Tell me about New York City.
I’ve never been there and probably will never go but it sounds fascinating and I want to hear about it from normal people, not advertisement agencies or upper crust who live in $3000 a month apartments with private parking.
I want to know about it from street level, the homes, the streets, the people, the smell, the infamous NY Taxi’s, the clubs and if you have never been there should you really know someone who lives there to keep you safe?
When you say New York City, do you mean it in the City sense (i.e., just Manhattan (the borough, not the mod)) or in the all-five boroughs sense?
I know a lot more about The City than the other four boroughs, so I can’t really help you with those.
The homes. The homes are pretty small apartments. These apartments are very very expensive, and may or may not have pest problems. People tend to lust after things like closet space, which is really rare.
Parking is impossible. There are very few good reasons to have a car here, especially since it’ll cost you an extra rent (up to $700 a month) just to park it. People know all of the really obscure holidays of all the popular faiths (how many Americans do you know who know when Shavuos is? Or Eid al-Adha?) because on them, “alternate side parking rules” are suspended, and you can park on both sides of the street.
The people aren’t as nasty as you hear. They/we do have a tendency towards a certain… bluntness. And they generally do seem to be hurrying someplace. And there are a heck of a lot of them, so things tend to be very crowded. But they’re as nice, on the whole, as people anywhere else are.
Everybody jaywalks. You look like an idiot if you don’t when you get a good opportunity.
More people than the average wear all black, but it’s not a uniform or anything.
The drivers (cabbies are just an extreme end of a spectrum) tend to be very aggressive.
There’s always something going on everywhere, making people like me who never seem to get out feel even more pathetic.
Everything’s really expensive except the mass transit, which is really a pretty good deal ($1.50 for a one way ride anywhere in the city, including bus-bus and bus-subway transfers). Groceries and stuff cost an arm and a leg. So do movies ($10 a ticket in some theaters now).
Neighborhoods have very different flavors. You can move five blocks and be in a very different world. It’s very hard to generalize about NY because every little area is so unique.
This is just the stuff that comes to mind at the moment - sorry that I went on so much.
Oh, and about being a tourist - my first cardinal rule of New York is Try Not to Look Like a Tourist. This means not walking around with a camera out. Not pointing at stuff that New Yorkers see every day, like the lights in Times Square. (Aside - during orientation at my college, one of the events was a ride on the Circle Line Cruises, which sail around Manhattan. Everyone from the entire freshman class took a ride to the Times Square subway station to walk to the piers. As we poured out onto the street, behind me I heard a guy say, “Oh cool! It’s just like TV!”) Not wandering around looking lost - walk purposefully (or stroll purposefully) at all times, and duck into a store to consult your map if you have to. The second cardinal rule is Do Not Do Stupid Things. Don’t walk around by yourself late at night, especially in bad/deserted areas, and especially in parks. Keep your wallet inaccessible. Knowing someone who knows the place is probably helpful, but follow the cardinal rules and you’ll probably stay safe.
It’s not that impressive, and when you leave at the end of the day your face is really dirty. It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
Yeah, I’ve found people from cities almost always carry their wallets in their front pockets. At least among people I know.
Personally, I find NYC incredibly impressive. Everything is so busy and big and stuff. And I’m from Boston, not the middle of nowhere. There are several restaurants of every ethnicicity in the city. Pretty much any food that is eaten anywhere on earth can be found in New York.
There is an intensity in the air that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. The place just seems so full of people doing stuff that it’s almost like the city itself is alive.
More, please.
Little things you’d never think about, like the smells, the sounds, are there really as many street people around like shown on TV, will New Yorkers just walk on by an unconscious body on the sidewalk, will the waiters in some restaurants actually chase you out into the street if you did not give them a big enough tip?
What do subways smell like? Are the NYPD as ‘smartassed’ as they seem? What is it like in Central Park? Do pan handlers accost people on the street and get mouthy if you don’t give them any money?
