I go to grad school in the city, but live on Long Island, in a town where I have lived for the past 19 years. Getting to and from the city means (for most Long Islanders) taking the Long Island Railroad (LIRR), a commuter rail system that links the city with most of Long Island, extending as far out east as Montauk on the South Fork, and Greenport on the North Fork. Heaven forbid I have to take the train at rush hour, here is the general scenario:
I get on the train and start walking down the aisle, trying to find the seat. In each car, there are two sets of seats: two-seaters and three-seaters. The general rule, logically, would be that if there is an extra seat and there is someone that needs a seat, the other person would make room for that person to sit down. Not the case on the LIRR. Three seaters are occupied by one person and five bags, two seaters likewise. There are times where I just give up and stand in the vestibule, hoping people get off at Jamaica. Other times, I will march down the aisle, find the person most unwilling to give up their extra seat, and make them make room. That coupled with the businessman who can’t stop cursing on his phone, the Botox-ed fiftysomething drawling on and on about vacuous nonsense, and the teens who are perpetually inebriated and inappropriate, well that pretty much sums it up.
Ok not exactly, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But why?
Perhaps it is a function of our being so close to New York City, the financial capital of the world, but I can’t speak for Westchester or Rockland counties, or for New Jersey or Connecticut. From what I’ve heard, they don’t quite have quite the same…er…aura that Long Island does.
Perhaps it is a function of our being Hollywood’s little haven. J.Lo has a home in Greenvale, P. Diddy has a pad out in the Hamptons, and the list goes on.
Nonetheless, there’s something that’s causing Long Islanders to be these cookie cutter people. Men have their suits, briefcases, and Blackberries; women have their fake orange tans (or worse yet, leathery skin from real tans), gaudy French-manicured nails, excessive makeup, plastic surgery, Tiffany jewelry, Coach bags (or maybe Prada), and Blackberries. Starbucks and tanning salons are ubiquitous. Materialism is their god, indulgence and excess, their salvation.
Going from high school to college meant a few drastic changes. It meant going from a place where the teacher and the students excitedly talked about getting highlights that weekend, where Prada and Gucci were a way of life, where conformity trumped any other pursuit to a place where…well…people were actually concerned with varied pursuits, new points of view (political and otherwise), and just plain old diversity. Gone was a lot of the racism and homophobia, replaced instead, by a healthy respect for all things unique and different.
Not all of Long Island is racially/ethnically homogenous, but it feels like much of it still is. Certainly Long Island does feel like a conservative stronghold, among the older generations, though the younger generations are slowly starting to break the mold.
Oddly enough, coming from Long Island I didn’t think too much was wrong, but it was when I realized what Long Island’s reputation is on the outside that I realized that there was much that needed to be addressed. “You don’t strike me as a Long Islander,” people would say, and when I asked why I wasn’t, they would often just roll their eyes and laugh congenially. “It’s a good thing,” they would finally add.
Long Island has been my home for the last 20 years of my life, for better or worse. I went to Long Island schools. Among my closest friends are friends from high school. I’ve shopped at Roosevelt Field, gazed out from Montauk Point, and done research at Long Island’s premier labs. There is a connection I have with Long Island that I can’t deny.
Not everyone from Long Island is as I’ve described above, to assume that would be foolish. Really this can be applied to any similar piece of suburbia in the backyard of a large, populous city. This is just the trend that I’ve seen among the majority of Long Islanders, a trend that is disturbing and needs to change. I can’t comfortably consider myself a Long Islander without adding to it, all the baggage and stereotypes that come with the title. I can’t see myself living here in the future, past marriage, past having kids, and beyond. I can’t imagine my kids growing up to be among those often disgruntled, boorish, and self-centered LIRR riders. I don’t want my kids to just settle and conform to the vapid norms, I want them to stand up and take a chance, I want them to think of other people besides themselves.
The world does not revolve around any one of us, none of us is entitled to anything. I don’t care if you are a big shot trader on the floor of the NYSE or a plastic surgeon, netting millions of dollars a year. I don’t care if you own a mansion in the Hamptons, I don’t care if you’ve partied with the Olsen twins. I don’t care if you own stock in Armani, or drink only fine Bordeaux. Get over yourself. Get over yourself and make room for your fellow passenger. Heck, maybe strike up a conversation with them, you’ll be surprised at what you can learn.
