Re: Why Should I Care...

While I fully respect your comments about the aged Who and the difficult
city, I feel most compelled to defend New York.  I've lived in NYC for five
years.  I'm in my mid-twenties.  New York is dirty, angry, lovely,
passionate, fearful, funny, heartbreaking and absurd--24 hours a-day, seven
or eight days each week.  More than anything, it's profoundly human, whether
one wants it or not.  As a writer, I can't imagine living anywhere else.  The
place energizes me, like Dickens's London and Dostoevski's Petersburg.  More
importantly, it demands the *individual's* energy at a time in history when
passivity and compliance threaten from every screen, speaker and billboard.  
(By the way, I'm riffing a bit on E.B. White's essay, "Here is New York," a
perfect explanation of the city's contradictions.)
I like Chicago, too.  And San Fransisco is gorgeous and romantic.  And New
Orleans is sexy and slippery.  But, against the odds, I fucking love New
York.
(And I'm grateful that Mr. Townshend picks up his guitar for a gig here quite
regularly.)
- --R.