The question presents itself: What the shit do you think you're talking about, lady?

Her two big examples are the John Varvatos store at CBGBs, and the Whole Foods on the Bowery (which is the articles kicker). Great. She mentioned two places within three blocks from one another. Yeah, it sucks that CBGBs is dead, but that place sucked when it was dying and hey, at least Varvatos kept some of the original walls. It could be another Chase Bank, but, whatever.

Here's her thesis:

The problem for those who would like to see a return in New York to its edgy past is that Manhattan, as more than one New York-based blogger has claimed, is still "a gated community for the rich". The cultural critic Julian Brash has complained that under Bloomberg the citizens of New York have been turned into consumers - it is a place where everything is about what can be bought and what can be sold.

Okay, fine. Manhattan's really expensive, blah blah blah. Bankers run everything, blah blah blah. Everything in New York can be bought. And? This city was built by hyper-capitalists, it's why there's so much goddamn money here. Old hat. Certain things about New York absolutely suck and will always keep sucking worse and worse. And let's get one thing straight: people have been saying things about New York sucking for as long as New York's been around. If you read Monocle magazine, which this essay is basically ripped out of, this is like, every issue. This has long been the party line of travel press types—especially ones from abroad—for at least three years. I mean, if you really want to go back, I believe Rolling Stone called New York the Hot Dead Zone in their inaugural Hot List issue. In 1998. Saying New York is no longer edgy hasn't been edgy in forever.

The sequel to this piece is when she inevitably says that Berlin is starting to get really, really hip these days too. Pretty much anybody who went through Ellis Island and didn't stay probably had some sentiment along the lines of "this place sucks." According to the Daily News, one of our presidents basically told us to stick this city up our collective asses (look where he is, now: dead).

But—and I'm sure others have their reasons—I live here because, quite frankly (A) there's still nowhere else in America like it, and like many other people here, I have some sick/awesome compulsion that makes this grind of living here that much more attractive to me than anywhere else and (B) it's still got better stuff than everywhere else in America. Yeah, fuckin' stuff. Awesome stuff.

Now.

Can we quickly go over the reasons London—a nice city, sure—sucks compared to New York? Great:

• Your food sucks. It all tastes like ass until American chefs take two months to do better what you've spent hundreds of years sucking at.
  
  
• The service in your restaurants sucks, because you have to instruct people how to tip by putting a mandatory charge on their tab, like many other countries that do this. Which is the wrong way of doing this, which is why every server you will every have in London will probably be an asshole.
  
  
• Your theater sucks. War Horse—no, really, War Horse—is the best thing you have up right now. Anything good you have on the West End came from us. And don't bring up fucking Billy Elliot.
  
  
• Your nightlife is just stupid. Pubs close at 11, our bars don't close until four. Who goes to bed at 11? Are you serious? So you guys open up clubs that close at 2AM that have two kinds of people in them: the kind who get unceremoniously drunk and piss on everything, or the places Prince Harry goes. And who wants to go there? Also, you only play American music. You think Kings of Leon are the Second Coming of Christ. The Kings of Leon play our bar mitzvahs, goddamnit. By the way: most of those rappers you guys play on repeat (and not even the good ones...50 Cent?!) still live in New York. Our clubs and nightlife might have their issues, but they blow yours out of the water. You guys wouldn't know what to do with The Beatrice Inn if it crawled up your nose in a $100 bill.
  
  
• Nobody knows where anything is in London. Seriously. It's like the worst parts of the West Village for an entire city. Everything is higgly-piggly or whatever dumb word you have for it. We live on a grid. A grid. You guys have the dumbest civic planning this side of kids eating Legos.
  
  
• OH. Don't get me wrong. Our subways suck, for sure. But at least they're supposed to work after midnight, and don't cost half our income to ride. Also, an Oystercard? That just sounds stupid. Who's running your design schemes, Lewis Carroll? Stupid. Oh, and, you wanna talk about EDGY? How about our D-Trains getting stabby again, edgy? Exactly.
  
  
• You guys have never had a nice day of weather in the history of the universe. Seriously. The only person Madonna has to compete with for causing a scene is the fucking sun. It's yellow, it's in the sky, sometimes, it...nevermind. Have you even been here in September? It's like Central Park is trying to get in your pants and get you off, the weather's so goddamned nice.
  
  
• Oh, and the pound is stupid-expensive. Like everything else in your city.
  
  
• Your tabloid newspapers make the New York Post look like The Paris Review.
  
  
• And Whole Foods on the Bowery, sure, Whole Foods sucks. But it's in a pretty great location, and, fuck that, you know what sucks worse? Sainsbury's. Sainsbury's suuuuuuuucks. Which goes back to your food sucking.
  
  
• Do you have Brooklyn? Do you even know what a Brooklyn is? No, not David Beckham's son. You're stupid, shut up. [Quiet Moment: The article didn't mention Brooklyn once, but didn't refer to Manhattan exclusively. Go figure.]
  
  
• London's celebrities are all on Big Brother and fucking suck. They're mouthbreathing idiots. They make Tinsley Mortimer look like Jackie Kennedy.
  
