Every City I've Lived In (Based On Its Drivers)
The autobiography of a mediocre driver. Plus recs for Rusty Foster's Today on Trail, Maria Bamford on office life, and Kitboga's scam baiting
Los Angeles is famously a driving city. I won’t get into the whole tragic history of how L.A. was actually, at one point, a public transportation mecca but then nefarious businessmen conspired to tear up the extensive network of trams. Regardless of how we got here, L.A. is a car city now. And nowadays, the answer to how we got here is that we drove.
Spending so much time in a car has gotten me thinking about the different places I’ve spent time in and how their drivers compare. So here’s my experience driving in each city I’ve lived in.
NEW YORK CITY:
As a native New Yorker, I only learned how to drive at the end of high school. Most people in my graduating class did not have a license (and many still don’t). When I took driver’s ed, the instructor drove around the city picking us all up and then having us drive to the next person’s building. The very first time I was behind the wheel, a cab driver immediately cut us off and the instructor had to grab the wheel to narrowly avert a crash. I was very shaken up. He was completely unfazed. “Let’s go get a bagel and coffee from this cart I know on 95th Street.”
I got into my first actual fender bender because I was trying to parallel park in front of a group of guys watching me from a stoop. They started heckling me and I smashed down the gas pedal instead of the brake and scraped the side of the car against a hydrant. I will never forget the sound of the collective “OOooooooh….” that they let out.
If there’s one gift that learning to drive in New York has given me, it’s constant anxiety. I never go a full minute while driving without the awareness that this is the most dangerous activity I’ll be involved in that day. I’m responsible for thousands of pounds of metal flying through space much faster than any living creature has ever evolved to move. It’s terrifying. As you can imagine, I’m a fun addition to road trips.
ATHENS:
I spent a year teaching English in Greece after college. As far as I could tell in my time in Athens, there did not appear to be any sort of traffic or parking laws at all. You just move your car or your moped wherever you can squeeze it and when you get where you’re going you drive onto the sidewalk and wipe your hands of the whole situation.
I didn’t have a car in Athens so I mostly took the bus or metro. Occasionally, I would rent a car which often involved haggling in a way that I’d never experienced at a Hertz counter in the States. One time, the rental car people wrongly assumed I didn’t understand Greek (I’d been taking lessons) and I heard them say that my rental would be 100 euros cheaper if I paid in cash and didn’t ask for a receipt so they could avoid paying taxes. Conveniently, when they came back, I happened to mention that I’d be paying in cash and didn’t need a receipt.
More frequently, I would take a taxi, which provided me with a good opportunity to practice actually speaking Greek, not just eavesdropping. Greek taxi drivers were thrilled that I could speak even terrible Greek with them. After a few pleasantries, they’d inevitably ask me where I came from. I’d say New York. Then they’d say, no what village are you from? When I explained that my family wasn’t Greek, they’d almost always turn around with the same wide-eyed expression of shock as they yelled, “But you have a Greek head!”
BOSTON:
Before I lived in Boston, I never thought about myself as a person with a lot of anger. But after commuting daily in Boston traffic, I discovered that even imagining in my mind the merge onto Storrow Drive would be enough for me to kill a person in cold blood. Once I found myself aggressively honking at what turned out to be a car driven by an elderly woman. I took a long hard look at myself in the rear view mirror. “Who have I become?” I asked myself. Then she deliberately cut me off and gave me the middle finger.
LOS ANGELES:
One time a guy backed into me at a stop sign. I was fully stopped. This man was reversing. I honked to let him know I was there. He did not stop reversing. I can’t imagine a situation where I could be less in the wrong. Nonetheless, this guy refused to share his license or insurance information. When I started to get upset, he looked at me and said, sympathetically, “I know. Fucking people, right?”
He was right. But also, he was the people!
Sometimes in L.A., I’m the one in the wrong though. One time, the power went out in our neighborhood and Mollie was appalled when I started cruising through intersections without stopping. “What are you doing? When the stoplight is out, you treat it like a stop sign!” This was news to me. We realized that I’d never been in that situation before since, in New York, if the stoplight goes out, there’s always a police officer in the intersection directing traffic. I just assumed if there’s no cop there, I’m good to go through. Turns out that is not the legal way to handle things.
A more common situation in LA is that I will be driving on the highway and see a person driving the car next to me who seems to be fully unaware that they are even in a car at all. They’re writing a screenplay on their phone or getting extremely high or doing their makeup or all of those things at once. The one thing they’re not doing is paying attention.
