Say what you will about Portland and its hipsters, hippies, and gentrifiers, I left after a few years living there with a far more polite public persona. While I once scowled when quiet walks in Boston’s parks were interrupted by tourists asking me to take a photo, I now find myself going so far as to volunteer bus detour information to the audibly confused, even when they haven’t yet asked me anything.

So it happened that last week a woman at the corner of Allen and Houston stumped me by asking where Orchard Street was. For some reason I can never remember which direction most Lower East Side streets run — north/south, east/west? In NYC it’s perfectly fine to shrug your shoulders and keep walking if you don’t know, but I knew it was "in this direction," holding my left hand along Houston with the right cupping Allen, and she was pretty sure it was parallel to Allen… We were trying to work it our between us when suddenly I remembered that I have a phone that can tell me exactly where I am on a map. She said, "Oh. Right," before sheepishly pulling out her own device. We conferred with Google Maps, and she was right, it was one block east, parallel to Allen (maybe now I’ll finally remember). As we parted at the corner, definitively navigated, we laughed at ourselves for not thinking to turn to technology when we really needed it.

But a few days later, evidence arose as to why perhaps New Yorkers can come off rude. On the N/R/D (and sometimes M) platform within the Atlantic-Pacific hub in Brooklyn, a woman asked me how to get to the Metropolitan stop on the M line. Except it was the weekend, so the M train wasn’t running into that part of Brooklyn, which I told her, adding that I wasn’t sure where she could connect with it. A guy next to me piped up saying that she could take the N train to Canal and transfer to the M where it was running into Brooklyn the other way. Which I promptly agreed with. Despite the utter clarity of this, the woman didn’t seem to understand or, perhaps, believe us. We repeated the directions a couple of times each. "The N train, here at this platform. You take it one stop, over the bridge, look for the signs for the brown trains—" To which she said, "What do you mean ‘brown trains’? I’m from Manhattan!"

We all wound up on the same car, so we both had to witness the woman, obviously unhappy with our directions, query every other willing passenger. The older Latino couple closest to the map started out helpful and then became as annoyed with her as we had. Eventually a woman with an iPhone volunteered to Hopstop directions for her once she had service on the bridge. Naturally, the easiest way was to get off at Canal and transfer there to the M; the woman wrote this down carefully.

For the rest of the weekend, I related the story, declaring, "If this is any indication of the people who live in Manhattan, they are the wimpiest borough by far."