I lived in NYC, and I also worked for the city as an auditor. I’m voting more “money grab” (and money waste). Waste because often when that stupid sanitation truck comes by, the stree looks dirtier than it did before (at least it did back in “my day.” Perhaps technology has improved them). The joke went: “How can you tell the street sweeper came?” Answer: “By the big trail of dirt it left behind.” And those trucks cost a fortune–I believe in the 6-figures in the 1980’s! And the labor is very expensive to the city too.
I was going to mention the guy in Seinfeld whose job was to move parked cars. Imagine paying someone to do that.
As for the frequency of cleaning, yes I suspect it is necessary in NYC. I’ve not spent much time there, but I found it to be a terribly dirty city.
Act now and you can have Unit PH95, where you are literally standing higher than the tip of the Empire State Building’s spire. It’s 8,200 square feet, with six bedrooms, seven baths, and whatever view you want because it is actually the entire 95th floor. Private elevator landing, stair landing, a 500-square foot kitchen, dining room with seating for 14 (18 if you squeeze 'em in) and a master bedroom with His and Hers bathrooms. Somehow it has a wood burning fireplace, too.
Yours for just $82,000,000. The monthly condo fees and taxes come up to $33,000. A bargoon!
There’s also a high-rise (nineteen-story) Manhattan apartment building in which some residents can park their cars right next to their apartments. There is an elevator that will lift the cars to private garages right next to the apartments.
Hoboken NJ right across the river is more densely populated than NY as a whole (though less than Manhattan), similar system, and a notoriously overbearing, money grubbing parking authority. However, you don’t get ticketed if you park after the sweeper goes by but still during the one hour/week street cleaning time, and the little ticketing buggy almost never comes more than a minute or so ahead of the sweeper. Do they really ticket cars in NY which pull in after the sweeper passes?
Anyway Manhattan is a crazy place to habitually street park a car, as opposed to just a PITA in Hoboken or the parts of Brooklyn, Queens etc where few residences have driveways (in some further out parts of the Outboroughs many houses do have driveways as has been mentioned). OTOH garage spaces are more insanely priced in Manhattan. We don’t get anywhere near enough street cleaning tickets at $35 a pop on our son’s car, which we street park for him, to equal the $200 /month we pay for an indoor space for our car (a bargain here but it’s way more in Manhattan especially if the car isn’t a safari trek away from your apartment). Even factor in the hassle of moving it and it’s better to street park…a car you don’t mind getting dinged up from other people’s clumsy parallel parking (and streets here are really narrow, even compared to the City). Similar trade off in the City though, except prices are higher. And when the car actually gets towed (which eventually a street parked car will) that’s another dimension of hassle. Also if you don’t have a flexible time schedule to move the car at opportune times it can be impractical to street park.
So instead of taking a high speed elevator to the garage in the basement, you get to wait for a much slower elevator and ride your car up and down?
I am required by tradition to mention in any thread about living in New York City that it costs $2000 a month to rent a broom closet to live in.
If you’ve never lived in a big city, the logistics of some of this stuff will amaze you. My sister once came to visit me in Manhattan, and parked legally on the street. When she went out the next morning, her vehicle was gone. After various machinations, someone suggested that she just walk around in a few block radius, because the city might’ve moved it to do some streetwork. Sure enough, it was parked (legally) a couple of blocks away.
I imagine this makes it easier to load up the car for the weekend in the Hamptons. And I also imagine this feature would appeal to people moving from the suburbs (where adjacent garages are standard) to the city.
I live in a suburb of the 5th largest city in the US, and it’s nothing like NYC at all. There’s plenty of on-street parking, the street sweepers can and do avoid parked cars, and therefore there are no tickets for sweeping day. We also don’t have NYC levels of garbage, and you don’t have to pay $700,000 for a 600 sq ft apartment, plus $1900/month in maintenance fees.
Yes, it’s hot. But it doesn’t smell like pee everywhere.
hahahhaahHAHAHA. Worse for me. I see people gasp when I tell them what I pay and then I don’t have the heart to tell them that’s just one room in a four person share.
That was meant for mssmith. in response to
“I’m always surprised when people ask how New Yorkers live, as if they don’t have a TV or ever seen a movie that takes place in New York. When I told a friend out in the Midwest how much my apartment cost, his wife was shocked and asked me how many rooms I lived in. It was a studio…so just the one room.”
Sorry, multitasking and can’t remember how to do the code quote thing here yet
So all I’ve learned from this thread is that New Yorkers are fucking filthy. I sometimes walk around downtown of my medium sized city. I work down here, sometimes I go to the Saturday market, etc. And where I go, I leave no trace. Somehow I avoid dropping enough goddamned garbage in the city street for the city to have a giant machine come and clean up after me. Maybe I should do a TED talk.
You really can’t compare a “suburb of the fifth largest city in the US” (Philadelphia, I assume?) with downtown Manhattan. Many suburbs of New York City have plenty of on-street parking and no (or at least fewer) issues with street sweepers. In fact, not all of New York City is that dense and urban. Parts of the outer boroughs feel like the suburbs.
There’s garbage all over London, too.
Heck, in my suburban city there’s garbage. Especially outside the Portuguese bar on Kerr, where they just throw their cigarette butts everywhere; it’s gross. But there’s garbage around. The thing is, my city only has 200,000 people, in an area almost exactly the same size as Manhattan, which has eight times as many residents, and even more than that many people coming onto the island every day to work. So, the minor garbage problem my city has? Logically, if you have ten times the people, it’ll be ten times as bad. And during a weekday Manhattan has TWENTY times as many people.
I don’t litter, either. I would no more drop garbage on the sidewalk than I’d cut off my own finger. But some people don’t care. Stuff blows away, too, out of cans and bins and whatnot.
So you’re telling me 100% of your shits have been in a toilet?
I’ll submit that if the ticket writer cannot tell if the street has been swept then sweeping didn’t accomplish it’s purpose (or perhaps wasn’t necessary in the first place). Around here a street that has just been swept is obviously cleaner.
If you had a motorcycle in New York, and parked it on the street, how long would it sit before being stolen?
But there is opera here!
(Thanx & a tip o’ the hat to Dave Barry)
If you locked it, possibly forever.
If you left the keys in the ignition, it’s anyone’s guess.
I knew someone who lived in Chicago well before the invention of car share or quickie rental scheme like Zipcars, and they kept their car at their sister’s house in the suburbs. If they needed the car, they’d take the El and a bus to get to her house.
Saved them the twice a week irritation of the sweeper dance, and it was quicker and cheaper to keep a car in another city than it was to rent one as needed.