Colin Quinn: The New York Story

- -Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, folks.

Folks, thank you. Thank you.

- -All right. Stop, folks. Stop!

Stop it, folks. Folks.

- -Enough.

I’m not kidding. I’ll stop the show.

-I’ll stop the show. -

Folks, I’m not playing games. I’ll stop the show. Enough applause.

If you want exuberance-- This is a New York show. It’s not--

Exuberance is the West Coast. That’s my whole point.

Applause is killin’ this city. Understand me?

The West Coast-- exuberant, enthusiastic people--

That’s what they’re supposed to be, ’cause it’s paradise on earth.

So they’re happy and enthusiastic,

perpetually surprised by everything that goes on.

Oh. “The mountains, the beach.” Ah.

Everything they do, they’ve done it a hundred times.

It’s like the first time. “You wanna go to the store?” “Yeah!”

Midwest-- Humble, hard workin’. They had to farm.

So they got that personality.

The South. Very hot. Very polite.

Overly polite because, you know,

could get a little violent if you’re not careful.

I don’t know about you, but I got a concealed carry permit myself.

New England, it’s like they’re always gettin’ hit by mist from the water.

New York is New York. We’re what everybody says we are.

Rude, opinionated, pushy,

loud, fast-talking, sarcastic, wiseass.

But what people don’t understand is,

what’s rude to the rest of the country is polite to us and vice versa.

Because, if I go to a pizza place, and like, “Gimme a slice.”

-That’s polite. Because... -

...you’re not tryin’ to hold the line.

There’s a line. You’re not tryin’ to slow--

If you go into a pizza place like, “Hi, how are you? You must be hot.”

That’s rude. You know what I’m sayin’?

There's no stools. They want you to walk and eat your food.

You have to fold your food and walk.

I remember once, when I was little kid, we went to Maine.

On, like, a family vacation to Maine.

We go to the general store. I wanted to kill myself in five minutes.

I was like-- You walk in, the guy’s like, “Oh, haven’t seen you around.”

Sir, who cares? Gimme my--

What do you care? Give me my soda.

“You... visiting?”

“No, I live here. I’m just very shy. It’s my first day out of the house.”

“You new in town?” “No, I’m the mayor. I just got elected actually.”

But, um, yeah.

New York, it’s always like somebody’s hurrying you somehow.

It’s just a rushed kind of vibe.

But the thing is it's a pedestrian city too.

It’s a city for walkers, not cars.

That’s why you’ll notice every car acts like a person,

and every person acts like a car.

Pedestrians are in charge. They walk like they--

You’ve seen it a hundred times. They walk in the street, the cars just stop.

The driver’s like, “Ooh, I almost got hit by that person. That was close.”

It’s just a rushed and hurried thing.

Even as a kid, in church: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know. Come on. Hurry up.”

Yeah, the New York personality, that’s us.

So where-- Why did the New York personality form?

How did all these cultures come together to make the New York attitude?

Well, first of all, you have to realize, all the people that came here

came here ’cause they were miserable wherever they were.

So now, you know, you got a city filled with miserable people, to begin with.

The first people were Lenape Indians. The first people on Manhattan.

That’s according to them. You’re takin’ their word, which is...

You know, they said they were first, but what are you gonna do?

Say, “We killed the people here before us”?

Of course you’re gonna say you were the first. And, um...

But let’s just assume they were the first people here.

Already, they had an attitude to the other tribal people

’cause they had all the seafood.

This was headquarters for all the seafood. All the waterways.

Give ’em five bushels of clams, give us 40 cartons of American Spirits.

You know-- Give ’em some beads, but get outta here.

Canarsies are like, “Don’t push me.” Canarsie Indians.

And Ramapough comin’ in from Jersey on the weekend for some seafood.

And...

The Lenapes were kinda-- They smoked.

The only place to get tobacco in the whole world was North America.

They invented smoking. Already a New York vibe. They’re smoking.

Standin’ up there.

Henry Hudson sees them standing there, lookin’ at him over the cliffs.

Northern Manhattan. Lookin’ at him.

Smokin’, shirtless. A little homoerotic.

You’re not imagining that.

It’s kind of like-- Right away, it’s not a friendly--

When you think of the Dutch comin’-- The Dutch-- pot, prostitution, Amsterdam.

This is not those Dutch.

This is, like, 1600s Dutch. Everywhere they go, they take it.

And they show up with the navy, so it’s already not--

When you showed up with the navy, that was a statement back then.

’Cause there’s only four navies in the whole world.

And the Lenape Indians don’t have a navy.

Their navies are a couple of strong swimmers, a couple of canoes.

So when Holland’s like, “This is a beautiful place you got here.”

“Oh. Here it comes. It’s not for sale. It’s not for sale.”

“I didn’t say if it was for sale. I’m just sayin’ it’s beautiful. How about $26?”

They’re like, “No.” “Twenty-five.”

