Blog #4- Alcoholism in NYC

In looking around for material for this post, I kept coming across interesting ads for things like cigarettes and alcohol. The common thread between many of these ads, especially the older ones, was a focus not on the product itself, but rather on the culture which surrounds it. This got me thinking about when I lived in New York City, and how the culture there pushes constant drinking and smoking as an assumed way of life rather than an option. Media representation certainly reinforce this: shows like How I Met Your Mother show drinking as the primary social activity of young, vibrant professionals in the city, and for years virtually every representation of a professional in NYC showed them smoking. However, I noticed that it is not simply media representation that pushes a dependence on alcohol and cigarettes on residents of the city. The use of these products is woven into the day to day culture of NYC in a way that I haven't found to be true of other cities.

In New York, there is an expectation that just about everyone drinks or smokes, at least the "real New Yorkers" anyway. I noticed this idea reinforced by some very basic facts about living there. For instance, with the expected high-speed work environment that is prevalent throughout the city, smoking gives workers much needed short breaks throughout the day. When I worked at a restaurant in the village I was the only non-smoker on the staff, and I definitely felt the pain for lacking those breaks that everyone else got to take. Obviously people know that smoking is harmful to them, yet this pervasive culture makes smoking seem almost necessary to survive in the city.

On the drinking side of things, something that drove me crazy while I lived there was that all of the coffee shops closed at 5pm. All of them. Except the chain stores in Times Square. Compare that to Minneapolis, where shops open until 11pm or midnight are easy to find. The difference is the culture. In NYC, it's simply expected that by 5pm, you should be at a bar drinking, so why would they keep the coffee shops open?

The representations of alcohol and smoking in New York City as almost crucial to life are created by the culture of the city itself, not just the media. It's also very hard to pin down the source of this culture because it is so widely and deeply ingrained into so many aspects of life in the city. Of course, living in this culture leads to increased problems with addiction because mild addiction is pretty much expected! I think this shows just how sneakily representations of addiction can be inserted into culture. It isn't always blatant, like in an advertisement encouraging you to smoke. It can instead be small cultural expectations that gently push citizens in the direction of addiction.