Andrew Yang and the New York Test

Yang’s bodega video attempts to game the time-honored tradition of hazing political candidates for their knowledge of the city’s culture.

In case you haven’t heard, former presidential longshot Andrew Yang, 46, is running for mayor of New York City, and last week his campaign released a video of him at a bodega. As he talks about how great bodegas are, Yang attempts to buy what he describes as “breakfast”: he grabs two bottles of green tea, tries to pull one banana off a bunch and struggles, ultimately deciding to purchase what appears to be approximately 11 bananas. When he pays, he tells the cashier to “keep the change.”Yang’s video has been viewed 3.7 million times as of Sunday afternoon, according to The New York Times, where the engagement was juxtaposed with the attacks he received from opponents in a “no such thing as bad publicity” way. Andrew Yang’s vibe is both bland and earnest, a combination that feels like a paradox. He’s earnestly bland, and if it’s intentional, it’s pretty savvy because the blandness takes the fun out of mocking him, limiting people on Twitter to typing out the same three jokes in boring pursuit of virality. The best replies either asked where the bodega cat was or said Yang wasn’t actually in a bodega, but a Key Foods, a local grocery store chain. (The video was in fact filmed in a bodega in Hell’s Kitchen called 7 Brothers Famous—a very bodega name—and it allegedly does have a cat.)

The Yang video also owes its virality to a tradition of subjecting candidates to little tests on random local cultural knowledge. New York City politics is rife with them: can you swipe a MetroCard on the first try?; do you root for the underdog sports teams?; do you eat pizza normally, or like you’ve never seen pizza before? These tests can spawn news cycles in the New York and national press: When it took Hillary Clinton five tries to swipe her MetroCard in 2016, it felt like every single news outlet ran a whole story on it. The narrative was about what an outsider she was, rather than questioning why a finicky, outdated technology felt sacred. We cooed over Bernie Sanders referencing subway tokens. The New York Post still references the fact that Bill de Blasio ate pizza with a knife and fork more than six years ago. 

Although the Yang video attracted mockery, it did manage to kick off a New York media news cycle. A lot of people commented that Yang clearly must not have any New Yorkers working for him because a real New Yorker would’ve never published such a corny video. I think any New York-based political strategist would know there’s no way to do a good bodega video, but a bodega video is absolutely a good way to get a lot of New Yorkers’ attention. Getting outlets to write an entire story about a single campaign video is a major coup (sorry, too soon, I know). Barring a slow news day, few lone videos are worth a whole story — unless, of course, it’s viral. 

At least eight outlets ran items on the Yang video, or the reaction to the Yang video (Slate and The New York Times folded a mention into larger stories about Yang’s run). Mashable and Eater’s headlines — “Andrew Yang, NYC mayoral candidate, doesn’t know what a bodega is” and “NYC Mayoral Hopeful Roasted on Twitter Over Bodega Video” — have a real “make sure you get those SEO keywords in there” vibe. Refinery29 (“Andrew Yang Slammed For Bizarre Bodega Twitter Video”) and The Hill (“Andrew Yang sparks Twitter uproar with pro-bodega video”) went the “blow it out of proportion” route, reaching for that beloved media trope where criticism is a “slam” and somehow finding an “uproar.” Grub Street (“Andrew Yang Walks Into a Bodega—or Does He?”) and Curbed (“Andrew Yang, Who Is Absolutely a New Yorker, Went to a Deli”) do their civic duty as local news outlets; and even Fox News makes a vague grab at some of that SEO action (“Twitter mocks Andrew Yang for ‘bodega’ video”). 

Very few people are actually going to vote or not vote for someone based solely on these litmus tests — I, for one, am much more bothered by the fact that Andrew Yang has never voted in a single mayoral election in 25 years of living in NYC than his inability to purchase a single banana at the age of 46 — but they unfailingly give local outlets something to riff on and readers something to rally around. New Yorkers love this shit. There are all sorts of rules and insecurities about what makes someone a real New Yorker, and when you can claim to be one if you weren’t born here. It’s a city full of transplants and also of extremely judgmental people who see hazing candidates for public office as the unofficial state pastime.

The video may have been dorky as hell, but the people who made fun of him also now know that Andrew Yang is running for mayor. If you tweeted any jokes about him, you likely got some Yang Gang bros in your mentions “well, actually”-ing you about how great he is. It remains to be seen whether he has support in New York City, though it was interesting to see him encouraging his supporters elsewhere to ask their friends in NYC to donate to his campaign. Maybe he can do that with voter turnout, too? If a Yang run gets more than 15 percent of New Yorkers to vote in a local election, then I’ll happily buy the guy a bodega banana myself. 

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