Scout Atlanta

austinkleon:

Saul Steinberg’s New Yorker map of the world, New Yorker cover, March 29, 1976 (via)

My friend @jndevereux, who now lives in Austin but lived in New York for over ten years, had an excellent rant about “smug provincialism” after @kbandersen tweeted the John Updike quote, “The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

New Yorkers who celebrate smug incuriosity…I love New York, lived there nearly ten years (through 9/11), etc., but smug provincialism is the most tedious thing about NYC’s culture. New Yorkers are never more like the hicks they disdain than when bragging about how they have no interest in other places. And I’ve lived for years in New York and among hicks, so I know what I’m talking about. It’s like the famous Steinberg poster, which I read as slightly barbed satire, but some people seem to think is a guide to right thinking. I got angry when people in NYC would tell me “only tourists look up at the buildings.” ONLY A BUFFOON IGNORES THE BUILDINGS! LOOK UP! It always bugged me: you live in a fantastic city, but you’re supposed to act bored about it and the world? F that! In short, celebrate curiosity and cosmopolitanism, not narrowness. I love you, NYC.