Paul Bass Photo
Agreed: New Haven’s a great small city.
At issue: Does that boast belong in a hashtag or on a T‑shirt?
Mitchell Young (pictured above) wore such a T‑shirt to WNHH radio’s studio.
Young — founder and publisher of Business New Haven and New Haven Magazine — believes all of New Haven should proclaim the slogan “The Greatest Small City In America.”
Or #gscia, as the popular hashtag goes.
Every since that hashtag caught fire, Young has promoted the slogan as a way to market New Haven and build pride. Mayor Toni Harp and Yale President Peter Salovey, among others, have hopped on the bandwagon.
Some of us who love living in New Haven but also remember booster slogans of yore — such as “New Haven is the Paris of ‘80s” — might question the utility, or even accuracy, or the #gscia push. Should you make such a statement without having visited every small city? Even if it’s true, or close to true, does a truly great city need to boast about it? Or even want to?
Young responded to such doubts during an interview on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
Young also discussed his success in building, and continuing to publish, two valued local print publications in the Internet era. Click on the sound file above to hear the interview, or find the episode in iTunes or any podcast app under “WNHH Community Radio”; the “Greatest Small City In America” discussion begins at around 26:00.
Following is an excerpt from the interview:
Why do you want us going to Twitter and typing #gscia? Why do you want us wearing these T‑shirts?
Young: The reason is simple. you either have a positive outlook or you have a negative one. And a lot of times people think they have a positive outlook but they end up with actually a negative statement. I met a few weeks ago with the mayor of Waterbury and president Webster Bank. They were telling me about some of the good things they were doing. And they were good. Then they talked about a slogan. It was one of these “We’re getting better” slogans …
That means we’re not so good …
When Hartford used to have the slogan “Rising Star,” to me that means, “you’re junk.”
But are we the greatest small city? Are we better than Burlington?
Oh, we’re definitely better than Burlington. Here’s why. It’s not about, “Are you clean? Do you have clean energy?” In fact we did an interview with Barry Nalebuff. He’s an SOM [Yale School of Management] professor and the founder of Honest Tea. He said he used to recruit at Columbia University. And there was this rib house. If he told people about the rib house, if they weren’t excited, he knew they weren’t going to make it. They weren’t going to want to come to Columbia …
His point was that people came to New Haven because they felt they could make a difference.
That’s … like “Rising Star”: You can make things better, because they’re not that great?
Well, let’s take Paul Bass for example.
I do love New Haven. I settled here by choice. I felt I could make a difference.
It would have been a lot harder if you were in Cleveland. That’s not to knock Cleveland. … In New Haven you can make an impact.
I’m saying this as someone who loves New Haven. A slogan like [“Greatest Small City in America”] feels generic. Because people say, “Come on, what makes you the greatest small city in America?”
No, it’s the opposite of generic … Hartford has “Hartford has it.” Torrington has something with “it” in it also.
I can never tell people why I love New Haven I do love New Haven I settled here by choice, raised a family, had a great feeling about it all the way through. [But] whenever people ask me why I love it, I sound like a babbling idiot: “Well, we’re kind of between New York and Boston . It’s big enough to be interesting. Not too big to swallow you up. It has great neighborhoods” …
That’s why we say “the greatest small city in America.”
But Mitch. How do we know? Have you been to every small city in America?
You don’t have to. Nobody ever said, “You say you have the best hamburgers. You … have to worry about comparing it to every one in America.”
But everybody who hears that knows you haven’t [tasted] every one in America.
We have a writer who works for us. Rachel Bergman. She went to this writer’s retreat in New Mexico two weeks ago. And there were these writers from all over the country, mostly feminist writers … And she walked into a room, and there were four women there talking angrily about how New Haven shouldn’t have been called “struggling” [in The New York Times]. They weren’t New Havenites. They had been people who were familiar with New Haven. One of them was … a major author. And he was really pissed. And she said, I’ve been back to New Haven a lot of times. This place is doing great!
Remember what Martin Luther King said about “black power”? He said … if you have power, you don’t claim you have power. If you’re a great city, why do you have to tell people that?
People have been calling themselves the “Paris of …”
Which was nonsense [in New Haven] in 1980 …
Everybody. Worcester was “the Paris.”
But that’s how you know it’s fake, Mitch.
Paris now has a Brooklyn! … Don’t sell something you don’t have.
I’m going to mostly agree with you. .… It’s a great small city. [But] if you start to boast about it … that suggests it’s not true.
I didn’t create [the slogan]. It’s something that started on social media … Michael Morand of Yale has been a big proponent. He certainly talked to the president of Yale. Part of what happens is, it’s a fun thing to say. We don’t want to say, “We’re a city on the move.” It makes people happy. A teenager came up to me at the tennis tournament and said, “How do I get a T‑shirt?”
Thank you for bringing this up, Paul. Why don't all the people using the hashtag #GSCIA come visit my neighborhood? I can tell you, many residents here do not think it's the greatest small city in america. They can't even find a job or get the city to patch a pothole on their street.
Let's actually take a closer look at the demographics of WHO is using that tag. I'll bet they're mostly WHITE, mostly middle and upper class, and entirely web-savvy and mobile. But that does not represent most residents of #NHV.
Get a grip, #gscia-ers! You're living in a mental bubble that you've created for yourself.
What we really have in New Haven is actually an ole' classic:
<b>#taleof2cities</b>