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The quality of New York delusional snobbery isn't what it used to be. Exhibit A: Brian Costello, writing in the New York Post about quarterback Kirk Cousins' decision to dump Gotham for the Vikings: "Are you kidding? Choosing Minnesota over the greatest city in the world? Choosing a place where fine cuisine is a Juicy Lucy (don't ask) and high-end shopping is going to Target?"
Because we're nice people who simply sigh with a smile when the guy at the end of the VFW bar starts a Schlitz-babble, we shrug off stuff like this. We simply say, "Well, that's different," and leave it at that.
I mean, who wants to be that guy? Who wants to point out that there's nothing quite like the scorn of people who pay six grand a month to live in an apartment the size of a tool shed and ride to work in a hot, subterranean clatter-box that breaks down periodically and everyone stews in a fog of electrified urine?
I don't.
It would be downright mean to suggest that someone who thinks our fine cuisine is a Juicy Lucy is depending on the ignorance of his fellow New Yorkers, many of whom have considered rhinoplasty extensions in order to have a longer nose for looking down at people who have never spent $423 at the Four Seasons for broasted artisanal quail thyroids garnished with the shavings of Tibetan yak hooves.
Which, by the way, you can get in Minneapolis for $23.
There's more. "Remember, Robert Zimmerman left Minnesota to become Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village!"
True, but he wouldn't make the move today. The Village is a boho theme park for tourists who willingly pay a barista with a carefully waxed mustache $14 to judge them for ordering a cold-press coffee. But we don't want to be that person.
He also wrote: "Do you enjoy temperatures below zero all winter, Kirk?"
Well, Kirk might enjoy living among people who don't react to a half-inch of snow with Pampers-dampening. But if he gets that panicked look of an East Coaster when the first flakes fall — "Lemme out, I gotta go buy bread and milk and toilet paper!" — we'll just say, "Shhhh. It's OK. It's just weather."
There was one last dig: "Cousins chose the Mall of America over Madison Avenue. Enough said." A jerky person — you know, someone who never got off his narrow island and was content to think New York pizza is the greatest in the world when it's really just ironed cardboard with Boyardee sauce — would point out that Madison Avenue is nothing special, at least compared with Broadway or Sixth Avenue.
Don't worry what we think; we're sure you have your reasons. New York is the greatest city in the world. Or so you said.
Now I'm going to turn the light off, but if you freak out, we're just down the hall. Nighty-night.
james.lileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • Twitter: @Lileks • facebook.com/james.lileks
