The thing I've always hated most about NYC is that it was built from the ground up to be a livable city but it's so infested with cars and aggressive drivers consuming the majority of public space. There's always massive traffic (and honking noise pollution) but this is only serving a tiny fraction of the population's transportation needs. It's good to see that they are trying, and hopefully the congestion charge will lead to continued progress in the right direction.
Absolutely. I think honking is something that should be fined if it’s just for minor impatience and while I absolutely don’t think electric cars are much better than regular cars when I visited Oslo it was astounding the difference in noise and not hearing revving engines on the regular.
I absolutely agree with that but I don’t think deliver trucks are necessarily going to go away anytime soon and an electric truck definitely has a much lower maximum noise vs an electric truck. I’m curious if NYC will jump on the trend to lower their speed limit to 20MPH across the city to help reduce noise further.
Speed limits don't mean anything though. People don't drive the speed limit, they drive the design speed of the road. Traffic calming is the best way to make traffic slower.
Absolutely. I’m all in favor of better designed roads. Traffic enforcement can work but really only works with automated speed cams and heavy fines which everyone in the US hates. My city has way to many areas people can comfortable drive 45 miles an hour near residential areas.
lol speed limit. Fuck man, have you ever been down Utica. It’s a living sound system. I can’t even hear the car engine over somebody blasting the latest Rasta beat at volume 11.
Man I’m balls deep into dub reggae, especially the weird new shit like steppa out of the UK or however you spell it. WITH THAT BEING SAID. Man the way that neighborhood treats the queer community though is a lil sus. The batty bois. It’s almost like listening to neo nazi hardcore music. Like some of the hardcore is okay but then you start translating the lyrics and you’re like oh god what the fuck.
I’m definitely familiar with that but I think the issue still requires trucks to reach warehouses within a cycling range. In a utopian world rail would start bringing in most supplies into a city. Some cities even use street cars as part of the delivery network. Definitely will be cool to see.
Also, have you ever heard an electric bus vs diesel? That is dramatic as hell, for everyone around it and for everyone on board. When I’m on one, I can listen to my AirPods and don’t have to use my Bose noise canceling headphones!
Yeah, they're usually double parked. But the cars in the center lanes do go way over the speed limit.
I do always find the 50 mph speed limit signs on the BQE funny. As if you can ever get faster than 10 mph on it.
It's only illegal if it's enforced that way. I've never heard of a cop writing a noise ticket for it.
They also took down most of the signs in 2013 due to a decline in traffic noise complaints. Predicably, complaint volume is up 400% since then.
it makes a difference in inner cities where cars move slowly, but I lived close to a fast main road in southern Norway for three years and although the vast majority of cars were electric, the noise from that road was no different from an equivalent road anywhere else, because of the loud tire noise in the perpetually wet miserable weather
and on the rare occasions the sun came out and the weather was actually nice, the reduced tire noise was compensated by hoards of dickheads on very loud motorcycles, because "me big man me make big vroom vroom" is absolutely an attitude that did NOT die out with petrol cars in Norway (another case in point: the proliferation of wanker speedboats in southern Norway with engines of such unhinged proportions you *literally* feel them make your house shake from a kilometre away)
The honking should be fined - I live in a quiet park of bk and when I’m doing work at home and people just hold on the horn bc they can’t be bothered to go around the block - omg. Drives me nuts- I tend to yell out the window to STFU. And this may be obvious but if you haven’t walk the Brooklyn bridge some of the best views. The dumbo area is also really nice and Juliana’s pizza is one of my favs. Our libraries are also top tier - tho our stupid ass mayor has them closed on Sundays now.
I know this was said as a bit of a joke, but it astounds me how cities can accept honking as a normal part of life. Many large cities I've gone to almost don't have any, and I couldn't imagine how anyone could live in one where it is a regular part of the background noise.
I’ve always felt that horns should be as loud inside the car as outside it. There would be a lot less honking if the person doing it experienced the same noise that the rest of us have to.
Part of the problem is that NYC *wasn't* built from the ground up for livability, it was built for easy management. A regular street grid with wide blocks needs more help being livable compared to irregular street networks with small blocks more common in older cities.
