My college friend who is in town this week is here with her boyfriend of 1.5 years. Her boyfriend is originally from India, did graduate work and work in New York for about nine years, and now lives in the Phoenix area. Given that he spent almost a decade living in New York City (different areas of Brooklyn), he knows it fairly well and told my friend he knew where to go and what the best places to eat were. My friend, who is also food obsessed, knows that I am food obsessive with both finding places to eat and cooking. So of course, she reached out to me for my recommendations for specific areas they’d spend time in. After I gave her a handful of recommendations for one or two neighborhoods, I sent her my entire NYC Google Map, which I am constantly updating (yes, really, pretty much every single day something is being added, edited, or removed at least once). This list, as of today, has 761 places across all five boroughs; yes, that’s right: all five boroughs. And when he saw her refer to this mysterious food map that I’d created, he got a bit jealous.
“What, are you really referring to your friend’s food map? her boyfriend said, rolling his eyes. “She lives in the Upper West Side. What would she know about Brooklyn food? Don’t you remember I lived here for nine years! I know the good spots!”
My friend was quick to put him in his place (I love this about this friend; she never fails to call out bullshit when she hears it and delights in telling people when they are wrong). “Umm, you clearly don’t know Yvonne at all,” she retorted. “She goes everywhere and knows all the places all over New York City. This list has over 700 spots across all the boroughs! Have you been to all these neighborhoods?! Plus, you moved away four years ago; a lot has changed since then!”
His friends they were staying with made similar comments, trying to dismiss anything that someone like me living on the Upper West Side could suggest. My friend was annoyed because she kept saying she wanted to eat Asian food, but all those friends did was take them to Italian-adjacent and American foods places. “I can eat this food in Phoenix!” she grumbled. “I want ASIAN FOOD!” Somehow, her preferences went mostly unheard.
While her boyfriend’s eyes did widen after he heard the 700+ spot comment, he still was not convinced. He wanted to box Chris and me into the “Upper West Side” box, as in, if we live here, we must not know much about any neighborhood outside of where we live (or work)… because why on earth would anyone want to leave their neighborhood and see other areas? And this is where he was glaringly, glaringly dead wrong about us.
On Wednesday when they mapped our address to come over for dinner, he immediately saw the Google map label that said our building was a “luxury building.” He looked at my friend and said, “Who the hell are these people?” And when he got to our lobby, checked in with the doorman, and went up the elevator, he made more comments like this, in shock and confusion of who the hell we were and what the hell we did for a living that would allow us to live in a “luxury building” like the one they’d be hanging out in for the next nearly five hours.
So over the course of their time at our place, somehow all his assumptions were proven wrong — about Chris, about me, about what it means for people like us to live on the Upper West Side of New York and what that may say about who we are as individuals and what we like, dislike, and believe in. He ate my food. He drank Chris’s whisky and wine. He laughed at our commentary and banter and engaged with us. He had a good time and felt like himself. And on their hour-long commute back to his friend’s place in Brooklyn with my friend, he said he liked us a lot and perhaps the greatest praise of all you can give to your girlfriend’s friends: “They’re my kind of people.”
It’s always fun when assumptions are proven wrong, isn’t it?