It can be pretty far. Like an hour or more late at night from what I hear.
Even Hoboken which is a 15 minute PATH train ride becomes an hour long adventure because the trains run infrequently late at night.
Then again, I got spoiled from being able to roll out of bed and walk across the street to half a dozen NYU bars that serve $2 Budweiser specials every night until Midnight.
Budweiser? I had you pegged as a Guinness man, or at least Heineken.
I agree, time spent waiting for the first bus or train, plus at transfer points, really does add up. Though in my case, as I’ve said before, I’m so sick of driving I think I could live with that.
Regardless, that’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to sell the concept of mass transit in cities that have been developed around the idea of people having their own cars.
It depends on where exactly you live. I’m five stops into Queens and about a 3 min walk from the station so I don’t feel far away at all. If I had to take a bus to the subway I’d feel much more distant. “Short walk to the subway” was actually number one on the list of must-haves when I was looking for a place to buy.
I also work in Manhattan and don’t suffer so much from the no-way-am-I-getting-on-that-train-again syndrome Ichbin Dubist speaks of. I usually get out at 3:00pm, and I’ll frequently go home, take care of my dogs, and be back in Manhattan around 7p or so.
Heh. I wish. I’m so far away that there’s no yellow cabs at all and not even cabs you can call. What you have is some Russian and Pakistani guys with totally illegal Lincoln Town Car gypsy cabs loitering around who ask every white person who comes down the el stairs “Taxi? Taxi?”. They have no fixed rates and charge a minimum of five bucks to take you to my neighborhood, which is literally a two-minute ride away. I offered one guy ten bucks on New Year’s to take me home and he smirked and turned his back on me. Nasty place to wait, too, very cold and with one badass bar as the only nearby business. Industrial area.
There’s also no coffeehouses, chain stores, or even a McDonald’s in my neighborhood either, and the even the one supermarket. It’s a big trade-off living in the outer boroughs. I go to Manhattan all the time but always, always, have to calculate a 90-minute ride back. Lousy when I got out of the Metropolian Opera at 11:30 or so.
Heh. I wish. I’m so far away that there’s no yellow cabs at all and not even cabs you can call. What you have is some Russian and Pakistani guys with totally illegal Lincoln Town Car gypsy cabs loitering around who ask every white person who comes down the el stairs “Taxi? Taxi?”. They have no fixed rates and charge a minimum of five bucks to take you to my neighborhood, which is literally a two-minute ride away. I offered one guy ten bucks on New Year’s to take me home and he smirked and turned his back on me. Nasty place to wait, too, very cold and with one badass bar as the only nearby business. Industrial area.
There’s also no coffeehouses, chain stores, or even a McDonald’s in my neighborhood either, and the even the one supermarket closes by nine. It’s a big trade-off living in the outer boroughs. I go to Manhattan all the time but always, always, have to calculate a 90-minute ride back. Lousy when I got out of the Metropolian Opera at 11:30 or so.
Yikes! Sorry for the doublepost. Anyway, during rush hour I can get home in about 55 minutes or so. But outer-boro bus transit is always iffy.
David Hartman & Historian Barry Lewis did a Walk Around Tour special in each NYC borough that aired on PBS. Here’s the web site version of the
Brooklyn episode
& The Queens episode.
Here are links to videos: On Barry Lewis’ site.
If the beers are $5 - $6 , I’ll go with the Heineken, Amstel or some microbrewery (Stella, Blue Moon or Yingling are some of my favorites). If the $2 special is in effect, I lose my beer snobery real fast.
I’ll second that. There’s like this invisible boundary of about 10-20 blocks or so where you decide “is this really worth taking the cab?”.
For the most part, it would be almost impossible to convince me to go to Brooklyn, Queens or above 60th street or so.
I just bought an apartment in Inwood in December. I have lived in Inwood for about three years. The time spent there has turned me into a stark raving Inwood partisan, so feel free to take my story with the usual salt.