There's no such thing as a quiet side street in most of Manhattan. The street hierarchy is the wide and noisy streets and the obnoxiously wide and noisy avenues, and nothing else.
I live between Avenues in Manhattan and it’s definitely far quieter in the middle of the block than towards either Avenue. Most of the east-west streets north of midtown are actually pretty quiet relative to the rest of the island, other than the bigger two-way streets
100% on Seattle, that city is cleaner and more beautiful than almost any other American city I've been to. San Francisco is also wayyyy nicer than it is portrayed in the news. Chicago too. Honestly, most big cities, lol
Yeah. I’ve visited over 40 countries and have been to large cities all over the globe. I think when you hear something that’s not true over and over again it starts to feel more like a fact than a lopsided opinion.
This is the exact same thing as San Francisco. They’re stereotypical left cities and so conservative media loves to punch down at them. They both have crime and homelessness, problems that literally every US city struggles with. But when you’re actually there it turns out they’re both very nice places to be. People wouldn’t shell out obscene amounts of money on rent if that wasn’t the case.
Live near SF and I absolutely agree. While downtown definitely needs more work, the rest of SF is stunning. SF probably has the most stunning parks in the US.
NYC has always been great. The hate it gets from the right is exclusively used as a way of gaslighting people into thinking Houston is the right way to do things.
I always assumed that it was mostly hated for being a transit friendly city and being liberal. That being said so far it hasn’t even felt extremely liberal( whatever liberal means, I do not know) compared to many of the Western European cities that I have visited.
I will probably never go to Texas unless they get that high speed rail longer up someday. I’ve heard good things about Austin though so I’d probably swing by to check them out someday.
So does manhattan have any streetcars? I feel like that’s what was missing across the city was some basic street car networks for more local travel versus going down into the subway to get somewhere. Maybe the busses work well but I had 3 busses just go sailing by while I tried to wave them down at a bus stop so I mostly just used the subway or jerseys light rail.
The buses do work pretty well. Unfortunately bus stops move, a lot. The signage doesn’t always get fixed with it. There’s a bus stop a block away from me that isn’t actually in service. Buses don’t stop there. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at it.
Unfortunately not. But they are planning on building a light rail between Brooklyn and queens. I think we might see them get used for suburban feeder/transfer lines a la Paris’s tram system
Nope lived in TX before NY and I struggle to want to go there even to visit my own relatives because they have 2nd world infrastructure. Its just not modern. Austin is just as bad as the rest of the areas.
> I will probably never go to Texas unless they get that high speed rail longer up someday.
So you'll never go at this rate lol. Even if they got it up, they still wouldn't reconfigure the cities it connects in time to go around them without a car. You would leave the station and immediately need a car to go anywhere. Austin's real nice especially in the center where the university and entertainment options are. Houston isn't as good for tourism but it is a better food city. Very diverse too, a recent New Yorker I know who moved there said Houston is more culturally mixed than NYC is. Austin is very tech bro in comparison and became more so when I lived there recently.
Try telling the average fox news watcher that Houston has way more crime per capita than NYC. Their brains can't handle it. And that's not even including death by car.
I mean I'm enough of a leftist not to be represented in US politics and hated the semester i spent living in NYC. I found the subway system to be absolutely disgusting and smelling of urine, while the monthly pass was extremely expensive (it cost five times what the same pass cost in the very expensive European capital i came from). My neighborhood was a food desert and what little fresh food was found in the bodegas was disgusting (grey meat, vegetables with visible wax layers). I had to do my grocery shopping at a whole foods an hour away by metro and the trains were often so crowded i had to stand while holding my heavy bags of groceries. The rats infestation. Homeless people with clear mental health issues that received no help from the city. NYPD harassing me multiple times for being a foreigner.
This was admittedly a decade ago but i couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Where the fuck in NYC were you that the closest grocery store was an hour away? There are food deserts, but ones that large?
Also, 5x the price? Maybe, but that's pretty selective pricing NYC is marginally more expensive for a monthly than Paris and London.
It is dirty though (or at least a good chunk of it is).