  
• You guys have soccer—yeah, I called it soccer, goddamnit—teams. Multiple ones. Great. We have two baseball teams (including the 2009 World Series Champions), football teams (Including the 2008 Super Bowl Champions), hockey teams (I'm sure they Won Something Great recently), and a basketball team. All of them except for the Knicks could smash every London soccer player. Nothing else, just "smash" them.
  
  
• There is one—and only one—good song about Foggy London Town. There are as many songs about New York as there are New Yorkers, and most of them are awesome.

Anything else? Oh, yeah, did Samuel Motherfucking Jackson just buy an apartment next to your boss? No? Exactly.

Shut up. New York is awesome.

A PR agency had to improve the reputation of shitty Heathrow airport in London, which, how are you going to do that? They are doing it by paying a respected literary figure to sit at a desk, in Heathrow airport, for one solid week, like a monkey in a cage, writing a book about sitting in Heathrow airport for a week, which will then be given away free to travelers at Heathrow airport. Then later if anybody has the bizarre desire to buy said book for cash money, the writer will get some (money). Sounds fun!

Consider what this says about the relative cultural strengths of the book industry vs. the advertising industry. Straight from the NYT:

1. Quote from Alain de Botton, writer: "Right from the start I said I can only do this if you don't even see the text before it goes to print...They just took a big gulp and then to their credit they said, ‘Fine, yes, you can say anything you want.' "

2. Quote from a representative of Heathrow, the ones with the money: "Alain bit our arms off to be involved in the project."

In this economy you could have Michael Chabon live in a glass coffin in your front yard for a month for a 12-pack of Michelob and four dozen donuts.

According to the Daily News, New York is now Milan's bitch when it comes to fashion:

Milan, which ranked fourth last year, has ended New York's five-year reign as the globe's top town for styling designer duds, an annual survey released Monday shows.

The survey ranks cities partly based on how fashion terms like "haute couture" and "mode" are used to describe them in the media, on the Internet and in the blogosphere.

"It was very, very close," Paul Payack, president of Texas-based Global Language Monitor, said of the survey.

The Big Apple's backseat status isn't just a swipe at designers and models. Economic woes helped seal its second-fiddle rank, Payack said.

He said the recession had a noticeable effect on recent Fashion Weeks as designers tried to show off on the cheap.

"The parties were not as big," Payack said. "That was enough to knock New York off just a bit. And Milan seems to have had a very strong fashion season, very well praised and a lot of noise about it."

If it's any consolation, New York did rank ahead of Paris, London, Rome and Des Moines. So there.

Milan sashays past New York to top list of most fashionable cites [Daily News]

We're forced to admit that they are. Also, the capitalist pigs on the opposite side of the protesters are putting their meek, chastened American counterparts to shame, by telling the protesters to fuck off:

City workers waved £10 notes at G20 protesters today as thousands descended on London's financial heartland.

Bankers leaning out of office windows taunted demonstrators on the streets below, who responded with jeers and shouts.

Ha ha! See, the two sides of a protest feed off of each other, so this taunting by the rich just makes the anarchohippies more awesome. Already huge crowds have been 'CLASHING' with riot police, shooting paintballs, and hurling fruit, which gives the whole thing a pleasant "Public shaming in the town square, 1745" vibe. Police helicopters are hovering overhead while smoke wafts through the streets, packed with bandanna-clad punks ready to break shit. Or better:

This morning a group [of protesters], caught with police uniforms, drove a riot truck or armored car through the city.

This is the level of commitment that turns street protests from boring retreads of laughable kids playing anarchist and chanting "Si se puede!" into truly entertaining affairs. They have jeering bankers hurling money out windows and tomato-slinging angry unemployed workers stealing armored cars; we have AIG employees scared to wear logo-ed golf shirts, and NYU food court revolutionaries demanding the right to a vegan lunch.

Let's get our act together, America. We can hate each other in a much more professional fashion. Yes we can! [Pic: Getty]

An Associated Press story printed the St. Paul Pioneer Press mocks Londoners from the headline on: "London, the city that survived the Blitz, crumbles under a little snow." Apparently they got about 4 inches overnight, which shut down the trains and buses, and four more inches in the afternoon that completely crippled the city.

Even a photo caption drips with scorn: "The eight inches of snow, referred to as a blizzard by Londoners, challenged those famous stiff (now frozen) upper lips."

For some reason, Winter is very political! Conservative London mayor Boris Johnson blames the snow on European regulation, and his rival, former mayor "Red" Ken Livingstone, blames it on the Tories. Of course, every time there is winter weather in the States, Matt Drudge helpfully updates us on what Al Gore is up to, because as we all know Mr. Gore claims that because of your SUV there will never be snow again.

Even Rachel Maddow got into the act, wondering why Republican House members voted against the stimulus plan, which would've helped people who got their power knocked out by a real blizzard. An American blizzard.

Snow! It's a handy symbol of the death of rational political discourse based on the acceptance by all sides of the basic reality-based facts underlying the debate! And the English are all pussies!