I’ve been to Rome. In all fairness, Rome is several thousand years older than New York.
The Manhattan as a giant mall phenomenon is relatively recent (past 20 years or so) and is one of the biggest complaints of long-time New Yorkers. When New York gentrified in the 90s, it drove out all the crackheads and prostitutes. But it also caused local specialty businesses, restaurants and walkup apartments to be replaced with the same retail stores and chain restaurants you find in any shopping mall in America, expensive “celebrity chef” eateries and towering glass luxury high rises that are so self contained, residents rarely need to frequent their own neighborhoods.
All though a lot of this romanticizing the past of New York comes from people who loved old New York so much they long since moved to Westchester or New Jersey.
When I lived in Boston, it seemed like I used to golf, ski, play hockey, kayak, go to the beach and do a lot of other stuff besides just drink and eat in restauarnts. Not that it’s impossible to do these things in Manhattan. But without a car, there really is a tendency to not do things that require a car.
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You don’t need a car to kayak in NYC. You can do it for free at the downtown boathouse at Pier 26. Join an adult hockey team at Chelsea Piers or go to Lasker Rink. There are golf courses in the Bronx.
I can see not wanting to ride the subway with a bag of clubs, but kayaking and playing hockey? You could walk to those locations from just about anywhere.
What I don’t understand about this thread is that the anti-NY faction seems quite insistent that everyone else ought to/secretly does feel the same way. But in pretty much any debate on the internet the anti-__ faction seems to do that for some reason – it seems a lot easier for people to say “I like X” without saying “… and so do you” than for them to say “I don’t like X” without adding “… and you don’t either!”
I never walk through Bed-Stuy alone. Why would I? There’s nothing there if you don’t live there; I would think a tourist would have even less reason to. And as Hello Again said, it’s not unusually* dangerous nowadays anyway.
There are dangerous areas (blocks rather than neighborhoods, mostly, though), but the aspects that make them attractive to petty criminals also serve to make them unattractive to most tourists. I don’t go to those places either, again, because I have no need to.
*Come to think of it, I have a feeling that people are saying “it’s no more dangerous than anyplace else” and you’re hearing “it’s safer than everywhere else.”
I tend to assume that people who found their interactions with me and my 8 million neighbors unpleasant had skewed expetations and/or a definition of “pleasant” that diverges wildly from my own. Of course, sometimes one has bad luck; it’s not entirely impossible that every interaction with another human being for an entire day/weekend/week was unpleasant, and it may be that every memorable interaction was or seemed that way. But I wonder what sorts of behavior people are classifying as “rude and obnoxious.”
This. This exactly. If you want to visit NewYorkLand, you’re not going to be happy here, because I doubt there is such a place, but New York definitely isn’t it.
Very few people are going to see that one of your arty is using a wheelchair and then completely dismiss this data point when they assess how much space you ought to need or how fast you ought to be traveling (or maybe I just assume that because I wouldn’t). New Yorkers may be in a hurry, but we aren’t automata.
Inclines aren’t so bad in most places, though if a neighborhood has the word “Heights” in its name there’s generally a reason for that, and I was surprised recently by some steep hills in East Harlem.
I have never experienced this. Nor have I experienced the lack of vibration when traveling outside the city, if you’re going to suggest I’m simply inured to it. So either New York doesn’t vibrate or unincorporated areas outside Burlington, VT, vibrate at the same frequency.
NYC is one of the most safety cities in United States. But, there are, of course, many areas of the city you do not visit, and certainly not at night/alone/on foot. However if you will keep one rule: be aware of surroundings and if any street makes you feel anxious turn back – you can live safely anywhere.
I’m a single woman who often goes into NYC alone. Extremely interesting (if it exists, you will find it there), not very intimidating, and I’ve never had anything close to a scary incident there.
NYC, meaning just Manhattan Island I feel safe walking around there especially during the day. One of the wonderful things about NYC, is that just about anything you can think of exists there. If you want to start a business, the talent pool is huge often has the best people in the country at whatever it is at that they do. I don’t find it intimidating, instead I feel there is a higher degree of professionalism from the businesses there than in other parts of the country. You get direct answers to questions, and people don’t beat around the bush when you ask questions and opinions. Maybe some people don’t like that, but having been to the Midwest I get frustrated by people not speaking their mind when I ask them about a product or service.
The other wonderful thing about NYC, is that with such a large population there is always something for everyone there.
I used to live in New Brunswick and take NJ transit/PATH train into Midtown to work. Two fucking hours each way, and I paid $387/month for the privilege. I understand it has since gotten worse.
I worked in two locations in Midtown, One Penn Plaza (right across from Penn station) and 120 Broadway (close to Wall Street.) I spent most of my NYC time in Midtown and didn’t stray much farther. In order to get to 120 Broadway, I took the PATH train from Newark to WTC, this would be during the post-911 reconstruction phase, when the site was basically a huge hole in the ground, and I was shocked at the sheer magnitude, in city area, of the construction site. It almost defied comprehension.
