What is so great about living in a big city

[Doomtrain]

@CrazyCatLady

The whole thing just sounds terribly cold and lonely to me.

Depends where you live. Down here, talking and being chatty is a way of life, so we somehow manage to combine living in a major city with actually talking to people. Reading my psych books on the train into school gets me into a conversation at least once a week. The people at Kroger and the Mailboxes Etc. know me well enough to chat regularly. And the guy at the liquor store where I pick up my tasty adult beverages is usually chatty. People not caring? Guess it depends where you live. I helped a nice girl jump her truck a week or so ago, though there were other volunteers. Our car died on the highway and three people stopped to help before the Highway Patrol types even managed to show up.

Night sky? We’ve got a beatiful night sky. I spent a lot of time in the country, but it’s a lot prettier here, for some reason.

Do I take advantage of my opportunities as much as I’d like to? No. I wish I could catch more shows and do more stuff, but I appreciate the chance to do these things when I have the time/money. We did just hit the Cool Used Bookstore the day before yesterday and I take public transit 4 days a week when I go in to class. And the food. I LOVE being able to answer my Chinese/pizza/weird food cravings at 2am. We used to catch more movies, but the bombardment of ads has totally turned me off to the moviegoing experience, except for major things like Lord of the Rings. We catch a show at the Fox about once a year.

Am I the dazzling young urbanite I’d like to be? No, but I do what I can.

About the only thing I’m missing is a front yard, but that means I don’t have grass to cut, cause the complex pays people to do that.

[CrazyCatLady]

@jehovah68

With all due respect CrazyCatLady, how can you make such an ignorant statement? If I may infer, you’ve never actually lived in NY, have you? We’re all well aware of the rep of New Yorkers as being rude people, and it is oh so easy to buy into the stereotype, but it’s not altogether true.
I would love to label rural folk as inbred uneducated yokels, but as I’ve never lived in those environs, it would be foolish of me to make that assumption.
Have a nice day.

No, I’ve never lived in New York. All I have to go by are the statements other people make about it. You know, like the people in this very thread who have commented about how nobody cares what you say or do in a large city. It seems to be a recurring theme in this sort of thread, that nobody in a city is interested in what you’re up to, that you can be completely anonymous in the crowd. It’s presented as a liberating change from people in “small towns” of 80,000, where everybody’s all up in everyone else’s business (while we’re discussing ignorance and stereotypes…), but it sounds pretty damn sad to me.

So, I guess the real question is whether or not the depictions of nobody caring what you do or say are accurate.

[Declan]

@CrazyCatLady

No, I’ve never lived in New York. All I have to go by are the statements other people make about it. You know, like the people in this very thread who have commented about how nobody cares what you say or do in a large city.** It seems to be a recurring theme in this sort of thread, that nobody in a city is interested in what you’re up to, that you can be completely anonymous in the crowd. It’s presented as a liberating change from people in “small towns” of 80,000, where everybody’s all up in everyone else’s business (while we’re discussing ignorance and stereotypes…), but it sounds pretty damn sad to me.**

So, I guess the real question is whether or not the depictions of nobody caring what you do or say are accurate.

It really does depend on your circumstances and personal pychology. When I was living in Toronto , I did know quite a few people that could not wait to get out of the city and do all the country living type stuff , with cottages in the muskokas or peter patch.

Our colleges and Univercitys get quite a diverse group of people that come into the system each year ,and the results of them both living and commuting to Toronto are what you would expect. Most of the rural folks that come for the education are quite content to never come back to Toronto , with the exception of seeing a jays game or go see Cats or what ever play is being shown.

Others find the Big city , quite liberating simply because of their persoanal circumstances make them stand out at their home town, or as mentioned , they will never get their dream job in a smaller venue.

Big Cities can make you , or break you , it really all depends on what type of social person you are.

One persons paradise is another persons hell, and thats been the story since day one.

Declan

[yosemite]

@CrazyCatLady

It seems to be a recurring theme in this sort of thread, that nobody in a city is interested in what you’re up to, that you can be completely anonymous in the crowd.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know.

