I’ll give you $100 if any European property owner who isn’t a drug addict, an alcoholic or saddled with mental issues has a backyard like this. But this is more or less par for the course in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Brooklyn neighborhood that reeks of degeneracy and fatalism and anti-social asshole teenagers and a lack of soap and regular toothbrushing and deodorant and decent take-out food.

Backyard of 190 Pulaski Street, Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

I waited 45 minutes to get my passport stamped last night — me and 260 others being served by three shlubby guys. “Look at this way — at least there won’t be any waiting for the luggage,” I said to a guy I’d been on the same jet with. A 45-minute wait would never happen in Europe. There are lines, of course, but nobody waits that long for something as simple as a passport stamp.

The bottom line is that no system in Europe is quite as pathetic as New York City’s — their pride and respect for others won’t allow it. I love the really cool parts of this town as much as anyone else, but you don’t want to fly back from a really nice burgh like Munich and be suddenly wrestling with this wheezy, borough-accented, under-air-conditioned armpit of a town. It’s like “what“? They live better over there. They really do.