Manhattan is one of the most densely populated places on earth, with over 71,000 people per square mile in a 26 square mile radius. This sloppy, crowded mess of a city becomes most evident if you’re ever caught near Herald Square or Penn Station during rush hour. In those places, at those times, the desire to jump in front of a cab may rise in you so swiftly, so violently, that you may wonder how you’ve made it so long in a chaotic place such as this one. According to Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z (a song real NYers pretend to hate but secretly love), New York is:
- A concrete jungle where dreams are made of;
- A manic coke fiend that encourages the use of prescription sleeping pills (the city never sleep, better slip you an Ambien);
But most importantly, NYC is:
- A pity, half of y’all won’t make it.
I did not make it, or am in the process of not making it, and one of the outstanding factors that contributed to my failure to ‘make it’ is the density issue. For instance, it would be quite nice to not get jostled and elbowed every time I walked down the sidewalk.
In cities with space, there is not a line to get out of the subway station.
In cities with space, there is not a 50% chance you will end your commute with a fresh new bruise.
In cities with space, the following annoying sidewalk inhabitants do not impact your ability to move in any crucial way:
- Gaggles of chatty teen girls flirting with baby-faced boys weighed down by North Face backpacks.
- Tourists flanked by other tourists flanked by other tourists, stretching five-wide across the sidewalk, paused, while the one in sunglasses studies a map.
- People who move slowly because they have to: children and the elderly, primarily. Mandatory slow-movers are the worst, because you can’t really make a scene about how slowly they’re moving without being an unsympathetic asshole. But still, must they walk down the direct center of the sidewalk?!?
- Drunken bros in backwards caps and Yankees T’s trying to figure out which bar out of the ten bars on the block will have the most “grade A pussy.”
- People from chill places on the West Coast who don’t understand the importance of urgency (or of themselves).
Because of these people, and the sheer lack of space New York offers (my apartment is close to the size of the elevator at my job, for instance), you have to become incredibly adept at weaving. Weaving is one of the first things I picked up when I moved to New York four years ago. Even though I am chronically early to everything, I operate under the basic assumption that I am going to be incredibly late. This means that I rush everywhere, and usually end up getting to places 20 minutes early only to sit in the lobby/outside wishing I’d taken my sweet time. However, I could not rush if I didn’t learn how to weave. Dodging on tippy toe, I scan the crowd ahead of me for any of the people above so that I can plan my attack a half-block early. Dip to the right to avoid the stroller, swerve to the left because I don’t want a flyer with coupons for pizza. Muttering under my breath all the way about how much I hate New York, I eventually make it to my destination unscathed, annoyed and freakishly early.
When I move to the Bay Area, I will miss the skill that proper weaving requires. I’m sure I’ll get to use my weaving abilities should I ever find myself near popular BART stations around rush hour, but the urgency will not be the same. I will still be freakishly early to everything, but at least I won’t be so covered in elbow-shaped bruises.
To employers in the media and publishing industries in San Francisco (or Mountain View!), I am here to introduce an offer that you cannot refuse. It’s easy, cheap, and guaranteed to be beneficial to both the long and short term growth of your business. The offer is simple, and can be summed up in two words: hire me.
This is the internet, so let me provide you with a short listicle of reasons as to why adopting me into your publication’s fold would be a win/win situation:
- Occasionally I am actually kind of smart. I like to think that intelligence is a major commodity in a market that was essentially destroyed by stupidity. I’m about to graduate from NYU with a 3.75 GPA, and I have the subway system down pat. This means that I am both school and street smart.
- I am what one might call savvy, which means that I am well-versed in the Tools and Trade of the Internet. Social media? I was practically tweeting at birth! I got my first AIM screen name when I was eight. I can build a webpage from scratch using HTML and CSS. I can help raise your Google Index through SEO. I can even make that div float so that the text doesn’t get all messy. Don’t know what that means? See, you really should hire me.
- Despite being only 22 years old, I have a lot of writing, blogging and publishing industry experience. Currently, I’m the editor-in-chief of hyperlocal campus news blog NYU Local, which gets well over 10,000 unique hits a day. I’ve interned for the Nieman Journalism Lab and Salon. I’m currently a Staff Editor and Developer for the soon-to-be-launched New York Times East Village Local blog. You can read my full resume here.