One of my friends, who lives in a smaller town, once had to walk into a liquor store to buy some candy or something or other. A “neighborly” friend noticed, and it got around town that my friend had a drinking problem.

Sure, people know who you are in a small town, but not all of us want to be known. We may miss out in the friendliness of strangers, but we also miss out on the gossip, the never-living-down-your-past, and the rest of it.

I never have found people to be necessarily rude or cold in L.A. It’s not hard to strike up a nice chatty conversation on the bus, for instance. (However, stay away from the people who are muttering about Kennedy conspiracies. ;))

where everybody’s all up in everyone else’s business (while we’re discussing ignorance and stereotypes…),

It may be a stereotype, but I’ve seen it and I’ve noticed the contrast between L.A. and Hooterville. No doubt about it, more nosy people here. Not everyone is nosy, but a higher percentage than I ever noticed in L.A. Just my personal experience.

So, I guess the real question is whether or not the depictions of nobody caring what you do or say are accurate.

Strangers don’t care if I walk into a liquor store. They didn’t usually get all bent out of shape when I had purple hair, either. I liked that. I grew up with that lack of interest in me and my doings and I am used to it. I am used to strangers that I’ve just met not asking me if I’m single, married, how many kids do I have, when am I going to get married, how old I am, where I live. I LIKE that. Maybe that seems cold and impersonal to someone else, but I don’t particularly like being asked a lot of questions and I never have. It’s probably due to my upbringing, but it’s too late to change that now.

Now, granted, you’ll be less apt to find someone to help you if your car gets stranded on the highway, but I guess that’s what cell phones are for. (And in California, they have those Call boxes on the highways, so even if you don’t have a cell phone you’ll get help soon enough.)

[doreen]

@CrazyCatLady

No, I’ve never lived in New York. All I have to go by are the statements other people make about it. You know, like the people in this very thread who have commented about how nobody cares what you say or do in a large city. It seems to be a recurring theme in this sort of thread, that nobody in a city is interested in what you’re up to, that you can be completely anonymous in the crowd. It’s presented as a liberating change from people in “small towns” of 80,000, where everybody’s all up in everyone else’s business (while we’re discussing ignorance and stereotypes…), but it sounds pretty damn sad to me.

So, I guess the real question is whether or not the depictions of nobody caring what you do or say are accurate.

It’s accurate that you can be anonymous, but you don’t have to be. Depends a great deal on where exactly you live and how you choose to live.If you’re friendly with people , they will of course care what you do and say. But to use the liquor store example, even though I live only 15 minutes away from my mom, I don’t have to worry that my mother will hear that I’m buying a lot of liquor from her friend the clerk. It’s convenient enough for me to go to a store where I’m not known. If I really dislike my neighbors, and don’t want to run into them in the hardware store, video store, dry cleaners etc, it’s easy for me to go to the next neighborhood over instead of the ones in my neigborhood.

[JRDelirious]

@doreen

It’s accurate that you can be anonymous, but you don’t have to be. Depends a great deal on where exactly you live and how you choose to live.If you’re friendly with people , they will of course care what you do and say. But to use the liquor store example, even though I live only 15 minutes away from my mom, I don’t have to worry that my mother will hear that I’m buying a lot of liquor from her friend the clerk. It’s convenient enough for me to go to a store where I’m not known. If I really dislike my neighbors, and don’t want to run into them in the hardware store, video store, dry cleaners etc, it’s easy for me to go to the next neighborhood over instead of the ones in my neigborhood.

Exactly. It’s about choice. In a (real) Big City, you choose whether and with whom to engage. And the feeling of community can be found very easily; neighborhoods in the Big Cities assume the role of the “small town”. Or you create your own comunity based on common interests and activities rather than accident-of-birth. To take the NYC example, were I to crave the warm, relaxed, sometimes raucous stylings of my “natural habitat”, I could find multiple neighborhoods in all 5 boroughs to live in, where I’d likely run into people very much like my family. OTOH there is the phenomenon of many pseudo-Big Cities which somehow don’t quite achieve many of the reported benefits.