Maybe that explains why they’re so relaxed. It certainly explains why I haven’t lost my NYC anxiety. Either way, I’m just grateful to not be driving in Boston anymore.
My projects and upcoming events:
LIVE IN NYC: Wrong Answers Only at Symphony Space - THIS THURSDAY! May 23rd at 7 p.m. We’re doing a live show all about the insects of New York City with Dr. Jessica Ware of the American Museum of Natural History and comedians Josh Gondelman, Alison Leiby, and Marie Faustin. Details and tickets here
LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO: Wrong Answers Only at The Independent - Sunday, June 30th at 7 p.m. Comedians Josh Sharp, Aparna Nancherla, Joanna Hausmann, and I try to understand the science of dark matter with Dr. Risa Wechsler. Details and tickets here
PODCAST: How to Be a Better Human (TED/PRX) - John Paul Brammer, the man behind the ¡Hola Papi! advice column, talks about what it takes to give and receive advice well. We also ask him to help several listeners and the people who work on our podcast with their tricky situations. Maybe the only episode of our podcast where we’ve gotten juicy gossip… Listen here (or wherever you get podcasts)
This week’s list
GREAT:
I’ve been a big fan of Rusty Foster’s Today in Tabs newsletter for a long time. It’s a funny, sarcastic, weirdly comprehensive roundup of the digital and media drama every weekday. Recently Rusty even got profiled in the NYT, which is a funny full circle moment since that’s exactly the kind of piece he’d normally make fun of in his newsletter (and, in fact, he did). I love that Rusty lives on Peaks Island in Maine, and yet knows more about daily media gossip than anyone I’ve ever met in Manhattan. Soon, Rusty’s going to start a new newsletter where he reports from the Appalachian Trail, which I can’t wait to read.
FUNNY:
I get asked pretty frequently who my favorite comedians are. The truth is, my list changes a lot based on who I’ve seen live recently or what pops into my head. But there are a few people who I always feel comfortable recommending. Maria Bamford is solidly on that short list. She’s hilarious and unique (and also an extremely kind and generous person in real life). Here’s one of my favorite bits of hers: Missing Office Life
INTERESTING:
There’s a specific genre of news story that I feel like I’ve been seeing more and more recently: scammers getting caught in their own lies. I can’t deny there’s something satisfying in hearing how a person trying to rip off an elderly or vulnerable person ended up getting tricked themselves. But the digital versions also make me think how the responsibility of policing this behavior shouldn’t be on random people with free time on their hands, it should be on the platforms that are enabling and monetizing these technologies. In the meantime though, it is pretty fun to read about “scam baiters” like Kitboga. From NPR: To make sure grandmas like his don't get conned, he scams the scammers
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People, right?
Chris Duffy
This has been Bright Spots, a newsletter.
…wait, who are you?
I'm Chris Duffy, a comedian, TV writer, podcast host, and both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student. I’m currently writing a nonfiction book about humor for Doubleday.
Masshole reporting in—I feel obligated to apologize for your typically Mad Max Fury Road experience in the fuckin Commonwealth, but also DO FRICKIN BETTAH NEXT TIME!! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU AHHR! NOMAHHR?! JEEZUZ H, KID! Sorry! I am obligated to say that part too. Please send help. We are not wickid great here. 🤷🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️
This was great! You nailed Athens. I spent a few months there when my father worked on the Olympics. I made friends with the head of transport for the production company. He was a fifth generation Athenian taxi driver (his great great grandfather used a horse and wagon). Panos took me everywhere, usually on his scooter. Can’t tell you how many times I saw him literally tap another rider on the shoulder, say something in Greek, then make his way through a seemingly impossible traffic jam.
You also nailed LA! I laughed out loud at the guy’s comment about people. So self aware and yet so oblivious all at once. That’s the highest state of enlightenment for an Angeleno.
Speaking of LA drivers who are unaware that they are driving, I was driving Christina to work one morning. We were on the 101, just passing universal on our way into Hollywood. Traffic slowed. The man in front of us opened his door, emptied his bong water onto the freeway, closed the door, topped off the bong (bottled water I guess), packed it, sparked it, and was puffing out white clouds of pot smoke by the time we hit Highland. I was speechless. Christina said, “so… I guess that’s a high occupancy vehicle, right?”