The burbs are a ncie place to raise kids if you don’t mind them getting into drugs from the boredome and killing each other with drinking and driving. NO ONE in my NYC high school was killed in a car accident in my four years… none of us drove! We took the subway where we needed to go. Not to mention being chained to them till they reach 16. Naw, sounds lame to me.
ANYhoo, I grew up in NYC, left to go to college, then after college I knew that I just couldn’t afford to live there, moved to the Midwest and gt into more of a rural lifestyle (not that I live in the sticks, but I own a horse and am actively competing… soemthing I’d need to make 4-5x as much to do in NYC).
Anyway, someday if I lose the horse bug I might move back.
Meanwhile, my dad drives me crazy with his insane NYC provincialism. Actual quote: “Brunch? They don’t brunch in Michigan.” ::rolleyes:: Like a late morning meal on sunday is beyond the technology of the Midwest.
I grew up in NY (long island) and moved to California in 1982. I’ve since met many people here from NY. Also, most of my friends from NY, no longer live there. A surprising percentage of them live in Florida.
Sadly, most of my good friends have left NYC, usually when they hit 40 or so. Now they live in New Orleans, L.A., Boston . . . It’s getting lonely here!
RickJay
"There’s always something to do no matter where you are. "
Yeah that’s something I think too. I live in the relatively small city in Canada and have friends here that used to live in New York and still pine for it. I’ve asked them before what they did in New York that they can’t do here and they said they did pretty much the same thing, just the “atmosphere” was different. We’ve got the same movies at the video stores and theaters as well as restaurants, live theaters and music.
I suppose you could argue, the quality of our entertainment isn’t as high and the architecture is not as grand, we don’t have Broadway or the met. Do most New Yorkers do that stuff often?
Oh, and suburbs can actually be pretty nice. Cleaner, quieter, friendlier. There comes a point when freak watching no longer holds any interest.
Considering the crime rate that we had here for a while, it’s not the only sensible explination.
Seriously, however, people do leave NYC to get away from the city. I have many relatives who used to live here who no longer do. They now occupy such places as California, Arizona, Florida, Rhode Island, North Carolina, New Jersey and Israel.
I left and hope never to return to live. I still have family in Long Island. I detest Long Island. Moving to Long Island from the five boroughs doesn’t count as leaving NY in my opinion. Same goes for NJ, Westchester, Southern CT and Rockland County because it may not be NYC but a good percentage of the population is from there.
I live in Rhode Island, which to me is paradise. It’s conveniently located between NY and Boston for all your big city needs, of which I have few. The people you see in stores and businesses are nice and I never get the feeling that I am inconveniencing them by being a customer; in NYC I got that feeling every day, sometimes several times a day. It takes me 9 minutes to drive to my parking lot at work. The lot belongs to my employer, btw, so it’s not open to the public. A large portion of my commute is quite scenic. In NYC, I spent over an hour on the J train or I took the bus to the R. My minivan never has beggers and I always get a seat, it being MY minivan and all. I walk from my car to work along a very lovely block. No hustle, no bustle. Culture? Got it right where I work. More culture required? 1 - 3 hours away. Restaurants? Got those too, including a little something called Al Forno, which is supposed to be on the level of a great NYC restaurant, but really kind of disappoints.
The fear of crime is pretty minimal where I live. We went away for the weekend a few weeks ago. I thought my husband closed the door, he thought I did. We went away for the entire weekend with the door to our house open. Nothing was missing when we got home. I’ve left $300 in cash in my unlocked car before and that was fine, too.
I left and there is nothing I miss and I love where I am so, yes, one can leave NYC and mean it. Now if my husband could just get rid of his accent we’d be all set.
Am I the only person that has absolutely no desire to ever set foot in NYC? I have never been there and never will. These were my feelings prior to 9/11 too. I would rather go watch a tree grow in the woods.
I understand that most people who live in NYC can’t imagine living anywhere else and assume that everyone else would kill to be there, but I’m with you, racer72. Don’t care if I never go, and can’t imagine living there.
I’ve never been to NYC, so I have a question about the trees: Just how many trees does the city have outside of places like Central Park? How are they situated? I mean, are they in those square concrete pots along the street like in some cities I’ve seen? Are they in little groves spaced here and there?
Yeah well cow-tipping sounds cool and all but I’ll stick to city livin’. Only boring people don’t get bored doing nothing.
New York is cool because other cities just suck. I liked Boston but after a couple of years I was sick of hanging out with 100,000 identical fratguys and dumpy college girls, all who think their family came over on the Mayflower, while drinking in some Irish pub (the Sausage in Hand was my favorite).
I only lived in NYC a few years and it was more difficult to leave than any other city I have ever lived in. If you haven’t been there, it is hard to describe - it is like no other large city in the world.
I have met a lot of ex-NYC folk in Berlin, LA and even here in Las Vegas. But we all have something in common - we love that city.
On 9/11 it was like someone stabbed me in the heart.
So my answer is, yes - lot of people move away from NYC for lots of reasons, but when asked, they are still New Yorkers.
Oh, wow, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I’ve basically lived my whole adult life here - I arrived for grad school with the assumption I’d live after finishing, and found I just couldn’t. Now I start thinking in cold, heartless terms, like getting the cash out of my apartment and buying a whole house in Baltimore, nearer my family.
But it ain’t easy. New York is an addiction, a primal need. Yes, I’m getting very tired of living in 450 nicely decorated square feet. Yes, I’m getting a bit tired of New York yuppiedom. No, I’m not willing to commute in order to lose those two annoyances - if I’m going to commute, I might as well move away entirely. But damn, I’d miss the subway, and the art, and the people (many of them met through this very board), and the restaurants, and and and and and.
The classic trajectory is that people move here in college (or grow up here), try to make it, and then when they have kids and/or get tired of the constant competitive nastiness, they check out. Looks like I might be the same. But I don’t know.
And if I won the lottery, I’d stay in heartbeat - buy the apartment upstairs, make a duplex, and live here till I become a little old man.
Trees: Some are alongside the streets, many of these are Norway Maple, Sycamore Maple, Ginko, or Flowering Pear, all of which thrive on air with a lot of carbon monoxide.
NYC also has many parks, large and small. Each of the boroughs has at least one really big park. The most famous but not, I believe, the largest is Manhattan’s Central Park. Brooklyn has Prospect Park, Queens has Flushing Meadows Corona Park (1200 acres!) and Forest Park, and the Bronx has Van Cordtland Park (sp?) and Pelham Bay Park. There are also numerous smaller local parks, all of which have trees.
I was riding the subway at 3:00 am once (once! - acually, it wasn’t that big a deal. Of course, it helps that I’m a VERY big man), and had a conversation with a guy who was on his way home from work - The gist of his side of the conversation was “I hate this town. I hate this town. I hate this town.”
He was NYC born and bred, and he thought it was the greatest city in the world, and that he would never leave. Then he joined the Marines, and saw the rest of the country. He then realized how dirty NYC was (mind, there were three of us in the car - the Ex-Marine, me, and the stereotypical passed-out, urine-leaking drunk), and how surly the people were, he grew to hate it. He was working to save money to move to Colorado.