One of the advantages of the times we live in is that with the 'net and other advancs in communications and transport, those of us living outside the big urban centres CAN easily access many of the goods, services and information that used to be available only at those places with large concentrations of population and wealth. This makes it possible for more of us to live where we want/need to w/o necessarily foregoing the things we like about some other place.

[lt180ml]

People in cities aren’t being rude by ignoring you. We’re being polite. When several hundred thousand people live within a few miles of each other, there’s a lot of people around, all the time. If everyone were as friendly as more rural folk, there would be no privacy outside your bedroom. If I said hello to everyone I pass on the street it would take me hours to walk to the corner store for milk or whatever. In the subway, the only way for anyone to have privacy is if we ignore each other: no eye contact, no talking, etc. A crowded car at rush hour with everyone exchanging friendly greetings? That would mean fifty people all talking at once, in each other’s ears.

How often do I get to concerts, museums, etc? I’m not a big visual art or theatre person to start with, so the answer there is once a year or so. However, growing up in New Jersey an hour outside NYC, I didn’t once get to the New York Philharmonic. (I’ve been since leaving home, though.) Living a block away from Symphony Hall, I get to concerts there 5-10 times a year, not counting other performances. And I don’t really pay for it, either, since I can’t afford a subscription. It’s not that hard to pull off with student discounts, donated tickets, etc. In fact, it’s just about time to go grab rush tickets for tonight now.

[RickJay]

@CrazyCatLady

Near as I can tell, most folks who live in very large cities take advantage of that sort of thing about as often as people who live within easy driving distance of those cities–if there’s something they’re truly interested in, they’ll make the effort to go; otherwise, forget it.

Gosh, that just isn’t true at all. Like I said, I’ve lived in both small town and big city, and since coming to the big city I’ve used the big city conveniences FAR more than I ever would have just driving into the city. I see more pro sporting events in a year now than I’d seen in my entire life before moving here; I’m a huge baseball fan, and since moving here I have attended about 60 ball games, as compared to maybe 10 before in my whole life. In 4 years here I have gone to museums and zoos and such more than in my previous 28 years of life; in fact, we became members of the Toronto Zoo, which would only make sense if you lived here. I’ve gone to more cultural festivals and trade shows than I ever did before. I simply couldn’t have done this stuff before - I would have gone broke driving to Toronto or Montreal.

Worst of all, though, would be the contempt and insularity of people who had never lived anywhere else and thought their way of life was far superior to any other.

Is this a joke? If not, it’s surely one of the most accidentally ironic statements in SDMB history.

I mean, holy shit. Pot, meet kettle!

[kevja]

Options.

Yeah, fine arts and rock concerts. Funky cafes and five star restaurants, etc.

But more importantly for me – in a big city you can be involved with other people 24/7, be an “urban cave dweller,” or anything in-between. Freedon to do what you want, be what you want to be, and yet blend in with eveyone else.

[Ravenman]

Let me just add a few points that other might not have made yet…

Jobs - I think big city jobs are a hell of a lot more interesting, for me at least. I couldn’t imagine working in my profession (foreign policy) anywhere but a big city. Simply not possible.

Travel - Related to my job, of course, but I’ve now been to a few dozen countries, and it has been because I have not had to fly out of smaller, regional airports before heading overseas. I am continually stunned at how much more it costs to get from even smaller cities - like Omaha or Fresno - to large international airports with good connections to the world. As an example, it now costs $480 to go from Washington, DC (where I live) to London: not exactly cheap, but won’t send me to the poorhouse. If I lived somewhere near Charlotte, NC, Orbitz tells me the cheapest fare is $723. Yikes.

Big City vs. Lots of People - Allow me to be a city snob for a moment. There’s a hell of a big difference between cities that have grown up rather than grown out. I like places like New York, Boston, and San Francisco - rather small places with a hell of a lot going on. Lots of character. I’m not such a big fan of places like Los Angeles, Dallas, or Atlanta, where there’s a lot going on, but it might take a long time to get there. In my view, these places just don’t have as much flavor as the former category… not that they are terrible places, mind you.