I pretty much agree with everything GilaB says but would add: Why worry about looking like a tourist if you are a tourist? Why try to be something you’re not? I never thought of NYer’s as being antagonistic or predatory towards tourists. Quite the contrary, we generally love showing off our city. I wouldn’t walk late at night in a bad neighborhood no matter what city or country I was in. Many people live in small, sometimes tiny, apartments. But not everyone. This is sort of a NYC stereotype. I have been in many apartments that have more square footage (feet?) than some houses. As to the outer boroughs, though I am originally from and currently living in Manhattan, I have lived in Brooklyn and have friends there. I go to college in Brooklyn. It’s different from Manhattan. It’s Brooklyn! On two different occasions out of state friends of mine thought Brooklyn the height of the tour that I took them on! Manhattan is a place where the moment you step out your door you are in the thick of things. In the outer boroughs there is more home ownership and car ownership. It’s almost unheard of for a high school senior in Manhattan to own their own car. But not unheard of in the outer boroughs.
But here is my basic observation: NYC is a different experience during the day and during the night. During the day, everybody is in a rush. Everybody walks straight ahead (perhaps where we get our unfriendly reputation; but if you actually ask someone something NY’ers are generally very helpful no matter what kind of rush they are in). But at night, everything changes. People slow down. Everyone has a smile. People stroll. They have casual sidewalk dinners. Yes, NYC at night is quite different than the day.
Try a little Fran Lebowitz: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/series/interview/lebowitz.html
I love NYC (I’m most familiar with Manhattan), it’s a happenin’ town!
I had a cop flip me off at a Mets game. I honestly wasn’t doing anything wrong either. I was sitting in my seat with my family and just turned around and this cop looked at me and flipped me off.
A story about a wily baseball fan . . . at a Yankees game there was this (stupid) guy walking around wearing a Mets shirt (this was before interleague) and kind of “flaunting” it to people in the section. This dude that was 10 rows above the Mets shirt guy decided to try to spit on him. He missed. The guy came back and he decided to see if he’d have better aim the second time. He didn’t. Instead he hit some lady. Kind of gross.
In the summer when it’s real hot there’s a certain smell (to me). It’s a combination of heat/humidity, asphalt, and kind of like garbage, but not really maybe kind of musty? It’s a very distinct smell to me, and if I smell it I associate it with NY, because that’s the only time I’ve ever smelt it.
Also another thing is if you’re coming from NJ and you’re taking the PATH and transfer to the NY Subway it’s really different. The people on the trains act (and appear) different.
To add to the “NYers are in a hurry” thought, I agree. I think it’s funny to walk around Times Square and see the “real” NYers curse the teeny-boppers waiting around MTV.
I also must add that NYC has a very high concentration of beautiful women. Just walking around there are tons.
It’s pretty cool when you’re high up in a building and look down at the city. It looks kind of calm, but then you get down there it’s fast paced.
I hope none of the NYers on the board get mad at any of the stuff I said. I mean it in the best way, there’s no other place like it. It’s got a real charm to it. I love NYC, there’s tons o’ stuff to do.
Yes, there are a lot of street people/beggars, but they are mostly not dangerous and don’t hassle you if you just ignore them.
If a body looked like it was someone just sleeping or passed out they might walk around it, but I think if someone was obviously injured, or too well dressed to be a bum, I think someone would call the police or paramedics.
In general people don’t like to get involved.
The subways don’t small as bad as you might expect, and I don’t think they’re really all that dangerous, except maybe if you are alone at night. You pay to get into the subway system but then you can get on and off the trains as often as you want, so if you don’t like someone’s looks, you can get off and catch the next train. The maps in all subway stations are great. If you ever get lost, just ask someone where the nearest subway station is.
The main sound I would associate with NY is car horns.
Its fun to go to the village (the Greenvich Village neighborhood) in the evening. There are some cool bars there.
You can get away with drinking beer or smoking a joint in public if you are at all discreet about it.
I cannot agree enough with the posters who have mentioned that every borough, even every neighborhood is different. I’ve lived here for 15 years, and I still go places within the city limits that I’ve never been before, and say “Good grief, who knew this was here?”
GilaB was dead on when he said that jaywalking is required.
New Yorkers carry a lot of stuff around. This is because most people who live in Manhattan don’t have cars, or if they live elsewhere and work in Manhattan, they usually leave their car at home and take the train/bus/subway to their job. So, you end up carrying everything you need, or might need, for the rest of the day. Your gym bag, a gift for a party after work, the shoes you picked up on your lunch hour. Have you ever seen a movie where someone without luggage checks into a hotel, and everyone raises their eyebrows? Any New Yorker at any given time could check into a hotel with more bags than some people would bring on a weekend trip.
