New Rule: Being From Somewhere Else Means Your Old Place Sucks

Fact:  If you don’t live someplace anymore, that means — the old place you’re from sucks.

Got it New Yorkers?  Got it Texans?  Got it Californians?

The fact that you aren’t living there anymore means your old place stinks.  It sucks.  You voted with your feet and a moving van.

Otherwise, why would you leave?  Why did you leave?  What made you pack up everything and leave that place behind like an old beer can for somewhere else?  If the place you revere so much with all that self-delusional nostalgia is so great, then answer me this — why aren’t you still living there?

I just returned from South Florida, otherwise known as New York City’s “sixth borough.”  From Miami Beach to West Palm Beach, it’s more like New York in many ways than The Big Apple itself.  Which is all fine and good.  I’m as fond as anyone of great Italian restaurants, and South Florida has some of the country’s best.  But at least let’s admit one thing.  You all fled that miserable place by the millions like rats leaping from a burning ship because there were greener pastures elsewhere.

Maybe it was because of the lousy weather up North.  Perhaps because New York is way too expensive to the point of obscenity.  Maybe because most of “The City” is a cesspool unless you’re lucky enough to be rich and live somewhere along Park Avenue.  I’m sure New York is nice if you have a doorman, enjoy a panoramic view, and you can go see a show and eat dinner out every night.  Whatever.  Now, let’s turn off the rerun of Friends and get back to the real world.

So unless you’re still living in New York, then shut up about it.  You voted where you really want to live — with your feet.  You took yourself “off the island.”  No one voted you off.  You moved on your own.  Now man the fuck up about it and admit the place you’re from isn’t so great after all.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t be living somewhere new where the sun shines most of the time and the cost of living is much cheaper.

I’m not discriminating here.  I’m not just picking on New Yorkers.  Texans are just as bad.  Maybe worse.  One thing New Yorkers and Texans have in common is they’ll both let your know where they’re from within the first 60 seconds of meeting.  Ever notice that?  People from South Dakota don’t act that way.  Then again, if I was from South Dakota I’d want to keep that a secret, too.

Here in Las Vegas, it’s transplanted Californians who make up most of the human tidal wave.  They’ve all flooded inland and ruined everything.  Let me tell you something, you “former” Californians.  We really don’t give a blind squirrel’s ass how you did things back in El-Lay, all right?  You somehow turned what was once a garden paradise into a giant CO2 tank filled with poisonous gases, punctuated with 450 channels of shitty television shows and two-hour commutes.  Now, you immigrate to Nevada and Arizona and want to lecture us on how to do things?  Here, as long as your mouth is open I’ll give you something to choke on.  Now shut up and let us run things.  We’ve still got a chance to make sure you don’t fuck it all up.

Once, I sat on a plane next to a woman who informed me she was originally from Chicago, which to her was the center of the universe.  For three hours it was “Chicago this,” and “Chicago that.”  Come to find out, she retired and moved to Glendale where it’s far warmer and cleaner.  I felt like saying to her — “Honey, Chicago can’t be all that great if you’re now living in Arizona, now can it?”  But I was nice and let it slide.  Which brings up another point — have you ever heard of anyone retiring to New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago?

Hell no!

But we sure see a lot of New York ball caps, Boston sweatshirts, Chicago jerseys — in other places around the country.  When these sports teams play in places like Florida, with huge populations of ex-pats, very often more fans are in the stands cheering for the visitors.  Go to a New York Yankee game at Tampa Bay sometime and see what I mean.

So, right here and now let’s make a new rule.  Unless you’re serving in the military or working a job where you have no control over where you live, then you have to shut up and quit spewing outdated delusions.  Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia — wherever you left behind — is now a meth lab.  A drug den.  A crack house.  Hey, at least you were smart.  You got out of there.  Congratulations.  You’re one of the lucky ones.  Others weren’t so lucky.  Now, please do us all a favor.  Shut up, okay?  You’re living somewhere else now.  Celebrate your new home.  Take pride in that.  You make the decision to leave, which is basically all we need to know about the place you left behind.

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During the Cold War, lots of Russians, Eastern Europeans, and Chinese jumped over barbed wire fences and climbed across minefields to come and live here in America.  You didn’t hear them bragging how great things were back in East Germany or North Korea.  They knew how wrong that would have been and how ridiculous they’d sound if they parroted such nonsense.  Most of these newcomers took great pride in their adopted home and revered their new culture while maintaining a silent dignity when discussing old memories of what they left behind.

It’s not that way anymore.  Sure, it’s okay to be proud to be from New York or wherever your from, so long as the emphasis is on the word from — as in waving goodbye to old illusions and outdated fantasies that are no longer true.

Otherwise, turn around and go back “home” if where you came from is so great.

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