Dear boys, don't let Billy near the goldfish bowl.

(Read in the accent of a Russian emigrant to Britain)

I wasn't always mad, you know. Actually I was driven mad by the indifference of architects and council planners. You see, I live in a tower block and the terrible thing about those is there's absolutely no noise insulation at all, you know, and eight floors below you there's always some bastard who's got a yamaha home organ. You're just about to go to bed when you hear this "Doop doop chick chick doop doop chick chick... Bow, bow... da badabow!"

And like, the people who live upstairs from me, right, I can't understand what they're doing, you know - I'll listen, and all I can hear is this weird noise that goes "Voom Voom, Fwep, Fwep, Voom Voom, Fwep, Fwep". It sounds, right, it sounds, like two elephants riding on a motorbike while a seal bangs his flipper on the table! I went upstairs to complain, and the door was answered by an elephant in a crash helmet! Standing behind him is this seal going "What is it now, Ralph?"

And I don't know, after that I started getting very depressed, and I started to think I was a piece of sponge, you know?

That's not a city... THIS is a city!

I've lived in metro DC the past 4 years, within the city limits the past 3. I hadn't been to Manhattan in about 5 years, until today. All illusions of being a hip urban dweller have been thrown out the window upon seeing this place again.

comparator	DC	NYC
height	no buildings taller than the Capitol, at 12 stories	The Empire State building has 102 floors.
advertising	no billboards except for the occasional billboard truck	Times Square.
downtown	"downtown" is approximately 10 by 10 city blocks	almost everywhere in manhattan is downtown - the only places there aren't skyscrapers in manhattan is where the ground can't support them
subways	clean, sparse	ubiquitous, filthy
people	mostly assholes	mostly rude assholes
time	downtown and most everything else closes around 6 or 7 when the commuters head back to the 'burbs, except for a few club districts	the city that never sleeps, at least it would seem judging by the horns and sirens as I try to fall asleep
raison d'être	home of modern imperialism	home of modern capitalism

So all told, I'm still mostly glad I live in DC and not NYC, but I suddenly feel a lot less cool about it.