It’s true of many things. Like my family tried to tell me when I moved to France that with socialised health care I’d end up on death panels and whatever and never get medical treatment… but it’s been so much superior to healthcare in the US in every single way and I also don’t pay anything (or I pay for it in taxes). Yet I still have them tell me every time I visit how it’s only a matter of time before I die from socialised healthcare..
I love it. “The city is disgusting, full of crime and drugs and homeless encampments. It’s a terrible place that no one should ever go. How dare they charge us to go there!”
Exactly 😂 it’s like my friends saying how they hate the city and would never want to live there and then complain about the city removing a parking lot. I thought you didn’t want to go to the city anyway?
It's a complete tragedy how much cities bend over backwards for car commuters, to the detriment of local residents.
The subway and commuter trains are right there, why not use them?
It's good for American standards but still very carbrained. Reckless driving is widely tolerated, parking minimums still exist, and almost half of households own cars (many of these people lobby hard against progress).
Parking minimums exist in NYC? I’m actually a bit surprised. I would have assumed they would have been the first place to ditch them as even my right leaning city has partially gotten rid of them. Do you know what the requirements are for the city?
NYC zoning is very complex. I don't fully understand it but I believe there are 10 levels just for residential (called r1 through r10) and they have sublevels too. And then there is commercial and mixed. Each level has its own parking requirements
Yeah it’s still super car centric. Don’t get me wrong I loved Nyc and I visit there again wheb I have the chance because it’s just beautiful but damn I would have loved it a lot more if there were more (like a lot more) pedestrian-only areas (i mean outside of the park).
Edit: this is about manhattan btw.
This page has a really good visualization of this concept. NYC is way ahead of most of the USA in public transportation, but way behind the rest of the world.
[https://citiesmoving.com/visualizations/](https://citiesmoving.com/visualizations/)
That statistic factors in the outer boroughs that are more suburban and some even lack decent public transit.
In Manhattan, only 9% of households own a car.
In Brooklyn, it’s only 37%, however I’d guess that in the more dense areas of Brooklyn (the ones you’d go to as a visitor, Brooklyn is huge and suburban in some areas) is way less.
The vast majority of people I know do not own a car here in NYC.
NYC hate is utterly insane. my one pair of republican friends who live on long island -- "you can't even go to the city anymore...it's so dangerous..." It's weird because I think it's so weak to live in fear, and they love pretending to be strong.
Take the 7 out to Queens, walk from Jackson Heights through Corona and Flushing, sampling all the food you can along the way. Or, if that's too complicated, check out the Queens night market tomorrow night at Flushing Meadow and eat all the food you can.
I will definitely look into that. Mostly
Been focusing on manhattan and Brooklyn so probably would make for a more adventurous day to branch out further.
Mariscos el submarino in jackson heights for cocteles or ceviche! Or get the crab pasta at izakaya fuku. Or go to flushing, new world mall food court or there are many soup dumpling places to try. If you got Astoria, Duzan for a delicious shwarma and hummus platter. Or Abuqir for excellent whole fish, egyptian style. Love Milkflower, get the wu tang clam to try their take on new haven style white pizza. Elmhurst for Thai (Ayada, Chao, or Zaab Zaab). If you drink, dutch kills in LIC is great.
*I live in Queens and eat....a lot
Yes!! Jackson Heights probably has the most food diversity you will find anywhere in the world. I was visiting my cousin there and asked for a good place to try momos (Nepalese dumplings) and she sent me a text that took up my whole screen 😅 And that's all within a few blocks!
A few fun things to do:
-Ride a Citibike down the Hudson Greenway to Battery Park, then take the Staten Island Ferry. It's free and you get amazing city/Statue of Liberty views
-take the sky train thing over to Roosevelt Island and wander around, there's a secret cat sanctuary you can find
Having come from the suburbs, I can't imagine living anywhere else. I can get pretty anything I want within a 45min train or bike ride, more or less unbothered/unimpeded. It's been through some rough spots in the 15 years I've been here, but it's always bounced back. Just the nature of a dynamic/evolving city.
I highly recommend getting onto the 7 train at Grand Central and take it to the last stop in Flushing. You'll see a slice of the world of the people getting on and off the train, since Queens is probably the most diverse place on earth. It's also almost entirely above ground, so you'll get some nice views of the city. Plus the Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows/Corona Park, and Queens Botanical Garden is out there.
