Crosley on the best and worst of life in the City.

Question: Is city life better than suburban life?

Crosley:  The right answer is it’s different, right? But the real answer is yes. It is better. It’s difficult to say. It sounds like it would be impossible to define better. It sounds like it depends on what you mean. But even if I think of every category I can just sitting here of the typical trump cards that suburbia has, which is raising kids and grass and a safe environment, I think those are just misconceptions about city life. And then what suburbia tends not to have is the cultural smorgasbord or what have you to choose from. It doesn’t have that. It doesn’t have the diversity necessarily. I think I’m happy where I grew up. As if it’s my choice, I say I don’t regret it. I don’t know what I would do with my own spawn. I guess it depends. It depends on whatever it right for you but I do think that city life has more to offer and therefore might be just unequivocally better.

Question: What about New York makes you the most happy?

Crosley:  It’s funny. I always thought this would make a good New York Magazine piece, except it would sort of die on the vine, just like suggesting the idea I’m pitching the idea, is really all you need to know. You wouldn’t then subsequently need to read an article about it. But I would love to find out because I do a lot of these surveys, everyone’s favorite pizza places and where does Salman Rushdie go when he wants to buy new shoes. I don’t know, but New York Magazine I’m sure one of these days will tell me. And until that day, I think it would be a good bet to talk about New Yorker’s favorite minute in New York, like what’s the best way you can spend 30 to 60 seconds. And for me, just because I’ve done it enough times going out at night downtown and then I live on the Upper West Side; usually if I’m on the east side, a cab has to cross Central Park at night in the 66th Street entrance and especially in the winter, if you look left and there are no leaves on the trees, you can see Central Park South and the first thing you see is the plaza. It’s lit up in this way that almost looks cartoonish and it just reminds you of how, even if you didn’t want to be reminded or how you thought about New York Before, it became so common place. It just a very sort of romantic little moment and it’s just a nice, quiet little moment and eventually, it fades as the cab passes through that. So that’s really my favorite part about New York, is the 30 seconds it takes to get home.

Question: What about the saddest?

Crosley:  What makes me the saddest about New York? I think how impatient people are and how it seeps into yourself. There was a woman the other day. I was coming down the subway stairs and she had a baby carriage with her and I was clearly going to miss this train because she was sort of wobbling with this baby carriage down the stairs. But that’s the price you pay. Then as I got closer and people were huddling behind her trying to flow down the stairs and not fall down the stairs, I realized that there was no baby in it. She was just really, really damned slow. I wanted to be physically violent towards her. It’s her right to walk a little slowly and it’s that impatience that seeps in. Maybe suburbia is better. Maybe there are roses you can stop and smell but there’s none of that in New York and it’s hard to find it. You have to seek it out.