I just read the first paragraph and still didn’t get it. I remember a line from the moving Keeping the Faith that went something along the lines of “New Yorkers know that those who live somewhere else are just kidding themselves.” It’s as dumb as “[w]hen a man is tired of London he is tired of life,” and that one might actually have been true in Johnson’s day.
This. I would like New York a lot better if it wasn’t full of New Yorkers. And I say that as a person who lives in a state that is also full of New Yorkers.
There are maps down there, you know. Even locals look at them, sometimes. (:eek:) Now get out of my way.
Tourists aren’t really hanging around ENY or Bed-Stuy, ya know? Every city has its crap spots. In terms of large cities in the US, New York regularly reports among the lowest violent crime rates. BTW, Harlem is the new Chelsea now. And Central Park is probably the most mobbed tourist destination outside of Times Square. You have a far higher chance of getting attacked by a tree than a mugger. If you wear a bosox jersey, your only danger is being laughed at, because the sox suck balls.
That’s probably because you were in somebody’s way.
False. New Yorkers are the friendliest people in the world. If you wanna disagree I got a set of brass knuckles that’ll learn ya. Also get out of my way.
In my experience New Yorkers are friendly and helpful. However, everyone in New York is in a hurry all the time, so they’re only going to tell you once, tell you quickly, and then tell you to get out of their way.
There is no place I would rather live. I did, for two years, in the early 60sb’wa, when rents were still affordable ($110 for a nice 2 room apartment in Morningside Heights). When my daughter got there in 1989 for a 3 month internship, she immediately decided she would never leave. And hasn’t. If only rents weren’t so damnably high.
The first thing I would do if I lived there was sell my car. The subway system is actually easy to navigate if you simply get a map of it. When I was there, I used only the B’way/7th Ave. line but with my daughter living, now in Brooklyn, I have gotten used to the entire system. It is the only way to get around.
And NYC is the safest big city in the US, maybe the world. It is not the cleanest, I will give you that. If only housing weren’t so expensive.
When I visited New York, both times as a total tourist, I frigging loved it. I’m fairly used to London and Paris, but New York, well Manhattan anyway, made me feel a bit like a country bumpkin, but in a quite exhilarating way. I didn’t find the locals rude at all - they are busy and focused like the locals in any big city - but actually quite friendly and chatty, really.
Actually, New York City wins just because the Staten Island Ferry is free.
Umm…OK? Not sure how you got any of that from the responses.
But anyway, for somebody like the OP who has visited Chicago, if they didn’t feel scared or unsafe in Chicago, they should feel fine in NYC in terms of safety.
Umm…because the responses I quoted all said they didn’t fell threatened anywhere in NYC, and I still don’t believe the city is THAT safe. If it is simply a case of the posters know where “not to go”, then there ARE places where they don’t feel safe. As an outsider, I wouldn’t know where these places are. In that sense, NYC is “scary”.
Maybe it’s just a case of what the word means to someone. If you are accept the risk of getting mugged as the cost of living in the city, if you know how to navigate around homeless people so they don’t hit you over the head or push you in front of a subway, if you never have a desire to play basketball in parks near drug dealers, and if you are used to looking the other way when bad stuff happens, then no, I guess the city doesn’t “scare” you.
You can’t buy a home in Bed-Stuy for under a million, not even joking. Its so far from what you’re thinking of, it isn’t even funny. The only thing you have to worry about walking through Bed-Stuy alone is that someone might try and recruit you to their artisan kale-growing startup.
Personal property theft crime is actually really really low (unlike most european capitols, there’s no problem with pickpocketing either). Its not that you “know where to go” its that its practically impossible to find anywhere functionally unsafe that’s accessible by public transit. Rated one of the top 10 safest cities in the world.
What Johnny Bravo said. It is no different than any major industrial/commercial city – therefore it is not especially “scary”.
And by now only high end white collar criminals can actually afford to live near the high-tourist-traffic areas. Your would-be common ripoff man/mugger now has to take the long commute along with the cubicle people, junior traders and the maintenance staff.
Funny, isn’t it, how it transitioned from one flavor of hellhole to a different one in less than one generation.
I see a pattern emerge
But yeah, those people are not the cast of a theme park. They have somewhere else to be and something else to do, or at least like acting like they do. In spite of critics beating their chests and pulling their hair about the “Disneyfication”, no, it has not become a sanitized Theme Park and never will. The infrastructure looks, sounds, smells like it has been rode hard 24/7 for longer than most people have been alive… because it has. Go ahead, you take it offline to fix it up nice.
It’s a big city, so you still can’t just walk around with your head up your ass at 3am. But generally speaking, you probably aren’t going to get randomly jumped or mugged in most parts of the city if you exercise common sense. Statistically speaking, you are more likely to get struck by lighting than shoved onto a subway track by a homeless man.
Probably the most dangerous thing you have to worry about is getting hit by a crosstown bus or harassed by a Times Square Elmo.
I can’t imagine anyone not finding it “interesting”…as far as “scary,” a lot of the reputation comes from a time that is no longer particularly relevant - NYC had a peak of 2245 murders in 1990, and 328 (less than one fifth as many) in 2014.
(And even the “bad old days” weren’t that bad - in the late 80’s - early 90’s I lived across the river in Hoboken, NJ and spent plenty of time in the city, and never had the slightest problem.)
Betcha I get better bread than you do. Unless you live in Amish country or something, and your bread is kneaded on the breasts of young virgins.
Not exactly true, unless you spent all your time here licking out the subway stations. And your town smells like what? Tuberoses? Freshly-mown alfalfa? Hayseeds?