Yet there is hope too…
A week ago, I was again, caught in an LIRR train at rush hour, waiting at Penn Station. I was in a three-seater, filled to capacity, with most other seats taken up. It took me a while before I noticed the noticeably pregnant woman standing next to me, her swollen belly creeping into my peripheral vision. I think she might have been standing there for a good five minutes before I even noticed. Clearly no one else noticed either, because she was still standing, and no one had offered her a seat. She must have been seven or eighth months pregnant, and she was still standing. Can you imagine standing with a ten pound load on your abdomen and legs? So I turned around after no one else decided to do anything to ask her if she wanted to sit. She declined, saying she was getting off at the next station (Forest Hills, as it happened to be, which is a ten minute ride). Yet really, I can’t stand for ten minutes with my bag slung over my shoulder. How would she fare for ten minutes, standing with a living load that needs far more protection from the jostling of a train? So I gave up my seat, much to the shock of everyone in the train. Really people? Is it that unusual? So I stood, sandwiched between several people standing in the aisle, and when the woman got up to leave at Forest Hills, I moved aside and let her pass before sitting down. The man standing in front of me also grabbed a seat. What surprised, and moved me, though was that at Forest Hills, another woman had come in weighed down with bags. The man, who had just gotten himself a seat after standing in the aisle from Penn Station, thought better of it and gave up his seat for the woman.
I consider that a little victory in my book. First one person, then the whole LIRR ridership, then who knows? I’m not saying I’m a crusader for all things good, but if I can do something to inspire someone else to do the right thing, then I think I’ve won something.
Conclusion: Long Island is a place of good people who, unfortunately, have lost sight of the more important priorities. Long Island is not all bad, though if someone can direct me to the parts that have not been overrun by corporate ambition and wonton materialism, that would be lovely. 
7 comments
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November 11, 2008 at 12:43 am
NJT
I’m going to comment on the first half of your post rather than the latter half, because things that make me angry make me happier than things that make me happy. Trust me, it makes sense…at least in my head.
I abhor the LIRR. Not because it’s prohibitively expensive for most normal working people, but because of the clientele it draws. Ugh. Our taxes pay for the construction of a railroad used almost entirely by assholes.
I also abhor the goddamn Prada/Gucci/LV bags. The only thing I detest more so than the bags are the people who carry them. I know guys have their materialistic indulgences as well, but $600 for a goddamn bag? What the hell is wrong with those girls? At least a car has an engine and a radio and four wheel drive. What the HELL does a prada bag have? ultra-super-cool…pockets? The best part is when spoiled brats have the nerve to argue how they’ll be able to teach their children values on how to spend money. Yea, u can tell them how you had to wait TWO whole days for your BEAMER as a high school graduation present. I don’t even bother arguing with those coconuts, and you know how much I love to argue.
Alas, these grievances are probably the result of unresolved childhood envy, but I still love Long Island, and I frankly cannot think of living anywhere else.
November 11, 2008 at 2:19 am
silence
Unfortunately, America is a consumer, capitalistic nation, and as long as money (and its associated power) gets people places, materialism will remain alive and strong. Personally, I feel none of us (at least the blogger, the first commenter, and myself) have the right to really judge. Yes, there are people with their $600 Prada bags and Blackberries and iPhones, who may not give a care about anyone else. But…is their seeming ignorance to the rest of society a function of these materialistic things? Does owning a fancy bag, or phone, or car cause these people to act the way they are? There are plenty of people who may not be as well off, who don’t have the means to buy into materialism, and I’m pretty sure they’re not all angels. Similarly, there are so many rich, spoiled “brats” who do as much good for the world as any of us. If you hate being stereotyped as a “Long Islander,” then first you have to stop perpetuating the stereotype by speaking against these people. I’m sure none of those Botox-ified, cursing Businessmen, Prada wearing people like being stereotyped either.
I’m not saying that the incidences you mention were completely and utterly coincidental, but all I’m saying is that a person’s values are not exactly inversely proportional to how much materialism they buy into. And if you want to look at it from a spiritual lens, you don’t always have to bypass materialism to attain the spiritual goals of self-evolution and “enlightenment.” There are philosophies that promote materialism and indulging in the “here and now” to conquer it and move past it (i.e. arguable interpretations of Tantrism). In short, if you stereotype the people who are materialistic as inhumane and ignorant, then you’re no better than them.
