A Hater’s Guide to NYCFC

Welcome to a Hater’s Guide to NYCFC*

This is a special “petty” edition of the Guide in which “petty” means that we’ve eschewed the normal structure of the guide and went from attempts at clever observations to potshots that are rarely based in actual fact. Why? It may be because Sam is intoxicated and feels like being extremely petty because he keeps running into his ex’s in unexpected places and instead of holding a dialogue and working through repressed anxieties/fears/regrets/objective deconstructions of his own limitations as a romantic partner and lover, he’s decided to project them onto the fans and members of a soccer team which he has never met and onto anyone else who happens to be in the crossfire like you, you sad human wasting their life reading a soccer blog as a distraction from the fact you never lived up to your parents expectations sorry, sorry, sorry I didn’t mean that, I’m projecting again, I apologize, let’s focus here, stop distracting me.

As always minimal effort has been put into this. There has been little research, next to zero editing and there’s a legitimate chance that you won’t find any of this entertaining in any way. If you take any of this seriously you deserve to be made fun of. As a commenter once eloquently stated even after reading a disclaimer about how dumb and irrevocably pointless this article would be…

“This is a waste of time. Nothing here folks.”

What do you want me to do here? You want me to make fun of New York? You want me to make fun of one of the most notable cities in existence? This isn’t Kansas City. This isn’t Minneapolis. Heck, this isn’t Orlando. I can’t just waltz in, crack a few jokes about their cities residents lives are meaningless for living in meaningless places that contribute in no way to the culture of literally anything except for I don’t know, I want to say competitive Yo-yoing? Any jokes that I can make about New York have already been made somewhere by someone at some time because no city is more freaking “there” than New York. Though if I had to point anything out I didn’t like about New York I guess I would start by going after their flimsy trash pizza they think is great because it’s big and because to them having three quarters of the cheese and toppings fall off at one time is “part of the experience” and because they’ll yell at you for daring to try and use a fork in their presence while their face is covered in cheese and anchovies and Italian sausage and whatever other ridiculous nonsense they’ve placed on the soggy giant Wheat Thin they try to pass off as authentic cuisine.

Their subway system being terrible and making them 30 minutes late for their friends one man play in Brooklyn about how their story of struggle as an actor is “like, basically the Colin Kaepernick story” is exactly what they deserve. Scorcese is trash and the only good movie he ever made is the first 20 minutes of Goodfellas. Their heroes in other sports besides soccer are all losers. Jeter is the single most overrated player in the history of baseball, Ruth got famous off hitting 80 mph fastballs into the bleachers at Yankee Stadium about 220 feet away while there were 40 other Negro League players who could have smoked him at the time, Willis Reed’s injury was fake, Messier is five times more an Oiler than a Ranger, why does Manning look like that (?) and I have as many Super Bowl touchdowns as Namath. Billy Joel = trash. Sinatra got famous thanks to mob connections not talent. Friends is a bad TV show. The last four seasons of How I Met Your Mother are bad. Jay-Z ruined “Monster” and the only thing that saves the song is the Nicki verse. The Harlem Globetrotters hated New York so much they’re now based out of Phoenix.

I once met a guy named Steven there and he sucked. One time their river caught on fire except that was actually Cleveland but that’s the New York of Ohio so I’m counting it. It’s too cold and 8 million people in the city are dummies for living in the cold like dummies when they obviously have the means to move to warmer places because they have enough to pay rent in New York. Regis Philbin is overrated. Thanks for producing the guy that’s starting World War III, good work there. I’m glad Carnegie Deli closed, you people didn’t deserve it.

The Chrysler Building is way cooler than the Empire State Building and I know that’s not an insult it’s just something more people need to recognize. Great job on giving Jimmy Fallon a platform, always super excited to see him every night doing something unique and different and I’m lying, I’m obviously lying, you should know that but you’re probably too busy acting like fighting with someone over who’s spot it was in line at the bagel cart is going to keep either of you from somehow getting salmonella from that bagel cart, no chicken or chicken based products are anywhere near this cart, but yep, salmonella, this is your life you chose it don’t be mad at me. Rudy Giuliani. Nothing from Sondheim is actually good and you know it.