“The guy doesn’t understand-- No.” “How about 24?”

We better say yes. ’Cause it’s gonna get lower than 24 soon.

The Dutch just took it. They branded in those--

All those names are Dutch names.

“Bronx” is a Dutch word. “Harlem,” Dutch word.

“Bushwick,” Dutch word. “Brooklyn” is a Dutch word.

“Stoop,” Dutch word. “Yankees” is a Dutch word.

The word “fuck” is a Dutch word. I swear to God.

So if you see anyone on a stoop in Brooklyn going,

“Fucking Yankees,” they’re speaking Dutch.

So. Now, you know...

You know, it’s true. It’s true as anything. Right?

Um... It’s New York.

So now you got the smoking. You got people saying “fuck.”

You’re starting to get a formation of a New York personality.

The surface, you know. But still...

But you still don’t have that attitude that we all--

Everybody from New York thinks they’re better than everybody else.

Everybody, we think we’re smarter.

Not just rich people. Poor people, middle-class--

This is the only city that has blue-collar snobs. You know.

Take somebody, two years of high school, put ’em in a room with MIT professors,

after an hour, you’re like, “What’d you think of them?”

“They’re not New York. They don’t”... You know.

“They’re-- They’re educated. I give ’em that. You know.

They’re smart, but they don’t get it. They got their head up their ass.

No common sense, you know.”

Yeah, we just think-- We go on vacation.

Everybody else goes on vacation to say, “Can you imagine if we lived here?”

We go on vacation to tell people, “Can you imagine if you lived in New York?”

What do you do? “Give me a slice of the pizza. That’s not New York pizza.”

The guy’s like, “I know. It’s Italy.”

“I don’t give a shit what it is. It’s not New York pizza.”

“Gimme that bagel. That’s not a New York bagel. You don’t know...

You have the wrong water.” We tell people they have the wrong water.

It’s not like we live in Minnesota with beautiful lakes.

It’s our water. We act like, “Oh, this is the water.”

But you still don’t have the psychological-- the attitude.

The superior attitude that we all-- That came from the British, you know.

’Cause the British showed up, and the British in those days,

they showed up, it was theirs. Nobody even fought.

They’re just, like, “You know the drill. It’s the British Empire.”

They brought the real navy.

They had the Royal Navy, the biggest navy in the world.

Peter Stuyvesant is walkin’ around. Looks in the harbor one day.

With his wooden leg, you know.

He just turns to his Dutch friends and speaks in Dutch,

“We’re fucked. You understand me?” I don’t know.

And the British were like, “You can keep the names of the towns. They’re quaint.

But lose the shoes.” They’re the British Empire.

“Get rid of the windmills, please.”

“What are you calling it, by the way?” “New Amsterdam.”

’Cause the Dutch named it after their most prized possession. Amsterdam is beautiful.

The British rename it after the sixth shittiest city

in Northern England.

York was always a shithole.

Like, we should have been named New London, right?

But there already was a New London, Connecticut.

But if you’ve been to New London, Connecticut, you realize

they should be called New York, and we should be called New London.

So the British ran it, like I said,

all those Protestant churches in Lower Manhattan were Brit--

And they just ruled, you know, British style.

And they ran until-- Revolutionary War, this was still British headquarters.

Manhattan was British headquarters throughout the Revolutionary War.

So all the-- Nathan Hale hung to death on 66th Street and 3rd Avenue,

where there’s now a Starbucks, of course, on the corner.

That doesn’t say at all--

That ruins the glamour of their death, you know, the martyr.

“I regret I have but one life to lose for your reduced-fat raspberry scone

and your caramel macchiato.” You know.

So the British ran it. Finally, they’re out.

Then it became the transshipment point.

All kinds of stuff, but smaller groups of people.

There was no main group until the Germans.

Germans came in in the early 1800s, and they brought that German personality,

which is still a part of us.

First of all, they brought the delicatessen, which is a German word.

And it’s the German personality that’s still here today,

where the customer’s not always right. They yell at you. They hurry you.

They bully you. Efficiency over humanity.

“Come on. What do you want? While we’re young. Let’s go.

What do you want? You don’t know? Get over there.” We’re still--

We’re still the only city that has two lines.

One’s for people that know what they want. One’s for people who don’t.

And if you get on--

If you get on the line that doesn’t know what they want, you never get back.

It’s impossible.

Yeah, and that German personality is still there. The abrupt, rude-polite.

Where people, like, people from out of town--

They ask directions. They’re smiling. You’re giving them information.

“Excuse me. Where’s the museum?” “Excuse me. Where’s the subway?”

People from New York accuse you of information.

Like you owe them the information.

They don’t say, “Excuse me,” just block you. “Where’d you get the ice cream?”

You’re like, “Holy shit.”

Then if you tell ’em, they want a review. “Over there.” “Is it good?”

If you say it’s good, you have to leave, or they might come back.