the enemy is us: an introduction

Drop me down anywhere in America and I’ll tell you where I am: in America.” 
Martin Amis, The Moronic Inferno,

Amis had a great eye for detail but it was wasted in America. Baltimore, Birmingham, Bakersfield; it was easy to see that one was pretty much just like all the rest. Imagine Amis on a book tour. In every city, he stayed in the same hotels—Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt. Ate in the same restaurants—Capital Grille, Ruth’s Chris, Applebee’s. Shopped in the same stores—Banana Republic, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Home Depot. The readings were always at Barnes & Noble and the coffee was always from Starbucks.

There was one exception—NYC. “Heat, money, sex,fever—this is it, this is New York, this is first class, this is the sharp end,” Amis wrote in Money. It was also crass, commercial, and vulgar. But New York had its own brand of vulgarity, not one that was franchised across the country. “The barrelling cars and cabs shoved on by the power of their horns. All the contention, the democracy, all the italics in the air.” 

Thirty years later, when Amis and family moved to New York, that gulf between the city and the country had narrowed. New York has always been a city of extremes but the rough edges had been filed down for the tourists and corporations. The poor had been pushed into the farthest corners of the city, the street walkers rousted, Times Square had become Disneyland. And now, the coup de grâce, the gated community has arrived in the form of Hudson Yards, where geographic isolation and high prices do what fences and security guards do in the rest of the country. 

I don’t like it. I want a city with soul and New York is losing what made it special.

It’s hard but I want to end this dirge on a good note and what could be better for New Yorkers than bad news for Olive Garden. It’s hard to explain but New Yorkers have a deep, admittedly irrational, loathing for that institution alone. Olive Garden must have picked up on the feeling during their marketing research. While Applebee’s piled into the give boroughs with almost 20 locations, Olive Garden never opened more than three restaurants. Even better, two of those have closed due to a lack of customers. Only Times Square is left, where tourists probably make up 90 percent of the business. Mangia merde e morte!