The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
NOTE: The excerpt below is from the April 20, 2010 BOTW archives.
World’s Slowest Missile
“Iranian Missile May Be Able to Hit U.S. by 2015”–headline, Reuters, April 19
The America Next Door
Local BJ32 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents New York City’s residential doormen and other employees, is threatening to strike at midnight tonight. Reader Robert Koslover sends us a link to a New York Times story about the potential work stoppage, along with this note:
I find this to be hilarious. A doorman strike? Is “doorman” a truly necessary job at all? I don’t know any doormen, nor do I normally encounter any, here in Tyler, Texas. Will the people of New York City starve to death without them, or what? Y’all must live mighty strangely, there! Or is this kind of like if the “greeters” at Wal-Mart all went on strike? Whatever would we do then? Ha ha ha!
Allow us to explain. In Manhattan, where space is at a premium, most people live in what are called “apartment buildings.” These are multistory structures subdivided into tens or hundreds of individual dwellings called “apartments.”
The owners of these buildings, especially the larger ones, often employ doormen, whose job is a cross between security guard and concierge. Among other things, they screen visitors, sign for deliveries, and help residents move luggage and packages. Buildings also employ maintenance men–part of the same union–to clean common areas, dispose of trash, make minor fixes to apartments and so forth.
In a 1993 City Journal article, “The Two New Yorks,” Frank Macchiarola noted that the doorman culture is not the norm even throughout New York City:
Most Manhattanites live in buildings owned by someone else, while the single-family home is the norm for outer borough New Yorkers. . . . Manhattanites are used to the idea that other people work for them, while those in the outer boroughs embrace an ethic of self-reliance. Unlike the outer borough homeowner, the typical Manhattanite, living in an apartment, does not paint woodwork, replace fuses, hang wash out to dry, or even take out the garbage.
Most Manhattanites, though, at least are aware that people in the rest of the country live in houses and thus do not have doormen. The email from our friend in Texas, though it gave us a hearty laugh, leads us to think that people in that part of the country are as parochial about housing arrangements as our fellow New Yorkers are about politics.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.
