Upper West Side Story

Once again, I am forced to defend the honor of the Upper West Side, a neighborhood I don't even like all that much.

The Upper West Side takes a lot of crap in our liberal media. The gentry of Washington, D.C.'s suburbs, in the form of the odious sniveling propagandist David Brooks, continually bashes it. As far as Wingnuttia is concerned, it's the People's Republic of the Upper West Side. And now Richard Johnson, the N.Y. Post's corrupt gossip columnist is having a go at it in the context of the Wingnut's latest fake controversy -- Cameron Diaz's Commie BagGate:

While the Mao bag is ultrachic on the Upper West Side and college campuses, in Peru, the "Serve the People" slogan evokes memories of the bloodthirsty Shining Path terrorists who left nearly 70,000 dead.

It's now obvious that the corrupt, bribe-taking Johnson is writing Page Six from a secluded bunker in Tom's River, New Jersey and that he has never actually visited the Upper West Side. If he had, he'd see that the neighborhood is a vertible seething hive of strollers, bank branches, and, increasingly, mall stores (see e.g., the Zales Jewelers on Broadway between 79th and 80th). In other words, the neighborhood is a freaking bourgeoise paradise. Upper West Siders are people that would take up pitchforks and torches rather than allow Shining Path or any other Commie outfit to come between them and their $5 lattes, reserved spot at yoga class, and fantasies of a classic six on a park block. And while you have your occasional intellectual or pseudo-intellectual wandering around muttering about the perils of globalization, the only thing from China that Upper West Siders are embracing are the steamed vegetable dumplings from Ollie's.

Wake the fuck up, Richard Johnson (and David Brooks and the rest of you assholes). There is nothing "chic" (ultra or otherwise) about the Upper West Side.