I'm a New Yorker, balls to bones.  I remember when New York was a gritty place.  We took pride in our toughness, our resolve, and our street smarts.

Today's New Yorkers, however, define themselves slightly differently. There is an unspoken ideal at the back of every young New Yorker's psyche these days. It is no longer mentioned explicitly, but at an almost subconscious level, all of today's New Yorkers look at their lives, and their circle of friends, and measure their worth with respect to the same rubric, guided by the same persistent question: 

"Guys, are we like Seinfeld yet?"

No longer is the prototypical New Yorker  a gruff construction worker with a foul mouth and a heart of gold, sitting on an I-beam high above the streets and whistling at a midtown secretary on her lunch break. 

No, today's New Yorker is haunted by the fading ghost of a horse-faced, high-jeaned, occasionally-hilarious manchild and his bumbling band of sycophants.

This zeitgeist (whitegeist?) is reflected in all aspects of the modern New Yorker's life.  He refuses to get married or move into a house.  He refuses to date for more than a couple weeks.  It is unclear as to whether he has ANY interest in forging a meaningful bond with a mate. What IS obvious, however, is that that forging such a bond is NOT the modern New Yorker's primary dating motivation.  The true motivation is crystal clear: dating is a means to generate humorous anecdotes to be recounted the next day in a coffee shop or deli.  The raison d'etre for all New York nightlife is to fuel the daytime coffee shop economy.  Without bad dates, conversation runs dry, and the modern New Yorker may actually be forced to look directly into the blazing sun of adulthood.

Perhaps the most enduring complex to emerge in Seinfeld's voluminous wake is the Elaine phenomenon.  When the modern New York man cuts off one of his trite couplings, he does not make a  clean break, and he does not move assuredly forward.  He keeps the girl in question close, in relationship ether, in hopes that he may land that legendary relationship unicorn: an Elaine of his own.  This is no joke.  I still hear this phrase weekly in New York: "she is like my Elaine." 

An Elaine is that ex-girlfriend who settles into a delightfully platonic friendship, forever furnishing you with a delicate dose of sexual tension and feminine companionship. Like the unicorn, an Elaine is a myth. You two will never truly be friends, because you will remain forever disgusted by the idea of each others' genitalia mashing elsewhere. But that will not stop New York men from keeping their exes lingering about, meeting them at the coffee shop, taking in movies together, and--yes--occasionally sleeping together, accomplishing nothing beyond mutually assured HPV infection.

Don't get me wrong, gang. I love Seinfeld. But this used to be a city of men. You guys gotta grow up.

Get out of the coffee shop.

And let Elaine go. 

[Images courtest of flickr.com users violentz, i'll spank you with my lips, amisko, mingwall]