Everyone who’s ever been to New York will yammer on about the wonders of this big awesome city – for hours if you let them. While it’s true, the Empire State Building is enormous, and ridiculously great restaurants are everywhere, the Big Apple does have a couple of drawbacks that arguably fall in the “Major” category: driving and The Smell.

So yeah, of course driving in a city of 8 million people is a nightmare. Some would say hellish. Nice people might call it “an adventure.” But the reason why driving here sucks is not what you might think. For as many cars as there are here, traffic actually flows really well. It’s just a different style of (cutthroat) driving. But since everyone here knows how to drive that way, things actually move at a good pace (except at rush hour heading north on the West Highway, as I found out a week ago). Traffic in L.A. is way worse methinks, and Newark at times was pretty bad as well. So it’s not the throngs of cars and the deafening honking of horns… then what is it?

The answer is a 1992 Ford Econoline van. A smurf-blue Ford Econoline van. Yes, the smurf-van is here, and driving in New York now officially sucks. You see, in New York City you cut people off and you get cut off. You merge and you get merged upon. It’s how it goes. But then you encounter the smurf-van.

Take a look at the smurf-van. You’ll notice a couple of things that make it operate a little differently than most cars: 4,000 lbs of wrought iron, and no windows. That said, the smurf-van pretty much only merges, and it only cuts off. Which means you only get cut off. Or you die.

Driving in New York is like a game of chicken, and in chicken the giant blue van beats the shiny orange SAAB 100 out of 100 times. Same goes for the tricked out Civic and the midlife crisis red BMW. You see, nobody wants their ride to get torn in half by some windowless monstrosity, so all Smurfy has to do is pretend not to see them, and it’s like merge heaven. Seriously, the van goes where it wants, and it feels good about it.

Do I miss driving in Hawaii where people slow down to see if you might want to change lanes? Yes. Do I hate driving in New York? Also yes. Do me and the smurf-van own the road anyway? Triple yes.

So when people come back from their vacation to The City and tell you driving was awful, now you know why. It’s because I went out for pizza while they were sightseeing in their rental car that they declined insurance on because it was just for the day. Tell them I’m sorry.

And what about The Smell? You’ll just have to come here to find out about that one!

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