New York comes to London • in a nursery queue
Only in New York, they say: not so, reports Amelia Torode. From all-night queues for nursery places to doggy fancy-dress parties, Manhattan's strangest practices are arriving here New York is a city of superlatives. It's a point of pride. New Yorkers believe that their city and their city alone holds the mantle for being the place with `the most. . . ' — the most crazy folks, the most intense lifestyle, the most fashionable restaurants — you get the picture. There's a belief that nothing can compete. Nowhere else on earth could possibly come close. Cindy Adams, the famous New York Post gossip columnist, always ends her articles with the celebrated phrase: 'Only in New York, kids, only in New York', and people believe it.
I'm just not so sure that this is true any more. It strikes me that London is actually becoming more and more like New York with every passing year.
I recently had lunch with two university friends who had just become fathers. Over sushi and sake, they started comparing parenting stories — the sleepless nights, the projectile vomit, the curtailing of social lives and pre-schooling. Mark's wife had decided to go back to work, so they were looking for a day-care option. Being conscientious parents they did their homework and found the local option that seemed best. At the headmistress Meet and Greet they were told that places were very limited and in high demand, so registration would start at eight. Great, said Mark, it meant an early morning, but he would get there at 7 a.m. to make sure that their daughter got a place. 'I think that you misunderstood me', said the head slowly, 'parents usually arrive at 8 p.m. the night before in order to get a place at our nursery.'
All the way home Mark fumed. I'm not camping out all night so that our one-year-old can go to a bloody nursery, even if the children of a British rock star and his American actress wife are pupils. It's ridiculous! But just after midnight on the eve of registration, Mark awoke, racked with guilt that his own selfish behaviour was denying his only child the best start in life. He walked down in darkness to the local nursery ashamed. Outside the door was another father, shivering with cold. Congratulating themselves on being first in line, and thereby ensuring that their children would one day end up as Nobel Prize-winners, the two fathers bonded and settled in for the night.
At 2.30 a.m. my friend got bored, asked his new father-buddy to keep his place in the queue and went to explore. On tip-toes Mark peered over the walls of the nursery. What he saw took him by surprise, 'It was like Glastonbury, the whole courtyard was covered in tents!' After shouting, 'You're all mentalists' (or words to that effect), he ran back to the front of the school, told them they were not in fact first in the queue and anxiously pulled his coat tight around him and waited for dawn.
At about 6.30 a.m. there were rustlings from this urban-Glastonbury. Rubbing their eyes and checking their BlackBerrys, fathers were emerging from the tents. Within minutes the courtyard was buzzing with the sounds of bankers on conference calls to Tokyo. It sounded utterly surreal. The Alphafathers secured almost all the places, Mark and his new best friend got the last two. The other 50 were turned away. It sounds like a Manhattan pushy parent story. But this wasn't the Upper East Side. It wasn't the West Village. This was London, but not a posh part like Notting Hill or Primrose Hill. This was Kensal Green!
When I left London for New York in 1999 things like all-night parental camping sessions for nursery places, baby-showers and £800 Bugaboo prams just did not feature. Our capital city has changed enormously. It's not just the way that Londoners obsess about their children, it's apparent in the way that Londoners eat (sushi), drink (cocktails), dress (well) and socialise (expensively). It can even be seen in the way that they treat their pets, another typical NYC obsession.
I have happy memories of attending the annual Halloween/Howl-o-ween fancy-dress dog parade in Brooklyn with my mother. Hundreds of dogs competed for the title of Best Dressed Dog. There was a Britney Spears dog (from the 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' era) complete with gym slip, little rucksack and blond plaits; a Marie Antoinette dog with ruffles and an enormous white powered wig and policeman dogs with capes and truncheons. Only in New York, we chortled together. How wrong we were.
This summer I received my first invitation to a doggy fancy-dress party in Peckham of all places. Peckham, better known for gangland killings and sink estates, apparently now has its own annual doggy fancy-dress show, doggy day-care and doggy grooming parlour. Not that I have a dog or have any intention of ever buying one, but I was curious to see where I could buy a dog outfit if I suddenly got the urge. Angels (www.fancydress.com) tells me that fancy-dress hire for dogs has gone up by 293 per cent in the past year with the Superman outfit being the most popular. Stuff like this just isn't supposed to happen here!
In the past, one of the major differences between the two cities was the level of personal grooming. New Yorkers take grooming to a whole new level: mani/pedi's, blow-outs, touch-ups, fake and bake sessions, Brazilians, CBSs for the men (I'm not going to explain that last one!) — it's a new language of beauty that has to be learnt if you want to make it professionally or personally. Now I find that even TopShop has its own Blow Dry Bar, Nails Inc has expanded from one store to over 50 in five years and men (even straight men) fake tan on a regular basis. London is officially turning into New York. It's rather disconcerting. I came back so I didn't need to blow-dry my hair straight every morning and be judged in meetings on whether or not my nail varnish was chipped.
There is a type of person that flits easily between New York and London, equally happy in both, surrounded by friends in both: the NY-Lon. Increasingly I am starting to think that we should just twin New York City and London and get rid of their separate identities — they're merging into one anyhow. Let's call them Nylon City East and Nylon City West. We could have special Nylon passports and strict policies on who we wanted to live in our new unified city, we could ban shops we disliked, politicians that annoyed us and have special holidays just for Nylons. I guess that the only downside might be that we would be constantly surrounded by thin, tanned, overanxious overachievers and their designer children and fancy-dress dogs. On second thoughts, much as I love New Yorkers, maybe I'll stick with London and keep up the fight against its increasing New York-ification, one Bugaboo and one yappy dog at a time.
Amelia Torode is head of digital strategy, VCCP; www.ameliatorode.typepad.com.
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