No One Should Come To New York To Live Unless He Is Willing To Blow Tons Of Money On Overpriced Drinks And Mediocre Meals

I was single when I first moved to Queens. A friend of mine who was eager to somehow set me up on a date got in touch with her niece (or some relative) who lived in Manhattan to see if this person would want to go out with me.

My friend reported back that her niece (or some relative) would be happy to meet me — only after I "made it" to Manhattan. This from a person who apparently lived in a closet-sized place in Midtown East with a hot plate for a kitchen. Not a kitchen the size of a hot plate but rather an apartment with literally a hot plate instead of a kitchen.

I was fine with all of this — my own kitchen at that first place in Queens was large enough to eat in, and had a full-size stove to boot. Besides, I figured, if I ended up with this person then we'd probably have to go out to eat all the time and that would get tiring, not to mention expensive. I know that there are people who never eat at home, and who use their ovens as storage or whatnot. I don't actually remember how I know that there are people who use their ovens as storage — it's possible I saw this on television once or something and it stuck in my head, but the hot plate kitchen was something I distinctly remember.

Being that so many people in New York go out to eat, it's not surprising that there are over 24,000 restaurants that the City Department of Health inspects. Granted, there are a lot of places on that list that you'd never want to go to — according to the Yellow Pages, there are 52 Domino's Pizzas within 10 miles of "New York, NY" (that's 65 minus 13 in New Jersey that turn up in the search), which is a ridiculous enough proposition in a place known for "good pizza."

Even paring down this huge number to the restaurants you would actually go to, there is still an astonishing number — New York Magazine has 4069 restaurant listings in its restaurant database, 854 of which are "critics' picks." I know some of those listings are restaurants that are now closed, but using this number, if you visited one per day it would take over eleven years to try all 4069 restaurants and more than two full years just to visit the "good" ones.

But if half of Manhattan is living with just a hot plate then I guess it's important to have all these restaurants.

Although we try, our current apartment is not great for entertaining — it's small, we don't have much of a dining table and we're living next to and below people that we should at least attempt to be civil toward. So unless it's summer and you're able to go to a park, restaurants and bars are some of the few places to go to socialize. They're kind of like public utilities that way.

And people like to take advantage of a public utility — diners "camp" at tables while they catch up with old friends, freelancers and fly-by-nights use coffee shops as a work space, the Health Department uses restaurants as cash cows. People have birthday parties, baby showers and even wedding receptions at restaurants and bars. People go to restaurants and bars on dates. Respite in an urban environment like Manhattan means settling in for an evening at a bar or having a meal at a restaurant.

A few years back, Jen volunteered at a grade school on the Lower East Side. The public school kids had two observations about their neighborhood: One, that Jews wear hats and two, white people go to bars. It makes sense when you think about the Lower East Side — that's what middle-class kids on the Lower East Side do — they go to bars. Or at least that's how it seemed to the neighborhood kids. And if you stop for a minute and think about it, what else is there to do on the Lower East Side? Community Board 3 loves to crack down on bars, but in some ways who can blame them?