My Friend Is a Die-Hard Elitist Snob, So How Do I Fix Her?

by The Concessionist

Dear Concessionist,

One of my friends is elitist. I don’t have very many close friends, and she’s only recently become one of them; still, I love her and trust her like any of my older friends. She’s a native uptown New Yorker who went to a prep school and later an Ivy League college. She’s really smart and hard working. She has a great job that I know she got only by making use of her own credentials. We met over four years ago now — we’re in our mid-twenties — and now we see each other at least every two weeks. We live in different neighborhoods, so it feels like we hang out frequently.

Everything should be great between us, but I struggle sometimes because she’s kind of an asshole about class. For instance, most of our acquaintances (common or not) live in Brooklyn. I find myself in the borough almost every weekend to hang out. She won’t go to Brooklyn, ever, under any circumstance. I’m not sure when was the last time she went. Maybe Smorgasburg in 2013? There have been over 20 house parties in the past two years that she’s been invited to but refused to attend. A couple of times I’ve co-hosted said parties. Still, nothing. Bushwick, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, not even Clinton Hill she’ll do. When people ask me about it, I often say she works really hard and is a huge trek for her to come all the way from Tribeca to Utica Ave., even though I made an even longer trip from East Harlem.

The party thing above is kind of petty, but it’s her most repeated offense. Her lifestyle is questionable on Marxist grounds in other ways. She won’t live in a building without a doorman, or a bunch of other amenities. She won’t date people who didn’t go to “good schools,” which I’m pretty sure means “an Ivy League institution, save Cornell.” She is a member of private clubs in the city. She will judge you for wearing vintage clothes.

I brought this to her attention when it exploded, and she “kind of [saw] her point.”

She just doesn’t get it.

At the same time, she mustn’t abide by these rules 100% because I wear second-hand clothes, use the subway regularly, and, like, make under 40K, yet she calls me her friend. This makes it all the odder when I detect hints of elitism in her behavior. I call her out on it constantly, too, but she always replies with something along the lines of “that’s just who I am,” which, let’s ignore for the moment.

I’ve grown to love her but I’m not sure I can continue to call a friend someone who seems to be so out of tune with her (our) reality. What do you think?

A Friend In Deed

Dear Friend,

Your friend is absolutely identifiable to you, to herself, and to everyone on the avenue. She is queen of The Manhattan Snoots. Molly Ringwald with a rainbow of Birkins. I dig it. She is alien to you. But she totally and fully gets herself, and she is not ever going to take the G train with you. You would not want her to take the G train with you. You would be embarrassed, and she wouldn’t care. She knows what she likes.

Plus she grew up here, so her tastes and identity have cemented with a rigidity unknown elsewhere in the world except Paris, Tokyo, Singapore and possibly Beirut. She is utterly clear about this.

This is all quite central to who she is. These are not secrets. And… for some reason, you keep bringing all this up with her? This seems really rude! I mean, I’m glad someone’s ragging on her about not stepping on the necks of poor people on her way to the safety deposit box packed with conflict diamonds, but… is that really our job as actual friends?

Why is she putting up with this? And what are you getting out of it? And then why, when she says “yes, that’s who I am, enough already” are you persisting in picking at her and picking at her? That’s not a friendly thing for a friend to do. Even if you’re actually Brooklyn’s consensus-elected social justice sheriff, give yourself the night off once in a while.

Friends are, at a bare minimum, supposed to say “Yo, that is racist” when white friends say something racist. Definitely we are supposed to speak up when people start ranting about the One World Zionist Government. But actual friends are not supposed to be running after each other nipping at their heels for their behavior. Yes, it’s hard when someone says “I only date people from good schools” because, I know, it is so LOL-worthy. But you know already that the LOL is on them.

There’s a bigger question underneath here about whose New York we all live in. In many senses, the rich people were here first. New York may have belonged briefly to The People at a couple of junctures, but it most certainly does not now. Between the rental and the vacancy rates dangles the truth about #deBlasiosNewYork. It should not be a surprise that you and I aren’t coming up on top, pal. Upper middle class or actually straight-up rich people have been either entering or returning to neighborhoods their sort haven’t seen in decades, if not a century. The rest of us are just trashy froth on the sea of this great movement of real estate investment facilitated by deliciously low interest rates.

