live here than ever before -- that I'm stumped at the most respected paper in the city and country passing this off as journalism.

This kind of journalism is weird -- you never saw it before until the age of the Internet and social media. But perhaps there is something in the air in NYC that's making everything feel a little ... off.

Take, for example, our wacky mayor.

It turns out that he has a secret office in Brooklyn, right across the bridge from City Hall in Manhattan. This is honestly no big deal, mayor's have had hideout offices before (heck, Nixon famously didn't work in the Oval Office but in a little one off the Old Executive Office Building), but for some reason Mayor Adams kept it a secret for reasons that make no sense at all. Adams does a lot of weird things like hiring ethically dubious people, insulting low-skilled workers, lying about being a vegan, not being clear about where he lives, reiterating that crime is at historic highs when it's NOT ... and now this.

Adams is just a very weird dude and the city must be feeling very weird to have elected him. When you're the mayor of New York City, you are one of the most covered and criticized public officials in the country but the reality of this part of the job seems to have caught him entirely be surprise. He's secretive and ellusive and, honestly, I have no problem with wanting to maintain your privacy but, well, when you decide you want to be the mayor this isn't really going to be possible. But don't tell him that. 

So the mood in NYC right now is, in my humble opinion, contradictory -- people hate it here but more people than ever want to live here, the mayor doesn't want the press to cover him but wants to be seen everywhere, and day is night, up is down, and left is right.

So, honestly, my mood, the mood of this particular New Yorker, is confused and exhausted.