How do the schools compare between Tucson and whatever borough you might be considering? Or do you want to send your kid to private school?
I don’t know. I don’t think he needs private school, but I haven’t done any research in that area. Heck, it just came to me yesterday.
Today I went to a used bookstore (shout out to my homie Bookman’s) and found two books about New York and on memoir of a writer who moved there broke. Maybe I’ll end up waiting until his little self is grown, but still that’s at least 8 years of good research, no?
People say this kind of thing a lot, and I have to tell you it is bullshit. I live in a huge 2 bedroom in Manhattan that is pretty great for $1500 per month. My boyfriend and I are looking at 2 bedrooms to move into in the next couple of months and we have found several in the $1300-$1400 range in decent neighborhoods, a couple of them even have dish washers! Sure, you won’t be living within view of Central Park but that doesn’t mean you will be living in dangerous, gang infested areas of the city either.
Besides that, my transportation costs dropped by almost $1000 when I moved to NYC. I pay $81 a month to get where I need to go. I no longer pay for gas, repairs, payments, insurance, traffic tickets, or any other costs associated with owning a car and that makes me feel just fine paying a bit more for rent here than I did in Texas. I feel like moving to NYC was the best decision I could have ever made. My cost of living here is not as high as I had thought it would be and it certianly isn’t as high as everyone warned me to expect.
That being said, I did come visit several times over the course of a year before I moved here so I knew what I was getting into before packing up my stuff. It isn’t like an episode of Sex and the City but it isn’t like American Gangster either. Come up here and check it out and if you pm me before you get here I will be glad to show you around a bit!
Thank you- I appreciate that, and I will if I do!
I’ll admit to a bit of fun describing my feelings of this in the hopes that you’ll see that the other side of the fence probably looks greener because it sits over a septic tank. I was hoping to goad New Yorkers into espousing some of the qualities you’re seeking. I’d love to see you take a vacation to see the sights and experience some of the financial challenges involved. It sounds like you could use a break from your routine. You could price out a few apartments for the heck of it while you’re there.
I truly understand the mystique of living in NYC. It’s not like I think I live in paradise. But I’m also am very pragmatic when seeing the bigger picture. If you’re unhappy with the status quo you will still be taken a lot of that with you. New York isn’t going to make it all better.
One topic I was hoping to touch on was your son. I’m not sure what your situation is but does he have friends and a lifestyle that needs to be addressed? When I was his age, I biked all over the neighborhood and had lots of parks and stuff to go to. By the time I was 15 I was biking 100 miles a day during the summer.
That won’t be a problem. The nature of his disability will preclude his independence from reaching that point for a very long time still. I’m assuming they have neighborhoods there, like they do here, where the school is within walking distance and he’ll be able to manage fairly well. He isn’t cognitively impaired which will help.
In all reality it’s probably too expensive a move for me to justify. But somehow even though I haven’t ever visited, I’ve seen enough of it on tv and movies and heard enough about it that I* know* what it’s like to be there, almost. I just know I would love it, but really only if I had a lot of money. That’s true.
:dubious:
You can’t smell it on TV, sister. And I’m only half (or maybe just a quarter) joking.
I know it sounds weird, and probably smells weirder. But I’ve just always felt this affinity for the city, like it’s my destiny except for the small detail that I don’t believe in destinies.
If you don’t go there for vacation this year then I’m going to take up a collection for gas and fly my little airplane over Tucson just so I can drop “I heart NY” leaflets on your sorry ass.
Let me process the entirely new concept of “vacation” and get back to you.
Cutting out the cost of a car is a substantial savings but unless you want to be a prisoner of the city you need to add back the cost of a rental when you want to travel out of town. You also need to add in the cost of delivery. All of that has to be weighed against the cost of a car AND the cost of parking which would be substantial.
You know I thought of another plus for you Alice - you won’t have to worry about teaching your kid how to drive 
But in all seriousness, people who cannot drive or hate driving with every fiber in their body are one group that actually do come out ahead in quality-of-life points in NYC. If you see that being a problem for your kid down the line then it could be a check in the ‘pro’ column. I’m can’t really speak with authority on school transport, there are neighborhood school but it’s not uncommon for kids to take the train across town to get to a specialized high school.
I heart bookmans too. Be sure to check out this little shop on your first visit.
Ha! My original motivation for wanting to move there earlier was because I don’t want my kids to drive! I’m all, hey, *none * of us will have to drive, ever!! Come on! A big plus would be my son’s eligibility for different federal and state programs for people with disabilities, too. He gets pretty hooked up.
Out of curiosity, have you ever used Google Earth and “walked” the streets of NY using streetview? Beyond the ability to look 360 degrees in every direction along every street there are a lot of gigapixeland panoramic pictures you can click on. I’ve spent many hours touring the city this way. I can’t show you streetview because it’s imbedded but pictures are taken every 100 feet or so and you can enter into these picture bubbles and look all around you like you’re standing there.
If you’ve already used this my apologies.
