Snow and Melodrama

Published by

Clarissa

January 27, 2015

First, New Yorkers were filling my blogroll with endless melodrama because there was going to be snow.

Now, New Yorkers are filling my blogroll with endless melodrama because there was no snow.

Everybody makes fun of the Brits for supposedly obsessing about weather but it doesn’t look like Brits are half as drama – queenish about it as New Yorkers.

When I was in Montréal 3 weeks ago, we a had an ice-storm that knocked out electricity in half the city. It was -38C (38 degrees below freezing) and there was a huge snowstorm. Montréalers, however, comported themselves with supreme indifference to the weather.

You’d say that’s because Montréalers are used to snow. But that’s not true. That’s just how things are: some people encounter tragedy and battle their way through. And other people experience the tiniest of setbacks and choose to fall apart.

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24 responses to “Snow and Melodrama”

Shakti

January 27, 2015

International media center + city which is a bunch of islands + second largest airport system in the world = freakouts over snow.
Probably some NYCer will mention Hurricane Sandy. Has Montreal experienced such an equivalent weather event recently?

Try being in Atlanta or Florida. They are not equipped for snow at all. Of course, Floridians shrug at hurricane warnings for the most part.

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1. hkatz
  
  January 27, 2015
  
  “Probably some NYCer will mention Hurricane Sandy.”
  
  Of course we will (and 9/11!). See comment below… 😉
  
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hkatz

January 27, 2015

I’m in New York now, and the general atmosphere is one of a work holiday. People seem very light-hearted, as a whole. There are also some who are in trouble, and other people are bringing food and supplies to them (like through Meals on Wheels) but the atmosphere isn’t whiny.

Maybe you’ve got a skewed sample of the most petulant New Yorkers on your blog roll 🙂 I suspect the melodrama also isn’t a sign of them falling apart, not genuinely, but more enjoying themselves through whining about trivialities; maybe if it was really serious they wouldn’t get that pleasure, as they’d have a real battle to fight beyond some slippery sidewalks and temporarily shut-down public transport. I was here for much worse events, ranging from 9/11 to Hurricane Sandy, and so many people here responded beautifully. (As you might tell, I have a fondness for New Yorkers, as a whole…)

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 27, 2015
  
  I just hate New York, that’s all. It’s such an ugly, hopeless place. I felt a lot more comfortable even in Detroit.
  
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  1. Evelina Anville
    
    January 27, 2015
    
    You hate New York? Really? I think it’s so beautiful and vibrant and full of energy. I think it’s an incredibly exciting and hopeful city. I think it’s one of my favorite cities in the country. 🙂
    
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    1. Evelina Anville
      
      January 27, 2015
      
      But I agree. Nobody can deal with snow like an upper midwesterner (and I presume Canadians). Chicago and Minneapolis can get feet and feet of snow and the cities just move on as if nothing happened. 😉
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        January 27, 2015
        
        I’m very ready to deal with the snow. Snow, please come! I will deal with you joyfully and happily.
        
        But no, it’s warm and sunny here.
        
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        Evelina Anville
        
        January 27, 2015
        
        I love snow too. 🙂 I get so delighted when there is a blizzard. I am jealous of the weather on the East Coast!
        
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    2. Clarissa
      
      January 27, 2015
      
      Cities are like people: there is no reason or logic behind loving one and not loving another. My sister also adores New York while I can’t stand it. But I totally dig Chicago. And I adore Baltimore. Go figure.
      
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      1. Evelina Anville
        
        January 27, 2015
        
        I love Chicago too. The city that annoys me is San Francisco. It’s beautiful and has great aspects. Admitedly, I am sure I could happily live there. But to me it’s souless.
        
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¡No Pasarán! (@nopasa)

January 27, 2015

New Yorkers, like all highly urbanized populations are helpless when things go south.

As to Montreal, I have family up there, and there is no shortage of whining about weather despite the pointlessness of the act. It’s part of the larger pathology found more broadly advertized in Anglophone Canada metropoli such as Toronto, wherein complaining about First World Problems is a sort of lifestyle choice of those starved for attention.

Studies have shown that Narcissistic personality disorders are higher among those with more personal space, and Canadians have more personal space than any population on earth.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 27, 2015
  “wherein complaining about First World Problems is a sort of lifestyle choice of those starved for attention”
  
  It would be very bizarre if people of First World countries complained about somebody else’s problems.
  
  “Studies have shown that Narcissistic personality disorders are higher among those with more personal space”
  
  Those “studies” were conducted by idiots. Narcissistic trauma is more likely when there is very little space.
  
