New Yorkers are nuts. We pay millions for rat hole apartments. If we have a car, which most folks don’t, we pay more for parking than for groceries. Food and clothing cost more than anywhere else. And then there are the taxes—a 9% sales tax on everything you buy. State taxes, city taxes, commuter taxes.
There’s even a mafia tax, which of course you don’t see, tacked on to things like fish. So what do New Yorkers get for all those taxes? Well, part of that tax money goes to something called the Department of Cultural Affairs (search), which just gave a generous grant to a so-called art exhibit in Brooklyn.
One of the main features of the exhibit is a film called “Bjorn Again,” http://www.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/maine/maine2-12-6.asp in which tennis great Bjorn Borg plays tennis with a man who looks like Mr. Borg but is dressed in a skirt to “represent the tennis legend’s feminine side.” The screening room for the film is made up like an old basement den, with green carpet and old issues of Playboy and Club magazine laid about. Said one viewer of the cultural exhibit: “It’s nice to sit down on a couch and read vintage porn magazines.”
So why do I still live here? Like I said, New Yorkers are nuts.
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