Maybe I am just luckier than the average New Yorker, but none of this has ever been an issue for me. If I want to leave the city I can take a bus or a train. I can get to DC and back for like $12. I can go to Atlantic City round trip for $7. I can take the train to Fairfield, CT and back for $20. I haven’t ever had to rent a car to get anywhere. I also have never had to pay for delivery for anything. I have had a bed and an air conditioner delivered, not to mention take out food and my groceries and stuff, and they never charge for delivery. I always tip, of course, but other than the tip the cost of delivery is free.
Not driving is a huge benefit for me and I have found that public transportation is pretty fast and efficient overall. I won’t lie about the smell though…sometimes it is really unpleasant depending on the time of year and where in the city you are.
Yep!!
AtG, it sounds like money is an issue here. If you don’t mind leaving the country, there are plenty of other cities where it’s also OK to leave trash on the sidewalk that are substantially cheaper than NYC.
The cost of a rental is pretty cheap so I don’t see it as a deal breaker but how the hell do you exist without ever wondering far from a train station? You can’t go to any national parks or anywhere in the countryside. You’ll have to understand that there are NO trains where I live and although we have electric busses in town, I’ve never used one. Maybe I should look into using one for bar hopping (at my age that is done on one foot).
Oh, and you were absolutely charged for delivery. It was included in the cost of the product (higher prices). that would mean you pay for delivery whether you use it or not so it’s another reason to give up a car.
I Love New York.
I say this as someone who had the general attitude as you (minus the son and all; I’m 26 with a fiance but no kids and I’m in shithole Michigan), but figured I’d have to at least visit before I figured it was some Super Awesome Place of Magical Awesomeness.
I took a week long vacation in July. Instead of doing the usual touristy stuff, I stayed with my friend in her studio apartment in Brooklyn. I got a week-long unlimited subway/bus pass and I did more of a neighborhood tour (in Brooklyn and Manhattan) than any toursit things. I got the oddest looks when I got back and was saying, “no, I didn’t go to the WTC area”, “no, I didn’t see the Empire State Building”, “no, I didn’t see {fill in the blank}”. The most touristy things I did was walk around Grand Central Station (since I wanted to see the architecture) and go to the Cloisters (which was a grand adventure, what with the subway having unexpected maintenance and we had to jump off, run up top and grab a bus, then run all the way around the tall hill to the Cloisters just 15 minutes before it closed, heh).
Mostly what I did was… see the city (and Brooklyn). I went to neat independent food places, went to where my friend works, walked around snobby Park Slope and saw my friend’s friend’s business she ran out of her 1 br apartment. I went to great tea/coffee shops, walked around for hours in July heat and humidity*, stood and waited for subways in the extra-hot subway tunnels, and saw a bunch of things that you’d see just living there. I even caught a movie with a bunch of my friend’s friends near Union Square.
And I still loved every single second of it. I know part of it was the fact I didn’t have to go to work, didn’t have to worry about an apartment there with the rent, etc. etc. But goddamn, I loved that freaking city so much. I want to go back so bad, you have no idea.
- Which I didn’t find any worse than what I was used to in Michigan, since I still have never had A/C where I’ve lived.
That is absolutely incorrect.
Try at least $3200.
Any 2BR for less is either a rat and roach infested unfinished shithole, a 5 story walkup or not in Manhattan below 110th street.
My East Village studio apt near Union Square cost $1600 5 years ago.
That is the biggest downside to living in NYC. If you are used to a house, it will be an extreme shock to live in one or two rooms for the same rent as a mortgage would cost in the nicest part of town. This is a city where lawyers, bankers and consultants like myself making well over six figures need to watch their spending.
That said, you can find more affordable places in Brooklyn, Queens, or Hoboken / Weehawken / Jersey City / Union City / West New York in NJ. You can actually buy an appartment in Hoboken for $350,000, it’s set up almost like a sixth burough with plenty of restaurants and bars, you don’t need a car and you can be in Manhattan via ferry, bus or PATH train faster than you can get there from many other parts of Manhattan.
I love living in NYC (and to a lesser extent Hoboken) however don’t expect Carly Simons songs to start playing as you step off the ferry or to live with a bunch of quirky but fun roomates as you navigate the dating scene with your fabulous single girlfriends. But to a certain extent, yeah it is pretty fucking cool to walk outside and meet your friends in a bar down the street, or walk through Central Park, or sit in my boring-ass office job staring out the 40th floor window, or eat in some of the best restaurants in the world. There is a reason that they make movies and tv shows about people doing fuck-all, but for some reason it’s more exciting because it’s in NYC.
And don’t listen to the haters complaining about garbage or smells or crowds and whatnot. They are just jealous because their city sucks.
Oh and the “washer / dryer” situation. It’s rare that you have one in your appartment. At best you have a coin-op in your building otherwise you need to go to a laundrymat.
For the most part, the city seems pretty safe but you still need to be aware. For some reason, even though in the 3 years I lived in my last appartment, I never really felt scared of crime or anything. Although one girl was stabbed in my building, a dead body was dropped in a steamer trunk in the vacant lot next door and some crazy dude held up a local bar with a samuri sword. But that can happen almost anywhere.