A coworker recently introduced me to a simple game her friends like to play. They call it Love It or Hate It. One person throws out a noun—boating, Parcheesi, fish—and all the players have to quickly choose if they love it or hate it. (The two of us then played the game with another coworker; I was left trying to explain why I apparently love funerary urns.)
Since then, I’ve been playing little games of LIoHI (hate that acronym) in my head. Hardwood floors? Love. Traffic cones? Hate. Dogs? Love. Kind of.
So when I took a trip to New York City with my family, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would I love it? Hate it? Abhor it? Want to marry it? The answer: All of the above.
I gave myself a little longer to process whether I loved or hated the city, but after a whole day I decided to love NYC. (I bought an “I Heart NY” shirt for six bucks in Chinatown just in case I forget.) Once I loved the city, I really loved the city, and all others paled in comparison.
Take Minneapolis, my home metropolis. NYC blows MPLS out of the water. The subway is a great way to travel long distances in NYC, while in Minneapolis I have to take two buses to get from Uptown (paradoxically on the southwest corner of the city) to Northeast. Cheap, warm bagels sold by street vendors blow the expensive food truck fare found here out of the water. The architecture is spectacular there and bland here. And New Yorkers have Chinatown, Little Italy, the High Line, and the New York Public Library.
Though we Minnesotans like to call Minneapolis the Mini-Apple, we are so wrong. It should be called the Miniscule Apple. Or the Itty Bitty Orange because really, it can’t compare to the splendor of NYC.
Then again, most of the cities I stay in for a few days get LIoHI treatment in my head. Valencia? Love it. Killearney? I wouldn’t go there again. London? Amazing. Barcelona? Ick (I say that probably because it was raining and miserable for most of the time I was there). Madrid? Great. Atlanta? How can people live there? It’s so hot!
First of all, opinions of cities should not be based on luck or the weather, I admit. I should really give some of them a second chance. Second, I see the shades of gray in places I’ve stayed for a few weeks or more—the Chicagoland area, the Twin Cities, Denia, Mérida, Grand Rapids, and random small towns in North Central Iowa. In these cities, I know not only the good and the bad, but also the mediocre. The tedious. The specs of the daily grind. I’m not immune to being occasionally dazzled by any of them, but it’s harder to be permanently entranced by a city in which you have to think about buying groceries and keeping the bathroom clean.
So before I go traipse off to attempt to live the dream in New York City, let me remind myself that I haven’t had to do laundry or vacuum my room there. Maybe I should take on my brother’s mentality—he says he likes New York as a friend.
In the meantime, I’ll give it another go with Minneapolis. We might not have Central Park, but I’ve heard Loring Park’s pretty nice. The Met may be miles and miles away, but the Minneapolis Institute of Arts can give me my culture fix. Plus, we have a sculpture of a giant cherry on a giant spoon that I see weekly on the 4 bus. NYC’s subway doesn’t offer vistas of anything more than hot stations and litter. The studio apartments here are 500 square feet, not 200. And the closet-sized apartments in New York are probably twice as expensive as the moderately spacious studios here.
However, I wouldn’t rule out a move to NYC quite yet. After all, I’ve decided that I love adventures
Libby Stille (’13) lives in St. Paul and works in the marketing department of a children’s publishing company in downtown Minneapolis. She recommends that everyone visit the Twin Cities, but only between June and October, unless you enjoy subzero windchills and slipping on ice.
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Oooh, and then there’s the second round of LIoHI: the second time through a city, what are the rules for a rematch? Do we play best two out of three? It gets interesting… My first time in London was a hands-down love. Second time? I was freezing and miserable, sifting through huge life adjustments. I can’t say I hated it, but we weren’t happy with each other. I need to go back, and roll the dice again.
Ah, but does the city suit one’s needs for that time in one’s life? Loving something and having it fit into your life are two different things. I love visiting NYC, but would hate living there….love living in my current town, but would hate visiting it. So….a time and place for everything, right? (Especially those funerary urns…)