So what is this cool, vintage-clad, super-sensitive, rent-party-havin’ city of leisure-Marxists you think you live in? Hey, the subway costs ALMOST THREE DOLLARS NOW, whether you’re going to Ridgewood or the The Hotel on Rivington. I am sure that half your non-snobby 25-year-old pals are rent-subsidized by a force other than their own paychecks. Maybe you’re actually just living in a former slum, but all around you, the kids are just slumming it. You’re not dumb, you know this already.

On a slightly more shallow note, why do you hate nice things? I don’t really know what you have against doormen and private clubs. You KNOW how hard it is to get a fucking package delivered in this town. I’d kill to have a doorman. You know who would love a doorman to keep track of shit for them? Most poor people. Private clubs are so nice too, I love when people take me to a club and I get a very ridiculous mocktail and gaze upon all sorts of expensively sandblasted people I don’t care about and will never see again.

When was the last time you went somewhere snooty with Miss Snoots? Why aren’t you opening your horizons to the real money-laden freakshow of our city? Are you going to the enormous and unending galleries of Chelsea, our maddening auction houses, the great fabled stores of Madison Avenue, the silly boutiques of NoLIta? These are all TOTALLY FREE resources, where anyone can be educated on the very best in art, fashion, design and commerce. WHERE ELSE CAN YOU SEE $1100 JEANS? Don’t you want to know how and why they’re made? Why aren’t you going to parties and EATING FREE FOOD? That is the whole point of being 25 in New York City! And then, with a mind full of fresh ideas, you can go back to your Bushwick bedsit and boil some corn on your hotplate.

Because you have a tendency to be a bit of a pill. One little thing that’s really interesting here is that you’re making excuses for her not appearing in Brooklyn. “Oh, she couldn’t make it, she just works so hard you know.” Whaaat. You sound like a sexist 1940s cliché of an alcoholic’s wife! Why are you doing this? When I blow off a party because I don’t feel like dragging my ass to another borough or because I just don’t feel like it period the end, the last thing I want is someone making excuses for me. You know why I’m not at your party? I had something better to do. Maybe it was merging with the couch for 90 minutes because I just found out all of Friday is online. But I’m me, I’m intact as a human, and I can communicate regarding my presence or absence as I see fit, when I see fit.

I like you, and I realize I’ve just been ranking on you for ages here. YOU SEEM GREAT AND FUN AND NICE. (Even though I still sorta can’t decide if your letter is real or fake. I eventually decided I didn’t care, because it was so interesting.) Lemme leave you with a couple little obvious things:

1. It’s okay for people to be different. Not all my friends are marching in ideological lockstep with me! That would be really difficult to achieve. Plus the tribunals would get exhausting. What crime is too small to prosecute? And where does it stop? Do I have to cull my Tumblr followers? Do I have to block lots of people on Twitter who are miserable full-time victims? You know, the kind that is on the hourly hunt for offense and martyrdom, who are really just looking for people to scream at? Who have so terribly lost their way online that they don’t know what they’re even doing on the Internet anymore? Who have gone so thoroughly through the mirror in their pursuit of bullies that they have become that thing they hated? Oh right, yes, I do have to go block them all, good point, BRB.

2. SORRY, GOT DISTRACTED THERE. People change over time. They really do. I have seen really rigid friends soften, and vice versa. I can unblock those people I just went and blocked at any later date. They will change, you will change, I will change, she will change, who knows, maybe you’ll end up being a huge, rich, horrible Wall Street jerk. Kick me down a little something when that happens, okay? Meanwhile, chill.

3. There’s more to learn about what you like and care about. If I could ask one thing of you, it’d be to challenge yourself with a weekly expedition in discomfort. Discomfort is great! It’s like hunger, but it gets fixed by feeding your brain.

And if none of this advice works, then just remember this message from “Good Wife” actor Matt Czuchry:

Wherever you are, whoever you are, I want you to know you are an amazing and beautiful person. pic.twitter.com/JSYAM1k5h7

— Matt Czuchry (@CzuchryMatt) November 18, 2014

Ha ha, I know, the poor thing, he must be starving. Let’s go eat some food too.

The Concessionist is an adult human in New York City who is somewhat worn down and willing to make a good number of sacrifices for a peaceful life. Is it decision fatigue? Or just ennui? That’s probably a question for a psychiatrist. Anything else, ask me.