I don't know that there's a connection with just like New York, but my grandmother (born 1933 in Amarillo, Texas, raised in Lordsburg, New Mexico) used to exclaim just like downtown whenever a job was finished, especially if it had gone more easily than expected.
Lordsburg, New Mexico has a population of 2700. Small towns have an "uptown" but "downtown" in the Great Lakes states is generally reserved for communities big enough to have a fairly large "shopping district" including at least one large department store. Fort Wayne, with two daily newspapers and five television stations, had a downtown in the 1950s, but you'd have a hard time shopping for fine china or a wedding dress today; I'm not sure you could even buy toner for a copier.
I more frequently heard "just like store-bought" as an expression of appreciation, but these days, if you can't do any better than that, ain't no sense in bothering. I haven't heard that or "just like uptown" in about 50 years or so. "Satisfactory" at the completion of a job of work is usually expressed as "good enough for government work", or "good enough for the kind of girl I would marry," and it's understood that the worksmanship is far better than that. It ain't fittin' to be braggin'.
deaconB said
Lordsburg, New Mexico has a population of 2700. Small towns have an "uptown" but "downtown" in the Great Lakes states is generally reserved for communities big enough to have a fairly large "shopping district" including at least one large department store. Fort Wayne, with two daily newspapers and five television stations, had a downtown in the 1950s, but you'd have a hard time shopping for fine china or a wedding dress today; I'm not sure you could even buy toner for a copier.I more frequently heard "just like store-bought" as an expression of appreciation, but these days, if you can't do any better than that, ain't no sense in bothering. I haven't heard that or "just like uptown" in about 50 years or so. "Satisfactory" at the completion of a job of work is usually expressed as "good enough for government work", or "good enough for the kind of girl I would marry," and it's understood that the worksmanship is far better than that. It ain't fittin' to be braggin'.
Maybe she was talking about Amarillo, or some mythical place of perfection.
For a number of years in the 1970s I was apprentice to a patternmaker (two bits to anybody who knows what that is without looking it up!) in a suburb of an Upstate New York city. The boss frequently said "Just like New York" to describe something going perfectly. Pity I never thought to ask him where he got it: thirty-five years too late, now.
tromboniator said
... patternmaker (two bits to anybody who knows what that is without looking it up!)...
I think it is related to the tool and die trade for mass producing metal parts from a single pattern. (There may be a better definition out there.)