I grew up in the rural Midwest. It’s kind of a culture shock, but I expected people to be assholes, and by and large, people were not assholes. People were busy, in a hurry, and sometimes impatient, but not assholes. If you fell down, people would help you up. By and large, I really liked New Yorkers. I especially loved my coworkers.
I have a thing against crowds, too, but NYC didn’t bother me in that sense either. Wonderfully, nobody talked to you when you were out in public (praise Jesus!) and there are so many people that it’s like they aren’t even people, just this constantly undulating electric energy all around you. The diversity and the sheer number of people is a phenomenon that is difficult to explain in words, but it isn’t scary.
I didn’t find it intimidating, really. More like fascinating. NYC is one of the easiest places to navigate if you’re an outsider.
That said, I would never live there.
(Soon after leaving that job I went to grad school in Philly, and Philly is downright quaint compared to NYC. I would live there.)
Those pictures are either old or doubtful IMO. It goes back to the comment somebody made about not walking through Bed Stuy (all red on that map). The house my mom lived in eastern Bed Stuy in 1940, when her family was poor, recently sold for $945k. Business takes me to next door Bushwick pretty often, still scruffy in places yes, dangerous no. Look I’m not saying anybody is a ‘racist’, we have our gut feelings. But some white people feel threatened when most people on the street are not white, it’s ‘scary’, and why subject yourself to fear just to prove you aren’t ‘racist’? It’s not a matter of virtue IMO, I just don’t feel that way in my gut.
And as far as Manhattan I’m somewhat of an urban hiker. I’ve been down almost every street in Manhattan below the top of Central Park, and some beyond, in the last several years, no sweat, and I’m very far from fearless generally, climbing rocks or something? no way. Saying ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ (the place hardly anyone calls that anymore with all the giant super expensive new high rise residential buildings?) is dangerous is a joke. Even Alphabet City isn’t anymore. There’s no dangerous whole neighborhood left in Manhattan IMO. There’s a smaller area of Brooklyn than that map shows, to the south and east (like Brownsville etc) you probably don’t want to go for fun. But that’s the only significant no-go zone left in NY IMO. And anyway a tourist walking the whole city? A very high endurance tourist with lots of time on their hands.
NY isn’t just ‘not the hell hole it was’. Major crime rates have declined 80 to in some cases more than 90% since the actual peak in the 1990’s.
Interesting: no doubt. There are all sorts of things to do there. New York state, however, has some horribly boring places that are popular for conferences.
Intimidating: the only time I feel intimidated in NYC is when I’m trying to navigate the subway system. I prefer vastly Boston’s.
Scary: nope. However, I’ve never wandered NYC in a group of less than 3 people, so that could be different if I were all alone.
Unless you are loaded it isn’t interesting because everything costs 4 to 5 times what it would cost in any other location, urban or rural.
Interesting: Only if you have a trust fund.
Intimidating: Everything is poorly organized and chaotic. It’s not intimidating its just completely screwed up, which can leave you feeling defeated in trying to do the simplest task.
Scary: Depends on what scares you. Drugs are a huge problem in the city, for example. You probably won’t get shot like you might in Chicago. Also the main industry in NYC is the con. The really successful con men tend to work in the big buildings but there are plenty of wannabes on the street.
As someone who lived in London for 20 odd years, that is my precise impression. Both are manic and noisy and dirty (in parts), but New York always has a darker feeling to me. If I close my eyes and think of New York, I think of street after street of really tall buildings. London does feel airier for that reason, even if the street pattern is the opposite.
Interesting: Certainly
Intimidating: No, London is its equal in this regard.
Huh, that is the polar opposite of my experience in NY. We could get anywhere we wanted, easily, by using the well mapped subway system and walking GPS on our phone. We found plenty of low cost things to do and see - museums, parks, ferry rides, Ellis Island, etc., etc., etc. We found reasonable accommodations at a decent hotel in the Jamaica section of Queens, 6 blocks from the subway stop. We often rode the subway back at midnight and walked the 6 blocks to the hotel with no incidents. We ate both pricey and inexpensive food, according to our whim at the time. Neither was difficult to find.
I’m going to throw in a bit of a dissenting view on New York here, having lived in Manhattan for 5 years, starting when I was 28 and worked there for 17.
I think it’s fine if you want to live the “young, hip, single 20/30 something New Yorker” lifestyle you see on TV. You know, where you live in a shitty apartment with room mates, go to bars every other night, are semi-employed and develop a meaningless string of short term relationships. But I think a lot of people don’t want that and New York can be challenging.
For all the career opportunities, actually working in New York can be a tedious grind. Compact, open plan offices (because of high real estate costs), public transportation issues, surprisingly high amount of walking to/from work in shitty weather (unless you happen to both live and work within a block of a subway on the same line), constant competition.
A significant portion of “things to do” in NY seems to consist of “consuming”. Restaurants, bars, shows, etc.
In spite of what you see, it can be surprisingly difficult to form a core group of 4-6 friends you do everything together with for decades.