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Stringer Bell

January 27, 2015

Cable news and media in general is so NYC/DC centric. Petty political squabbles in DC between mickey mouse politicians are presented as world-changing events that the rest of the country can’t wait to find more about.

Btw, doesn’t it feel like the standards for competence during emergencies like this have fallen drastically? Governors imposing martial-law on cities days before a storm actually happens, and shutting down services preemptively is seen as a sign of great leadership. What the fuck happened to running trains on time? Is this what crisis management has come down to? Just shut everything down?

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 27, 2015
  “What the fuck happened to running trains on time? Is this what crisis management has come down to? Just shut everything down?”
  
  I agree. It was absolutely shocking when I was told that my plane from Montreal was just cancelled. Nothing like that had ever happened before. Normally, planes are delayed and some arrangements are made to accommodate the passengers. But here it was simply, “Plane is cancelled, bye, go away.” Yes, the company returned the money for the ticket later on, but still, it shouldn’t be this way. I was counting on being able to travel, I had plans.
  
  I’ve been traveling by air for many years, and this is the first such experience. There was some problem, and the company just gave up, without even making an effort.
  
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2. Stringer Bell
  
  January 27, 2015
  
  This line was unironically written by a human being. Could there be a more self-absorbed group of people on this planet?
  
  “We start, though, by looking at the political implications of snow. ”
  
  For all its faults, I love NYC.
  
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Shakti

January 27, 2015

Btw, doesn’t it feel like the standards for competence during emergencies like this have fallen drastically?
YES. See, crisis management beyond preemptively shutting down services and declaring martial law requires adequate budgets for agencies other than the police and military and a lack of fear mongering instead of unsexy shit like making sure municipalities have enough snowplows and salt.
It’s why Rudy Giuliani and Shrub were able to enjoy political success instead of being drummed out for incompetence for 9/11 and Katrina.
It’s why someone like < a href=”http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/newark_mayor_cory_booker_shove.html”>Cory Booker gets national media attention for breaking out a shovel and Rahm Emanuel immediately stages some photo op in suede boots to imitate.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 27, 2015
  
  It is an absolute mystery to me why people are so in love with Giuliani when he so obviously failed at his actual job. The guy is shockingly inept.
  
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  1. Shakti
    
    January 27, 2015
    
    Projecting “competence” and hating the right people will take you far? Authoritarian impulses? People love authoritarians.
    
    A reluctance by the general public to hate on people who are dealing with a crisis in the moment? Compared to Shrub he looked competent in the moment. I wouldn’t have dared say anything about either one of them in public even if I had known about their specific failures at the time because it would have been recast as “siding with the terrorists.”
    
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David P. Bellamy

January 27, 2015

Only BBC World News America and Al Jazeera have covered any news not about the snow in the last 48 hours. There was a commemoration of the 70-th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz today, with 300 former prisoners in attendance. Only BBC covered it at all, as far as I can tell.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 27, 2015
  “Only BBC World News America and Al Jazeera have covered any news not about the snow in the last 48 hours. There was a commemoration of the 70-th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz today, with 300 former prisoners in attendance. Only BBC covered it at all, as far as I can tell.”
  
  Wow. This is even worse than I thought. I haven’t been watching the news but this sounds even worse than my blogroll.
  
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Stille (@aperfectbalance)

January 27, 2015

I fail to understand how any amount of snow can be anything more than a minor inconvenience if one lives in a city and is not homeless.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 27, 2015
  
  New Yorkers are so passive. They are allowing their local authorities to shift the burden of the snowstorm onto them instead of addressing the issue.
  
  This is in part why I dislike New York. There is less of a community than anywhere. Everything is completely disjointed.
  
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Pen

January 28, 2015

I always get confused at first when people mention New York and mean NYC. I propose a name change! :p

Frankly, I don’t care about the snow as much as I care about the ice. It’s much more dangerous. But then, I’m upstate, so I don’t really understand the hype in NYC over there being no snow (that kind of hype upstate usually has to do with snow days, of which there are never enough). It’s like what happened at school when Sandy hit: we were going to have our first “snow” day in years and then people were mad when we just got a drizzle. I, for one, was glad the hurricane didn’t get that far inland on the day we were driving back from a conference in Rhode Island (which also didn’t get hit as badly as it could have). Of course, it was also Halloween–maybe everyone was planning a huge party.

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Jones

January 28, 2015

Drama … queenish?

[suddenly imagines Graham Norton and Eddie Izzard singing a duet]

🙂

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