New Yorkers and New Jerseyians have always looked askance at each other. Nobody quite knows why. Do people in Delaware and Maryland eye each other with such suspicion and distrust? Are North Dakotans and South Dakotans such feuding rivals?

When the pool club in the town I live in celebrated its 25th Anniversary, one woman – a former New Yorker – wrote her reminisces of moving out here in the early days. They were “pioneers” in their station wagons in the “wilds” of New Jersey, where the nearest bagel store may have been as far as five miles away! Sure, as if we Jersey people were up in trees – in loincloths – shooting arrows at their Chevrolets, and crying, “Ooga-booga!”

New Yorkers complain about the smell from the landfills in New Jersey’s Hackensack Meadowlands, quite ignoring the odors emanating from the landfills from Staten Island, New York. The schism even goes down to what we eat. New Yorkers call those colorful little bits of candy ants that you put on top ice cream, “sprinkles”. In New Jersey, they’re called, “jimmies”.

In the mid-1970’s one of my cousin’s friends – a Jersey teenager – was happily skipping down Broadway – near Times Square - when a grumpy New Yorker grabbed his arm, slapped him at the back of his head, and shook his finger at him. Apparently, you’re not supposed to skip in New York.

As a barefoot Jersey Boy who’s worked in the big city for the past four years, I don’t claim to have a better understanding of New Yorkers, but I’ve developed a grudging admiration for them. The expression, “Only in New York,” was coined for a reason.

I was teaching a class on the afternoon of Thursday, August 14, 2003 when the electricity failed. Students looked at each other, surprised. Was it trouble in the building? About a minute later, the sound of angry automobile horns that rose up from 37th Street -17 stories below - told us this was a bigger problem. And then, the next thought was, “Is this another terrorist attack?”

Class was dismissed. I learned later that one of my New Jersey students quickly walked westward to the Hudson River, hopped on a commuter ferry, and had his girlfriend pick him up on the other side. Ironically, most of New Jersey was unaffected, except where my student landed.

A few minutes later, I joined a group that was walking down via the darkened stairway. One person had a cell phone that lit up (mine did not). The power outage had turned the cellular phone towers into hulking frameworks of useless steel; cell phones were useful only as flashlights.

Being in the back of the crowd, I got separated from the fast moving group, and found myself having to “feel” my way down the stairs in pitch-blackness for a few floors. Luckily, at another floor, another group came out and we were down at street level fairly quickly.

Outside, it was hot and sunny, and rumors flew like confetti. I made my way down to Penn Station, where even more people were milling about. On the way, bins of ice with bottled water appeared on the sidewalk outside all kinds of stores; the prices of the water jacked way up.

The outage was citywide, at least. Ironically, the telephone landlines still worked. There were long lines leading to pay-phone kiosks, where people fished for change, their cell phones clinging uselessly to their belts like sated ticks.

I walked over to the Murry Hill section of Manhattan to stay with a relative. On the way over, bars already had sidewalk chalkboards announcing blackout parties with beer at half price. Only in New York. No power? Air conditioning dead? We’d better drink this beer before it gets warm.

At the intersection of Park and 32nd Street, a civilian businessman was directing traffic. Typical New York pluck.

That evening, my relative and I walked their dog past more tavern parties and candy stores where the owner accompanied you inside with a flashlight to shop for staples like Oreos and potato chips. We passed a Baskin-Robbins store with a “Grand Opening” banner across its brow. Doors locked. No free ice cream tonight. How would it look if we gave away all our stock and the lights suddenly went on again?

Next morning, the city was unusually quiet for a weekday; there was no work to go to. I decided to try my luck at Penn Station. On my way, I walked past the Baskin-Robbins, where melted ice cream cakes sat in the windows like deflated Mylar party balloons. Two blocks away from Penn Station, on 33rd Street, I encountered the end of a very long line that stretched down to 7th Avenue. Hopefully, this wasn’t the queue for New Jersey Transit. No, the last man in line told me; it was for the bus to Jericho, Long Island.

At Penn Station, the 7th Avenue entrance was still closed. I asked a cop if any trains were running and he mumbled something. When I politely asked him to repeat, he screamed at me that New Jersey Transit was running, and I could get inside the station by the 8th Avenue entrance. And so, I went home.

And that’s New Yorkers for you; ballsy enough to jack up the prices of water, but also dauntless enough to step in, unasked, and direct traffic. Grouchy, overworked cops who threw insults and savvy tavern owners who threw half-price beer parties.

Oh, it’s a fine madness. It’s an audacious singleness of purpose and the perseverance to grab as much of life as their hands will allow them to hold. If you still don’t believe me, there was the Barrie’s incident.

Five years ago, my wife dragged me into the city to a women’s clothing sale. Every year, Barrie’s would rent one or two – or three – floors in an empty building and dump all of last season’s unsold clothes onto folding tables and sell them at ridiculously low prices. One had to wait in line to get a number to get in line to get in. Picture a whole floor of tables with clothes and a swarm of women of all ages in a piranha-like frenzy.

As I stood aside reading a James Ellroy novel, thousands of women went to work tenaciously sorting through the clothes. I looked up from my reading and suddenly realized that some of the women – my wife was not among them, thank goodness – were taking off their pants and trying on merchandise. There were no fitting rooms. No one cared that there were a few men scattered about the room. Old, young, middle-aged women were shucking their slacks and trying on product, as determined as salmon swimming up river. On and on, the shopping rumpus went.

It was the New York City Female’s equivalent of the running of the bulls in Pamplona Spain.

Viva New York!