- My secretarial skills could put Joan Holloway to shame; just ask my bosses at The Library Journal Book Review, where I’ve been an editorial and administrative assistant for over a year. I am highly experienced in fighting with copy machines (usually the paper jam is imaginary, but it takes experience to figure that out). I also am well-versed in both PC and Mac usage, as well as software packages like Microsoft Office and Adobe Suite. If you hire me, I would be happy to Photoshop you into a picture with President Obama.
- I was reared during the internet age, most consciously during the dot com bust. I am also only 22, meaning that I am the definition of cheap labor. No, seriously, I think that getting paid anything more than $12/hour is “living large,” and getting paid $12/hour is “extremely manageable.”(UPDATE: Please see this comment. I guess I was lowballing.)
Now here’s where we get a little earnest, so if your publication is all about snark, then you may want to just skip this part. The deal is this: I’ve wanted to live in San Francisco since I was 10 years old. The reasons at this point are irrelevant (so what if, like most other suburban kids, I thought On the Road was life changing?), but I have always taken major risks in the name of San Francisco. These risks have almost always paid off. The summer before my senior year of high school, I decided to live in Berkeley for a summer and take a course there. Shy and awful at meeting people, I was naturally terrified of having to adjust my lifestyle so dramatically. Ultimately, the experience was incredibly rewarding, and I ended up meeting two of my best friends through the program.
To move to San Francisco now will be one of the biggest risks I’ve ever taken. Most media and writing jobs are here in New York, my network is here, my connections are here; but my heart is–wait for it–in San Francisco. I can’t value myself as a writer and as a person if I don’t give myself the chance to follow my instincts and settle by the Bay. If it were up to me, I’d have moved to San Francisco years ago–I even wrote my NYU admissions essay about that summer in Berkeley! Because of familial and school circumstances, this is the first time in my entire life that I can actually make the decision I’ve wanted to for years and relocate to the West coast. But San Francisco employers: I need your help to do this! I can’t afford rent on unpaid internships, I can’t pay bills on a meager freelancer’s income. So please, I implore you: look at my resume, and then look into your soul. If you’ve ever wanted something so badly that you were willing to risk almost everything, then you understand where I’m coming from here.
I am an incredibly hard worker, and I really believe that I could be a great employee to you. Once you’ve finished reading my pleas and wiping the tears from your eyes, please e-mail me.
Ed. note: The bragging required for this post made me extremely uncomfortable, but I am willing to step out of my comfort zone if it means landing a job in SF!
Logistics (timeframes, etc.) after the jump.
I don’t know anything about anything here, like “inside.” I saw the little picture with this item, and I read the hedline and I thought “Bleah, I’m not reading this one,” because this was gonna be a deal where somebody makes fun of this guy, like with that chick from England or Britain or whatever who was ready to have a show on MTV, I think, and then like a few months later she was gone. Or it was gonna be like something from The Onion, which is also too smart for me to enjoy without sounding out the comedy-math on every equation-gag. That’s all on me, the Onion is funny, OK? It just makes me tired to read it sometimes. So I wasn’t gonna read this piece until I saw how many comments it had, holy crap! Look at how many comments, so I gotta reasd this shit. And then all the comments, bleah. Look, I am way Less Intelligent and Sophisticated than the average Awl reader, and the only thing that really stood out was when that lady said “IRL.” It took me a minute to unpack that one and then I wondered if people really talk like that. They must, right? It made me feel judgmental about people who speak like that. The facts presented in this piece are Interesting to me, and I am generally not interested in crap like this. Reading about this person and his new job of aggregating teevee stuff and making comments about it was Interesting to me. The background information about his life was like, “wow, this kid is fucking MOTIVATED, man, fucking total Coffee Achiever.” The quote about how his personal relationship got in the way of his work was kinda sad, but I don’t feel sorry for this guy. He is a Go-Getter, Doing Things. I don’t look at GAWKER TV because I am too busy watching teevee, and I thought maybe this would make me interested in looking at GAWKER TV, but I’m not and I probably won’t. I am in no position to judge anyone’s writing about anything, but I would just like to say I thought this was interesting to read, and if you give people facts, they get to make up their own minds. Thank you.
(Via here)