Most places don’t take checks. I’m amazed when I visit the in-laws, and they pay for their groceries with a check. It would never even occur to me to ask if a drug store or supermarket takes checks.
It seems to me that more planning is required socially. If you’re meeting people somewhere, you need to make a real specific meeting place. “At Lincoln Center” doesn’t even cut it, you need to pick a bench at the south west corner, because everyone else in the world is also meeting at Lincoln Center. It’s often best to make reservations for dinner, depending on where you go. Especially with a big group. I’m sure the big group thing is somewhat true everywhere, but if you make the reservation for 8 people, and show up with 10 people, it’s a real problem. The restaurant will try to accomodate you if they can, but often you can see that every other chair in the place is taken by people who made reservations for the correct number of people.
There are so many parades, street festivals, and other gatherings of people that it’s impossible to keep up with them all. You might encounter a huge throng of people on the street, and wonder why exactly they are there. It might be a street festival, it might just be a slightly busier day than usual.
In the same vein, you see tons of stuff that you don’t know why it’s there, and you never hear about it again. I suspect that some of this stuff would make the news in other towns. I’ve been walking along the street and seen 5 naked people doing performance art, a person-sized plastic dinosaur, and a car tricked out to look like a covered wagon(not all at the same time). There’s so much unusual stuff that it just seems usual. I’ve been walking with visitors from out of town who stop and say “What is that huge basketball doing in the middle of the street?” and I have no good answer, sometimes this stuff just appears, and then a while later it disappears. Sometimes, it’s neat when you hear about one of these things weeks after you’ve seen it – someone mentions that the Museum of Natural History put a big dinosaur in the street to advertise the new dinosaur exhibit. I always feel very accomplished when that happens. Last summer, there was a big thing in some cities where artists would decorate big fiberglass animals around the city. In Buffalo (where I’m from), there were buffalos, and people would stop traffic to point and look at them. In New York, we had cows, and you barely noticed them amongst all the other things to look at.
I’ve never seen anyone walk over a dead body on the street. I’ve never seen a dead body on the street at all, come to think of it. I have seen rats the size of poodles, and they have no fear of you or anyone else. They tend to mind their own business.
To me, the subway usually smells damp. It sometimes smells like bodily functions, but more often it smells like massive amounts of chlorox or whatever else they use to clean up the bodily functions. The stations are vastly different. The station where I live (Clinton-Washington in Brooklyn) is particuarly not nice. I would eat off the floor of the 79th Street station – ok, maybe not eat off the floor, but it’s very nice. The subway always looks worse in movies and on TV.
The project was called Cow Parade. I loved them. They were all over the place last summer. There was a little group of taxi cows next to the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street, all different. A subway map cow, a cow with multicolored stripes, all sorts of cows. It distressed me when I occasionally saw one that had been vandelized.
I didn’t know Buffalo had buffalos. Neat idea.
IMO, it’s okay if it’s plain that you’re a tourist. Just don’t get in people’s way, okay? That can be a problem with tourists, when they’re in large groups. Sometimes you’ll encounter a group that doesn’t realize that behavior that would be okay in Disneyland or Six Flags or whatever isn’t okay in bustling midtown or downtown Manhattan: they’re at the entrance to an attraction, or a subway entrance or something, not going in, not going out, not going anywhere. Just milling around, totally in the way, waiting for I don’t know what. Someone to buy tickets, maybe, or the rest of their group to arrive.
A nifty feature of living in Manhattan is that no one thinks there’s anything strange or unusual about not having a car. Lots of people are carless. Can’t afford one, or don’t want the hassles, or both. You can not only get along just fine without a car, you are also not looked upon as some sort of looser for not having one.
