Sorry, New York

There are a million douchey love letters to New York City written by Carrie Bradshaw wannabes that include sentences like "LOL thanks for having every form of take-out ever because I use my stove as a place to store all of my shoes!"  Guess what, girls?  That's not charming or New York-y, that's what the scientific community would classify as a "borderline hoarder tendencies."

There are also a bunch of irreverent "manuals" to living in New York City, which are usually plastered all over the Facebook pages of girls you went to high school with who love cupcakes.  They say things like, "picture hearing a man playing the saxophone outside your bedroom window. End up hearing a lot of sirens instead. Figure it’s okay because it’s New York and you’re still so happy to be here."

Yeah, okay. 

What it comes down to is that while New York is a giant asshole, so are you.  Maybe it's time to apologize.

And though I'm someone who has literally apologized to more than one person by quoting lyrics from Ruben Studdard's "Sorry 2004," (what I'm trying to say here is that apologies are not my strong suit), I think it might be time to try to apologize to New York.  For all of my drunken shenanigans, for all of the complaining, for EVERYTHING.

1.  Sorry for continuing to be so surprised by how expensive everything is.  I should be over this by now.  If I wanted to pay $1.50 for a beer, I'd still live in Niagara Falls.

2. Sorry for walking through your movie sets and telling the Production Assistants that I can walk "wherever the fuck I want."

3. Sorry for throwing up on your streets, in your bathrooms, and in the back of your cabs.

4. Sorry for tricking all of your cab drivers into going to Brooklyn.

5. Sorry for roaming through the streets and screaming "Man in the Mirror" at 2AM on the day that Michael Jackson died.

6. Sorry for singing out loud ever.

7. Sorry for fantasizing about leaving you every now and then.  It's usually around July when it's about 100 degrees out and I'm in a subway car where the air conditioning is broken, there is a hip hop dance crew, and a homeless person who smells like piss pretending to read a Korean newspaper.

8. Sorry for only going to that one bar in the East Village even though you offer about 10 million more that I could patronize.

9. Sorry for all of the public bathrooms I have defiled.

10. Sorry for all of the public bathrooms I've cried in.

11. Sorry for skipping all of the great locally brewed beers on offer and going with the Bud Light.

12. Sorry for going to New Jersey.  I didn't have fun, I promise.

13. Sorry for pissing all over your limited park land.

14. Sorry for thinking that all NYU students are pretentious dbags.

15. Sorry for getting kicked out of a significant number of your bars.

16. Sorry for patronizing Chevy's (that was one of the places I got kicked out of, FYI) and Dave & Buster's in Times Square.

17. Sorry for only giving money to the homeless people that I find amusing.

18. Sorry for skipping all of your amazing cultural offerings in favor of a six-hour Millionaire Matchmaker marathon on Bravo.

19. Sorry for believing fake interpretations of what New York would be like based on various episodes of Friends and Law & Order (any given day it could be mildly amusing and non-threatening, or I could be murdered in a parking garage).

20. Sorry for going to the Olive Garden (surely, there are better breadsticks elsewhere).

21, Sorry for "hating" tourists even though I moved her 15 minutes ago.

22. Sorry for breaking every photobooth in every bar and always demanding a refund for my $2.

23. Sorry for ordering Dominos.

24. Sorry for never going above 50th street.

25. Sorry for laughing at John Elliot's stupid jokes on the CBS morning news.

26. Sorry for not understanding the point of NY1.

27. Sorry for going to a Mets game and looking at the field exactly one time.

28. Sorry for not registering to vote in my district to avoid going to jury duty.

29. Sorry to the bodega owners I've yelled at about the cost of cigarettes.

30. Sorry for taking "All You Can Drink" brunches as a challenge.

31. Sorry for not giving a shit about the Prospect Park Bike Lane.

32. Sorry to the subway riders who I have silently judged based on the books they're reading.

33. Sorry to Williamsburg and Harlem, for never giving you a chance.

34. Sorry to all of the ridiculously-dressed people that I've taken photos of because I thought I would start a blog titled "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WEARING?!"

35. Sorry for using Canadian quarters at the laundromat.

36. Sorry to Time Warner Cable, for thinking that paying $120 a month would entitle me to cable TV and internet that work properly.

37. Sorry to the waitress in the Irish pub whom I accused of not actually being Irish and instead "putting on a show" for the customers.

38. Sorry for always seeing something and never saying anything.

39. Sorry for saying dramatically that I need to "get out of the city."

40. Sorry for stealing a brick from an unguarded construction site to level my air conditioner.

41. Sorry for having absolutely no desire to eat a Nathan's hot dog.

42. Sorry for trying to convince starry-eyed tourists that it's not actually all that great here.

43. Sorry for thinking that every single person that brushes up against me is going to give me bedbugs.

44. Sorry that I equate "all of the walking I do" with real exercise.

45. Sorry for Halloween 2009, where I knocked over several police barricades while dressed as Sue Sylvester from Glee.

46. Sorry for fantasizing about a backyard and a washer and dryer.

47. Sorry for not thinking an exposed brick wall should up an apartment's rent by $200.

48. Sorry for writing pretentious restaurant reviews on Yelp.

49. Sorry for thinking that "New York, New York" is a little contrived.

50. Sorry for almost always not being sorry.

For more half-assed apologies and general douchebaggery, follow Amanda on Twitter @amandawaas.