Stephen A. Smith is from Queens. The Strokes weren’t even the best version of The Strokes. The Beastie Boys are legitimately great, so thank you. I also pretended to “get” that one Velvet Underground album, we can relate there, amiright? The Walkmen weren’t even the best version of The Walkmen. Thanks for the Talking Heads. Rudy Giuliani. Only like two of your sports teams are actually in New York City and the rest are in New Jersey. No I didn’t count. Your soccer team is the low-A minor league team for Manchester City. Andrea Pirlo and Frank Lampard once played for that team but had to retire after they got salmonella from that bagel cart, seriously why do y’all keep going there? The soccer team once employed Jason Kreis on purpose. Your coach’s nickname is “The Big Sausage” which is dumb because why would anyone be nicknamed that unless they had...ohhhhhhhhhhhhh. The soccer team’s biggest supporter’s group is called The Third Rail because the only thing that can save them from having to watch this garbage minor league team is the sweet sweet death of transit-based electrocution.

Jeter is one of the worst defensive shortstops of all-time and statistically might be the worst. The soccer team is nicknamed the Pigeons which are gross and spread diseases like salmonellohmygod I just figured out what the hell is wrong with that bagel cart. Their fans chant the phrase “chicken bucket” over and over which is amazing and I’m upset Atlanta has not stolen it. If you pushed the members of KISS into a pile of trash it would just become a bigger pile of trash. No seriously, they hired Jason Kreis to coach on purpose. Rudy Giuliani. The team once played a “home” game in East Hartford, Connecticut which is 107 miles away from the stadium because Patrick Viera got so sick of looking at people from the Bronx. No one likes y’all. And that’s not like a badge of honor thing it just means y’all are bad people. Stop acting like being the last kid picked for group projects is a defining characteristic to be proud of. It’s not. It just means you’re the worst person in the class and the cool kids like Atlanta and L.A. would rather hang with polite, boring Minneapolis than deal with your crap.

Jay-Z, Biggie, DMX and Busta Rhymes all went to the same high school where they all learned how to be worse than every Atlanta rapper ever. The soccer team competes in the Hudson River Derby with the New York Red Bulls in which the losing fan base has to jump into the Hudson River while saying that CBS’s “Blue Bloods” is just okay and not the perfect representation of life in New York which makes them cry and their tears to cause the river overflow in an event known as a “Donnie Wahlberg”. Mike Francesa is a hack. I sincerely apologize for John Rocker. The best show to ever be set in New York is Felicity which ended with an episode in which the main character time travels but yet fails to fix that awful haircut. Woody Allen.

Atlanta is going to win today and every day after because Andre is better than Biggie and you just need to accept that. Rudy Giuliani. New York native Cuba Gooding Jr. was somehow only the second most distractingly terrible acting job in “The People vs. O.J. Simpson” behind only John Travolta, a native of Englewood, New Jersey which is basically New York and if it’s not no one cares. Columbia is like the tenth best Ivy League school. Atlanta’s Flat Iron Building is cooler and was made five years earlier. I’m genuinely concerned the soccer team will issue a complaint that the Mercedes-Benz Stadium field is too wide and “made for no good cheater-heads” because of their usual arrangement at Yankee Stadium. I hope the soccer game gets played today and not cancelled because of protests is all I’m saying. Good joke Sam.

Escape From New York is less a movie staring Kurt Russel and more like what Jack Harrison did as quickly as possible. Guy Fieri once opened a restaurant in Times Square and I’m not saying it’s y’all’s fault but it’s not like y’all did anything to stop it. That’s not directed at New York that’s directed at all of us, like as a species. Spike Lee is trash. The soccer team once hired Jason Kreis on purpose. The soccer team recently lost a bid to develop their own stadium because the land was instead given to the NHL’s New York Islanders which is the equivalent of a lender awarding a mortgage to three kids stacked on top of each other in a trench coat right in front of you then denying your application while the kids point and laugh at you. I think. The soccer team is definitely going to lose by 40 to Atlanta today.

The whole city in general is a cesspool of undeserved arrogance hated by everyone outside the city limits even in their own state and who constantly insist on being mentioned in every single conversation about the culture while never really adding anything to that culture except for being really big and happening to be a place where celebrities show up in from time to time to remember what it feels like to live in the cold and bleak when they’re researching for a way to method act as Sylvia Plath or trying to do some urban Bon Iver thing where they lock themselves in a metaphorical “cabin” known as the concrete jungle and think they’re going to come away with art that’s uniquely meaningful even though everyone else in Brooklyn is trying the same thing or they’re in one of the other Burroughs that no one ever remembers unless they’re trying to remember where the Yankees bomb or where Kevin James holds dominion over and they take that as an excuse to fight and be angry with strangers in an attempt to find meaning in their sad lives as their only identity is in a city of 40 million people who have nothing else to offer except that they’re from New York. Rudolph William Louis Giuliani.