November 11, 2008 at 3:31 am
Julie
:::extreme chord:::
November 11, 2008 at 9:36 am
sospokesaroj
You make a good point, kutty. Yes, the stereotype needs to stop being perpetuated by others who don’t necessarily fit it. However, it is also on them to stop falling right into the stereotype with the greatest of ease. While the bag and the Blackberry don’t make the person, they certainly don’t help assuage what may have already been there, in the way of egotism. If you want to tackle it on a more spiritual level, perhaps they were born into a mode (rajas) that predisposed them to covet material objects instead of spiritual pursuits. Nonetheless they’re not permanent situations and they should aspire for better things, but many of them don’t. Yes there are situations where materialism is promoted in order to get past it, but that’s the operative phrase…”to get past it.”
I’m not saying all materialistic people are inhumane and ignorant either, a lot of Long Islanders just tend to have a knack for multitasking in that regard. There are obviously the Warren Buffets of this world, there’s no denying that, but the self-centered ones far outnumber the self-sacrificing ones.
This, though, is more a tirade against the culture of Long Island, not the world as a whole.
November 11, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Hon Most Rev Dr Cesidio Tallini
You cannot start changing Long Island without changing yourself a little, and/or your perceptions to the land. Long Island is the way it is, after all, because it is a divided island (the new Romans divided and conquered like the old), and has historically fulfilled the role of appendage of the United States.
It doesn’t have to be that way. You can start by changing the name of Long Island, which typically doesn’t even mean all four counties of Kings, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk, and call it Independent Long Island (ILI).
Independent Long Island as a concept means the very opposite of what Long Island is today: independent of New York City (aka Manhattan, aka Wall Street), independent of New York State (aka Albany, aka Upstate), independent of the United States (aka Washington, aka Uncle Sam, aka “that government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation”).
Once this intellectual change has begun to settle, then other changes are possible. Since people will begin to depend more upon each other, rather than upon every other place outside Independent Long Island (including the places where they make those Prada and Gucci bags), Iliers will begin to look after their neighbour — yes, write the word like the Brits would, because you can live without Webster’s Dictionary too — more often than they do today. I’m not saying you can affect these changes overnight, because Rome wasn’t built in one day either, but if you’re not willing to put into effect these changes every day, nothing will change, or things will change at just about the same speed you do.
Some resources in the links below might help. The first is a book, the most interesting book you’ll ever read, and the second a great website:
http://book.ilination.net
http://ilination.net
November 11, 2008 at 7:51 pm
NJTrivedi
Dear Silence,
You raised some great points. I just wanted to know that roughly 70% of my response was inspired by you. And you’re from the west coast. Talk about stereotyping LI, right?
I was unaware that you were an expert in capitalism/materialism. A sociology course would help you understand that they are not one and the same. Materialism is damaging on so many levels not only to society, but to the person. It is this sort of country wide “Long Island” materialism that partially devastated our economy, and chronic consumerism is probably as devastating to the psyche as nervous eating, and drug use excess.
November 13, 2008 at 5:49 pm
chrissy
firstly, i’d like to say i think nj is worse. try going down the shore in the summer and you’ll see what i mean…
Also, this entry strikes a chord with an incident that happened on the lirr yesterday. some guy, about 22 i think, dropped his phone and ipod on the tracks of the bellmore train station at 4:30am yesterday morning. He was hit by an oncoming train and killed. over an ipod.
this tells you something is definately wrong with our society, no?
also, i think you judge long island because it’s all you have to compare. but if you went to many other parts of the country you would find much less intelligent and tolerant people. you are comparing long island to ithaca.
try comparing it to the hick backwoods towns in the south that are still dominated by the klan and high schoolers don’t know how to read.
you may find the people annoying, snobbish and full of themselves — and they are. but there are worse things you could be, and worse places you could be.
long island does have some of the best schools in the country, and thats why it’s attracted all these wealthy people who would spend alot of money to live here.
its obv not perfect, but there are trade-offs no matter where you live.
p.s. i cant wait till i can afford to move to manhattan