New York’s Eurotrash exude a preening self- regard that makes me sick to my stomach
In New York, the big story of the summer is that the Eurotrash are back. Thanks to the weak dollar, rich Europeans have been descending on the city by the jet-load, irritating the locals by referring to ludicrously overpriced luxury goods as ‘bargains’. To add insult to injury, some shops have even put up signs saying, ‘We accept euros.’ The rapper Jay-Z seems to have caught the new mood. In his latest video, he is filmed cruising the streets of New York clutching a fistful of the European banknotes.
Among the expat community, the resurgence of the Eurotrash is a source of some irritation. The issue is not that the Brits have to join the natives in doffing their caps to the French and the Italians. On the contrary, as far as New Yorkers are concerned, the term ‘Eurotrash’ includes the British — and therein lies the problem. I know from having lived in Manhattan during the Eurotrash’s first incarnation in the mid-1990s that you constantly have to point out that there’s a world of difference between the residents of the British Isles and the rest of Europe and that, strictly speaking, the term ‘Eurotrash’ only applies to the latter. I lost count of the number of times I had to explain to Americans why the following headline was funny: ‘Storm in Channel — Continent Isolated’. As far as they are concerned, Europe is just one country, no different from the United States.
This time round, two enterprising expats have come up with a clever way of reminding their hosts that the United Kingdom is a separate country with a distinct cultural identity: they want to rename part of Manhattan ‘Little Britain’.
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