[rose]

I’m in Boston, and as everyone else has listed, there are plenty of practical reasons to live in the city: plenty of stuff nearby to do, see, etc.

But there’s something else here, too… somethign about being absolutely surrounded by people, all different types, all crammed in together. And then the abundance of people juxtaposes with the cold, unfeeling aspect of the city: the tall gray buildings, the dark subways, the incessant traffic, the sound of sirens at night… it all fits together into something amazing.
Like you’ll be passing through some dark cold alley, and all you can hear is the subway rumbling… but then you hear someone practicing violin from an open window.

You don’t find that sort of thing anywhere else.

[Cervaise]

What RickJay and Fish and others have said. (Note, Fish is my brother. He and I grew up in a smallish town, and he lived with me for a while in the big city. He went back, and I’m still here, so we know whereof we speak.)

The one thing I’ll add that nobody has mentioned yet is something that only a movie geek would really understand: In addition to the arthouse cinemas (several of them), it’s also important to have independent video stores. Small towns tend to have a Blockbuster (or a Hollywood) and a couple of gas stations and/or quickie marts with hardly more than the latest blockbusters. Here in the big city, I’ve got a choice of big independent and/or small specialty video shops where I can find just about any movie I want as long as it’s been released on tape or disc in the last thirty years. The same would go for music, too: How many small towns have a single place where you can go to browse classic jazz on vinyl, let alone more than one?

@CrazyCatLady

Sooo…all these advantages everyone’s touting, the art museums, the plays, the music, the fantabulous food at 4am…how often do most of you actually take advantage of this stuff?

All the damn time. I’m in a play now. I see movies and go to ethnic restaurants quite regularly. This past weekend, my wife went to the symphony. We have a family zoo membership, and I’m also a member of the city’s cinema club, which entitles me to great privileges at the annual film fest (whose program features the most titles of any festival in the U.S.).

When I visit my parents in their small town, an hour south of here, I can feel myself starting to slowly go crazy the moment I cross the city line. I know there won’t be any good bookstores, I know it’ll be pointless to check the film listings, I know there will be maybe one or two really good ethnic restaurants, I know the local live-theater and live-music options won’t be very good, and I know it’ll be pointless to be looking for anything to do after 6pm. Even if I’m visiting only overnight, it’s still a palpable relief to get out of town. And it’s primarily the character of the town that does it to me, not tension with the family. I just plain don’t like the constraint of the tiny little burg.

[CrazyCatLady]

@RickJay

Is this a joke? If not, it’s surely one of the most accidentally ironic statements in SDMB history.

I mean, holy shit. Pot, meet kettle!

Well, actually, it was just a comment on the people (like some in this very thread) who talk about how they’ve never lived anywhere but a large city, but it would all be so very horrible, and that city life is ever so much better. Yes, those comments are the exact same thing as rural farmers condemning the city without having experienced it. Pot, kettle, indeed.

Say what you will, but I’ve at least experienced city life enough to decide that I don’t care for it. And one of the things I especially don’t care for is the attitude that all things non-urban are automatically inferior to all things urban, which is a pretty common attitude among the city-dwellers I’ve known over the years. I especially don’t care for that attitude when it involves condemning non-urban life for its insularity without recognizing its own insularity. That’s all I’m saying.

[CrazyCatLady]

I would also like to point out that I’m quite open to the possibility that I’ve merely come up with a very skewed, non-random sample of city-dwellers and that has given me an inaccurate view of their attitudes.

[RickJay]

@Cervaise

The one thing I’ll add that nobody has mentioned yet is something that only a movie geek would really understand: In addition to the arthouse cinemas (several of them), it’s also important to have independent video stores.

Now, I have to give Kingston credit; some great, great independent video joints. Advantage of being a university town, I suspect.

A small town with a university does present some small artistic benefits, like independent video stores and active local drama scenes. Kingston had a happenin’ music scene too. There is a big difference between a town of 10,000 people and a town of 80,000 with a big college. But I’ll stick with Toronto for now.

[RickJay]

By the way, Cervaise, you should come up for the Toronto International Film Festival and dine with Mrs. RickJay and I. Make a Dopefest out of it.