What does this even mean?

I love NY. New York City, anyway.

I truly do.

As a senior in high school, more than 50 years ago, I made my first trip to New York City. I went with my friend Kathy during our spring vacation week. We stayed with her Aunt Mary - a "career gal" who worked for Pan Am and lived in Queens - and trekked every day on the subway into Manhattan to play tourist. Climbing the Statue of Liberty. Seeing the Rockettes. Hitting a museum or two. Just walking around and taking it all in.

I still remember exactly how I felt when our Trailways Bus turned onto Amsterdam Ave in Harlem and headed on down to the Port Authority bus station.

There was nothing about New York City I wasn't enamored with.

A few years later, I spent a year in grad school at Columbia. Nominally, I was in a PhD program. Practically, I just wanted to experience New York.

I've been to New York City dozens of times over the years - it was my husband's favorite place on earth, plus I went there plenty on business - and was never not excited to come over the 59th Street Bridge in a cab. 

Sure, in the early days it was dirty. And it was always chaotic and noisy. And yet... The excitement of walking both the teeming commercial streets, and the quiet ritzy residential environs. The hustle, the buzz. The diversity. The dynamism. The Chrysler Building. 

I haven't been there all that often since Jim died - a trip there was one of our last one, when he was in the process of dying, but still a few months away from death - and I haven't been there at all since covid (my last trip was May 2019, for a wedding). This August, I will be happily reacquainting myself with the Big Apple. Can't wait!

Boston, of course, has always had a peculiar relationship with New York. But we all know that, by however many measures we're better, we'll never be the IT city New York has always been. 

Yes, I'd rather live in Boston. It's a lot easier living. I love that dirty water. And there's no arguing that, since the dawn of the 21st century, the Red Sox have been a better, more successful team than the Yankees in terms of winning the World Series.  

Still, there's always a bit of an inferiority complex thing going on, living here in New York City's shadow. (In much the same way, my home town of Worcester has always and understandably been "not Boston" - and suffered for it. There's a reason I fled Worcester when I hit the age of reason.)

And I've always felt that, in general, New York tends to occupy more of the average Bostonian's mindspace than the opposite. In other words, they matter more to us than we do to them.

So what are we to make of a new ad campaign that includes the following message:

Admittedly, New York is famously the city that never sleeps, and Boston infamously closes up shop early, but does New York get up earlier in the morning, too? This I never heard.

And what does it even mean?

Collect more trash? Transport more computers? Hedge more hedge funds?

In the aggregate, New York City will always get more done than Boston. The population of NYC is about 8.5 million; Boston's is 654 thousand. Even if you just look at Manhattan, it's got a million more people than Boston does. 

So how could New York not get more done than us?

This ad is part of a new ad campaign that's supposed to:

...“cut through the divisiveness and negativity” that has plagued the city since the pandemic. True to its unifying goal, it quickly featured a swipe at Boston.

Introduced last week, the “We ❤️ NYC” campaign is meant to represent a new era for the city, reminding people they can come together no matter their individual background or what community they hail from, campaign promoters told the New York Times. (Source: Boston Globe)

Twitter, of course, exploded.  

These are a few responses from the pro-Boston Twitterverse:

One person assessed the ad in simple terms on Twitter: “They hate us cuz they ain’t us.”

“If they’re name-checking Boston, we’re living rent free in their heads just a wee bit,” another observed. “Sorry to me this reads like an ad for Boston,” a commenter agreed.

New Yorkers weren't exactly in ❤️ with the new campaign:

“This negates the whole premise — that Boston is never even on our mind!” one person pointed out.

Exactly! 

Another accused the city of having a bullying problem and that the advertisement defeats the purpose of the campaign.

“Sure go ahead pick on a city less than 1/10th the population of their own city. This does nothing to promote NYC,” the person tweeted. A Bostonian quickly responded, “1/10th the population [but] 2x the intellect.”

Hah. I say hah, hah. (Okay, I don't know about that 2x intellect thing, but hah, I say hah, hah.)

While we're at it, here's the original wonderful I-Heart-NY from 1976, and the updated, "we the people", sans serif version that's featured in the new campaign.

The original is still the greatest!

Meanwhile, that ad campaign...

What is it that a New Yorker would say?

Fuhgeddaboudit!