It is far cheaper both to buy and rent in Inwood than midtown or downtown, though the gap is rapidly closing. It is easy to find a decent studio east of Broadway for less than $1000 a month, but you aren’t going to end up in one of the neighborhood’s classiest buildings.
If you want to rent west of Broadway, things become more competitive. The neighborhood is more professional, and the buildings are in better repair. Expect to pay more like $1100/mo for a halfway decent studio.
The neighborhood itself is gorgeous. There is an enormous amount of green space, including Manhattan’s only old growth forest. I can choose whether I want to picnic on the Hudson or on the East River, since large parks on both rivers are a short walk from my apartment.
In the past five years, Inwood has attracted a large crowd of artists and musicians. These are not the starving (and pretentious) east village types, but professionals who have “made it” in their fields. When the weather is warm, it is not uncommon to find a dude practicing his cello in Isham Park. He’s not exactly playing for pennies, since he plays with the NY Philharmonic. One of my fiancee’s clients a few doors down is the pianist for the Harlem Boys Choir. Hell, Inwood has its own literary review.
If bars and clubs will form the basis of your social life, you will have to do a little traveling. However, due to the recent waves of gentrification, upscale lounges and restaurants have been opening rapidly. They tend to be neighborhoody places, as it is not really convenient for people who live in the boroughs or downtown to come up to Inwood or Washington Heights just to go to one or two bars. But some of these new places are actually really good. As a longtime veteran of alphabet city, soho, etc, I can say that I really don’t miss the fucking meatheads. It’s just nicer uptown.
If there are any more questions, do fire away.
<hijack>
$2 beer is a special?! Move to the “outer boroughs” of Wisconsin and I’ll show you bars that sell 25 cent taps anytime. (But I don’t know what Stella or Yingling are).
<hijack>
I haven’t seen a bar in ages that has $2 specials, unless the specials go from 2-4 PM or some other idiotic time like that.
Stella and Yuengling sure aren’t microbrews.
If we can get ya to shack up with [url=http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/21699.htm]62 year old Patricia Becker, you’ll be in like Flynn.
To continue the hijack, 25 cent taps sound hauntingly similar to that barrel of mixed beers they dumped from 1/2 drank mugs and sold to the Irish immigrants in “Gangs Of New York”
NY’ers: Help release this brain fart: What was the name of that joint down on Bleeker that used to have the ltagline:
A Burger And A Buzz For Under $10 ??
Stella is a popular Belgian beer.
Yuengling is the oldest brewery in the US (it’s in PA near where I went to college.)
Another thing about NYC is that I’ve seen very few bars/clubs where there is a big line to get in. Superclubs like Webster Hall or The Limelight have them but for the most part, unlike places like Boston,DC or smaller cities, you don’t have a line 50 deep just to get into a regular college frat-guy bar.
In Boston I remember if you didn’t get to places like Pravda or The Big Easy before 10:00 it was like an hour wait.
As a corollary, no one ever goes to Staten Island.
I live in a comically small studio in the East Village that I pay slightly over $4/sqft for each month. I’m going to law school here, and what people say - “everything in the world in a five-block radius” - is right on. Everything is, of course, more expensive, but you get used to it. There’s no BSing - not needing a car isn’t going to save you money in the long run because everything’s so much more expensive to begin with.
On the other hand, it’s New York F’N City. It’s a fabulous place to live.
I have a lot of friends who commute daily to the Village (toward the bottom of Manhattan Island) from Brooklyn, and one or two who come in from Queens. The Brooklynites as a rule take the subway, and the Queensers usually have to take express busses. Living in one of the outer boroughs will generally save you some rent money, because Manhattan is Manhattan. I can’t speak for Queens, the Bronx or Staten Island (obviously, since no one ever goes there), but the areas of Brooklyn I’ve stayed in (briefly) have been a lot slower-paced than Manhattan and more run-down. Still, a lot of character lives in those neighborhoods.