As a non-native who visits NYC every once in a while, the subways do smell musty, typically. They don’t really smell bad but on a hot day they have a faint BO smell. The entire city’s sidewalk and subway system seemed to be covered in black bubble gum (turns black because so many people step on it). There are more smells in the air of varying persuasions than any where in the world (most likely as no other city has as much diversity) from all the different foods, to perfumes, and even just a “people” smell. I can imagine being blind in New York but not missing it because I would just take in all the other senses of the city. The buildings are huge but they weren’t as big as I imagined. They are still impressive. Some people say the city never sleeps but at 2 or 3 am on Sunday nights the only people who seem to be out are cab drivers looking for their next fairs. You can spend virtually any amount of money for a good meal in New York. Chinatown is good for very cheap food. (Had a 3 course meal, soup, entree, and dessert for 4 bucks including the tip at 2 am one day. I think that makes it cheaper than Taco Bell.) Then you can spend up to several hundred dollars or more for a meal. I haven’t spent more than $150 or so for any one meal (for two) there though. The apartments all seem pretty dinky overall. In Manhattan it seems the entire population lives in a studio or efficiency apartment of some kind. I have a friend who has a studio apartment that is probably only 200 square feet (has a real kitchen/dining room though with a non stacked washer and dryer) and pays some astronomical price for it. If you are ever desparate for something to do you can find it in New York. From mundane walks to avante garde performance art (saw some “people statues” one day when walking through Central Park who would periodically snap into some weird dialogue about cartoons or cereal…No, I don’t think they were homeless). From folk art on the streets and the subway, with the homeless people performing songs (some quite decently) on the subway to chalk murals on the ground and even to handcrafts at some spontaneous street market. Always something to be had or to do. I would love to live in New York at times but most of the time I just remember how oppressive rent is there and get discouraged.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Things I like about New York:
• Ze stores! [Eva Gabor voice]
• The wide variety of people. I once saw a perfect, 7-foot-tall Frankenstein’s monster lumbering down the street. No one even turned around to give him a second look.
• The history. There are still some nice old graveyards, and 19th-century buildings, both big and small, scattered around amidst the hideous glass skyscrapers.
• Subways aren’t pleasanmt, but they’re not as dangerous as they were 15 years go, and really are a fast way to get around (unles you get stuck on the 6 train, as I always seem to).
• Lotsa parks of various sizes. I am the original Wandering Jew, so I always get lost in Central Park, But there are plenty of smaller ones, too.
• Great odd corners and things few people know about: tea at the Algonquin; browsing old newspapers at the library; Argosy and Gotham bookstores; strolling parts of the West Village that still look like they did in the 1850s . . .
New York has so many people on the street. The traffic on any given sidewalk in Manhattan is immense. Think about the volume of people leaving a concert or sporting event, and that gives you a sense of it. There’s a lot of attractive people too.
The worst NY smells are the steam rising from the street grates (ugggghhhh) and the roasted chestnut pushcarts (double ugghh).
An it’s not just normal jaywalking that’s expected, like crossing in the middle of a street rather than the crosswalks. It’s crossing in the crosswalks when the sign specifically says don’t walk. If a car won’t hit you, you cross, regardless of what the sign says.
How about those people I see on the specialty stations on cable TV who buy, like the top floor of some old warehouse and turn it into this great home? What about the remains of the Worlds Fair that was there years ago? I saw some site on the Internet that had pictures of these great, once wonderful abandoned buildings. Then these huge deli’s. I saw one on TV that was huge, packed with cheeses, meats, and everything and these guys in white behind this big counter handling orders rather grimly for this big crowd.
Neon Frying Pan, I think that it is very cool that you want to read about the sights and smells of NYC. But reading your OP I think that maybe you are asking for a level of prose that is beyond the capabilities of the average Joe. I’m sure that there are people on this site who up to the the task, but good writing is hard work. So maybe you should hunt for books and articles and essays about NYC that already exist. I linked to that Fran Lebowitz blurb because she usually cracks me up. But there are many interviews in connection with that wonderful PBS series New York: A Documentary Film, excerpts of which can be accessed here http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/series/index.html and click “interview gallery”
About turning the top floor of a warehouse into a great home - It’s a constant game to see who can discover the next great, unappreciated, undervalued neighborhood and get in on the bottom floor (or the top floor of a warehouse) Pretty soon, everyone moves there and it becomes expensive! People are getting rich at a younger age, and they don’t want to live on the Upper East Side (Where Eva Gabor’s dream penthouse would be - instead of Green Acres). Too fuddy-duddy.
Many years ago, I walked through the abandoned World’s Fair in the middle of the night. It was spooky with pigeons living in that big globe of the earth.