A couple months ago at Gothamist’s Laughable Hype show at Tonic, the hysterical Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel did a bit where they’ve renamed all the NYC neighborhoods. I don’t remember most of the new nicknames for all the various ‘hoods, but I do remember that the Lower East Side became “Go Fuck Yourself!” and the Upper West Side (where I currently reside for at least another 6-7 weeks) earned the moniker “MILFland.”
It’s a well-earned alias. You basically have three populations on the UWS, especially within my little stretch of contained by the 79th and 86th Street 1/9 station stops. (You know, “one-nine” really rolls off the tongue better!) First there are the college students — the ones who seem to spend every night at Brother Jimmy’s, Bourbon St. or Jake’s Dilemma, not to mention the inexplicably always packed Cafe Lalo. Then there are the more middle-aged couples, usually Jewish, who have lived in their apartments for 30 years and are probably still paying about $600 for a classic six! But most prevalent, it seems, are the starter families: professional couples in their late-20s/early 30s who just bought their first apartment in what, on some blocks especially between CPW and Amsterdam or between Broadway and Riverside, could almost be considered the suburbs in Manhattan — at least below, say 150th Street. As a majority of married couples do, they start to have kids. And these kids wind up in strollers, being pushed around the UWS streets by their mothers, many of whom have managed — thanks in part, I’m sure, to Equinox, NY Sports Club, the JCC and, don’t you dare forget the oh-so-reasonably priced Reebok Sports Club — to very diligently return to what I can only imagine was their pre-maternity figure. And, as Paul and Rob so applicably noted, what one finds on the UWS are a lot of hot women barely able to hold up their weighted left hand yet managing to push a stroller, talk on a cell phone, calm a crying baby and maybe even carry bags of groceries or other shopping, all without breaking a sweat. They are MILFs, and this is MILFland. (By the way, if you need to click that link you need a major course in pop culture and modern American colloquialism!)
Why do I bring all this up, you ask? Because of the other thing that seems to happen to so many of these new mommies, not just on the UWS. Now, sure, I’m not a parent, and I don’t know the hardships of actually having to be the one responsible for the crying two-year-old on my hip, but I do recognize what a hard job parenting is, and I sympathize with those who have already chosen to undertake it. With that said, there is a really annoying sense of entitlement that I see in a lot of the younger parent set, especially the – shall we say – slightly more affluent group.
Let’s take my experience this morning, for example. I actually woke up really early, forced myself to the gym, came home, showered, and decided that I would go out to get some breakfast. I was sitting there alone, minding my own business, reading this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine and enjoying my omelet. In come two mothers (and is it too disparaging to say neither would actually technically qualify as MILFs), each with her own daughter, each – I would guesstimate – about two years old. One of them wouldn’t shut-up. She was crying, yelling, knocking around one of the bowls on the table – whatever. Whenever her mother would turn to her and ask what she wanted, she would suddenly turn silent, but when the mother returned to talking with her friend, the baby would start screaming again.
OK, this situation was not actually my problem. I mean sure, it was annoying, and it was only one table away from me, but whatever. Do I wish the parent had been able to control her daughter more? Yeah, of course. But I also know that sometimes there’s just nothing you can do. And this wasn’t a movie theater – it was 10:30 AM on a workday at a nearly empty diner.
What bugged me was something I overheard coming out of this same mother’s mouth about 10 minutes later. I suppose she had placed and changed an order, either for herself or her daughter. The waitress brought the order, and while the mother didn’t exactly lose it, she started sternly telling the waitress that this wasn’t what she ordered and she had changed it … blah blah blah. I wasn’t really paying close attention, and I’m not sure exactly what the waitress said – it didn’t get heated, and I think she was just trying to explain what happened, but it doesn’t really matter. What the mother said next was: “You should go out of your way to accommodate us. We have two small children.”
Are you fucking kidding me? You know, I’ve never actually waited tables, but I’ve had so many friends who have, I know how hard a job it is. Yes, I have been known once or twice to get really annoyed, upset even, with a waiter when something really stupid happens, but for the most part, I have a lot of respect for anyone who does that job without running away screaming in the middle of every shift. Now the service at this particular diner isn’t anything special, but the waitstaff is also not required to go out of their way because some woman decides to bring her screaming kid in there. Because she chooses to bring her two year old to a restaurant does not mean that anyone should go out of his/her way to accommodate them. Maybe a nice person would say, “Look, I’m not sure where the miscommunication happened, but I did change the order, and I’d really appreciate it if you could help us because we have two hungry children with us,” or whatever!
It just goes to a larger issue that bugs me, and is maybe one of the few ways that I sometimes find myself agreeing a bit with a more conservative crowd: this entitlement people have when visiting someone else’s business. I know tons of people who love New York’s smoking laws, most of them non-smokers but some who smoke as well. Me? I haven’t smoked in 10-1/2 years. I enjoy not coming home from a bar smelling like ash (or ass!), but at the same time, I just find the law annoying. Why should a business owner not be able to allow what is a legal product and activity from occurring in his/her establishment. Go ahead – regulate the shit out of it. Make it a requirement that a smoking section have a certain level of ventilation and even air filters. Charge a health tax on a business that wants to allow smoking. Make sure that signs on the outside of the restaurant or bar clearly state that smoking is allowed inside. But leave the decision up to the business owner.
Of course the argument becomes, “But why should I be subjected to someone else’s second-hand smoke.” You shouldn’t, and you know what? You don’t have to go there! I’ve always thought (and I would bet money on this being true) that if such a system was created, what we would find is plenty of business owners deciding to reinstate smoking and just as many, if not more, choosing to stay non-smoking. And then all the non-smokers could choose to not go to places that allow smoking, and if those business owners discovered they were losing business, maybe they’d return to an all non-smoking place. But the problem is that people feel they have the right to go anywhere and do anything and complain if the environment is not to their preferred liking, and that’s just wrong.
You bring a baby to a restaurant, you don’t get preferred treatment just because you brought a baby to a restaurant. It might be nice for the people there to help you out, and chances are they usually well, but you are not entitled to anything, just like when I go to a diner at 10:30 during the work week, I am not entitled to a breakfast free from a screaming baby. If you want what you’re entitled to, stay at home!
And thus ends this test of the emergency broadcast system.
Out of Focus 