"You still live in Hoboken, huh?" an old acquaintance asked me at a happy hour in the city recently. An innocent looking question on paper, but one that cannot be appreciated until the oozing of pretentious condescension is actually heard. "Don’t you feel old still being there?"

It’s not the first time my 31-year old ears have been exposed to such a pompous inquiry from friends attempting to live the Must See TV Friends dream of life in Manhattan. Truthfully, it has prompted a re-evaluation of my living situation here on 8th and Willow on more than one occasion.

Maybe I am missing out on Lizzie’s VIP parties at Bungalow 8, the culinary masterpieces of Nobu or the cultural education only found at the Guggenheim.

Tickets to The Producers.

Jazz at the Blue Note.

Monday nights at the China Club with Jeter and Giambi.

Working out with Gwyneth at Equinox.

And then I realized a rather important fact: My friends that live in Manhattan aren’t living in this Page Six-fantasy world either.

There is misconception about the daily lives experienced by those who live in Manhattan and the lives that New Yorkers have on TV. Tune into Sex and the City for a few episodes and one cannot help but believe that casual intercourse and nightly blowouts are as much a part of everyday existence in the Big Apple as Starbucks and The New York Times. The ugly fact is that while your city friends crow about a scene they are likely not privy to, the reality of a post 9/11 economy means these same people are probably working longer hours than ever simply to survive.

The circular lifestyle becomes increasingly vicious: The job exists to pay for the apartment that primarily serves as a place to get enough rest and have enough energy to go to work to pay for the apartment.

The wheels of the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round…

The supercilious dialogue truly begins when people who once lived in Jersey are invited to a Hoboken event and curiously go into complete denial that their past addresses ever existed. One old friend that I invited to a bar party in Hoboken— a girl that is truly convinced she IS Carrie Bradshaw—responded, "Why don’t you just have the party in the city. I don’t feel like going all the way out there." You would think "out there" wasn’t a simple trip across a river, but a trek to…I don’t know…Baghdad.

Manhattanites feel a sense of accomplishment from completing the progression to maturity and freedom when moving out of Jersey and into the concrete jungle. In their mind, the stairway to success reads: Junior High School, High School, College, briefly back home with parents, Hoboken (or insert other North Jersey towns here) and finally New York City. Getting stuck at any of the rest stops on the way to urban utopia is considered failure.

One friend of mine who will be left nameless (OK, his name is Seth and I wouldn’t exactly call him a friend) recently chided me about a date I was going on in Hoboken.

"What are you going to do?" the arrogant bastard asked with a shit-eating smirk on his face. "Pick her up in your Camaro with Bon Jovi blaring and grab a meal at Sizzler?"

Three weeks later, I’ve never been more pleased to report that Seth needed to borrow $40.00 from me just to make it to his next paycheck because his rent and dinners with his Upper East Side, higher-maintenance-than-the-Giants-Stadium-turf girlfriend were eating him alive. Perhaps he put the cash to good use and went to swanky Trust downtown, where $40.00 can buy a guy three whole 7and-7’s.

"It must suck going out in the city and having to take the Path back to Hoboken at 3 AM," is another commonly echoed advantage of calling New York home. But when applying basic math, the cost of a $35.00 cab ride to Hoboken, say, twice a month, is only $70.00 and almost as fast with no traffic at that time of night. Given the difference in the prices of rent (in Hoboken, the average 1-bedroom rents for $1335.00 as opposed to $1875.00 in Manhattan) that $70.00 suddenly doesn’t resemble the national debt.

I once lived in a studio on the Upper West Side back in ‘96-97…two blocks from the park on 95th and Columbus. Nice area. Plenty of restaurants, bars and shops. And it was too cool to tell chicks that I had a place on THE Upper West Side (given my location, the word "upper" was particularly accentuated). Still, I felt strangely isolated in a city of 8 million people.

Although there are a few areas of exception, the small town intimacy that Hoboken uniquely owns invariably does not exist in Manhattan. The Mile Square is becoming increasingly New Yorkish, with sushi restaurants and couch-laden lounges proliferating throughout town to appease even the alleged botox candidate writing this column. Going to a place where everybody knows your name may not be your thing, but Hoboken at least offers the choice.

So go ahead, New York. Make the unsophisticated cheese that lives "there" the butt of your predictable jokes. And when the chuckles subside, have fun writing out the $300.00 monthly check to park your car. Or enjoy your pain-in-the-ass journey getting out of the city to go to the beach. Good luck finding a good mall to shop in.

Hobokenities will just sit here and soak up our bigger apartments, larger savings accounts and $3.00-to-anywhere-in-town cab rides. Oh, and those cozy BYOB restaurants that are Hoboken’s signature really have us feeling mortified to be stuck on the Jersey side of the world.

What, you city folk really thought all $12.00 bottles of wine cost a minimum of $40.00 as they do in most New York restaurants?

And finally, when leaving a Yankee game after the home team wins again, sing along to Sinatra’s "New York, New York" blaring throughout the stadium. After all, who else is more appropriate to croon about the virtues of New York than an Italian guy from…Hoboken?

"You still live there, huh?"

Yeah. Life is tough.

Joe Concha writes a weekly NFL Preview for NBCSports.com and is a feature writer for Hobokeni.com. He will announce his candidacy for Mayor of Hoboken in January 2004.

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