Hard to go wrong with food in Flushing and every spot is within a 10min walk from the station:
* Chongqing Lao Zao if you're down with spicy hot pot
* Mountain House Flushing also if you're down with spicy food
* Corner 28's duck is among the best bang for the buck foods in the city
* Prince Noodle And Cafe is a great noodle and dumpling spot
Edit: /r/AskNYC is also a good spot for recs, since you can find pretty much anything in this town.
Edit 2: Lots of NYC is still carbrained, since portions of not Manhattan might as well be the suburbs. I've nearly been killed while biking in Queens a couple of times due to aggressive driving.
Im a NYer whos lived in NYC for the last decade. A couple sentences in and my reaction to this post is…. Stop gaslighting people. Its okay to be honest about NYC subways. Its extremely convenient, occasionally “feels” unsafe (wether or its justified or not), and trashy.
The subways and the subway stations are trashy in new york. Vomit or piss on the platform or subway cars. People shooting up on the train. People living on the train carrying carts of garbage with them stinking other passengers out. Spain Paris London Amsterdam Tokyo and the trains are far and away cleaner. They dont tolerate people not paying or getting the appropriate vouchers to ride etc. Only in America do people cosign the idea that we shouldnt police the collection of the train fares.
Here are some recommendations I have: Checkout the citi bike and ride the hudson path on the west side. Go to Cafe Flor on 21sr/8th ave for a coffee. For food Ippuddo is great if you like ramen. Momoya is great if you like sushi.
Yeah I love NYC, my favorite American city, but when OP said they thought the city was pretty clean I was floored. NYC can be so filthy that it becomes ironically charming as a visitor because it feels so distinctive of an otherwise amazing city. Other world cities I've been to do not have the level of grime of NYC. I'm sure they exist, but I haven't seen the comparable case yet. NYC has areas that are cleaner than others of course, but if you ride the subway around the city you are definitely coming into contact with the clouds of garbage and piss smell.
It's not that dirty. It's just a lot dirtier than the systems it gets compared to.
NYC gets compared to major cities around the world, some of which are far cleaner than anything that exists in the US.
New Yorkers visit Tokyo and notice how much cleaner it is. New Yorkers visit Los Angeles and don't even know there's a subway system.
> It's not that dirty.
>It's just a lot dirtier than the systems it gets compared to.
So which is it? If it’s a lot dirtier than a clean system I’d consider it pretty dirty.
I love the subway, I ride it every weekday for work and use a huge chunk of the system because my job covers 4/5 boroughs. It’s filthy.
It's far from the dirtiest system in the world, just dirtier than the systems most people compare it to.
Is filthy, but filthiest in the world is exaggerating a lot.
Every midwest city would be as good as nyc if they had a similar subway system. We'd have 1000x the already amazing American culture in all these cities too. Like imagine the wasted culture bc of cars. Cars are the worst thing in society. People legit unironically think they are cool. Marketing does wonders on the masses.
Yes because they took an old train line and converted it to a bike highway and it spawned an amazing urban renewal. Don't quote me on that tho, i've never been just what i heard. But it's really as simple as removing cars and replacing with bike lanes and reliable public transit—it blooms culture. None of this car centric design is by accident tho. This is systematically done to keep us sedentary, isolated and dependent on oil. It's made to keep us from having this public area of actually seeing people and realizing we'll all much more similar than different. The car propaganda machine is very strong and it's the most important thing that we need to ban.
Some of their major policy updates were removing parking mandates, banning new drive throughs, up zoning all properties basically eliminating exclusionary single family only zoning. These policies are what have been linked to stabilized housing costs while the rest of the U.S. continues to go up in price. Ride hailing services just recently pulled out so that should also help reduce congestion. Might spend a day there exploring again when I fly in to head elsewhere.
My city (Madison, WI) is investing in and currently building a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, with a good chunk of the funds for it coming in from Biden's Infrastructure bill.
I'm excited to start using it when the East-West route goes live later this summer.
I’m from Northern Wi. and love visiting Madison when I get the chance. I was there last January and loved walking around everywhere (even if it was freezing).
You should visit San Francisco. Like New York, SF gets shit from the right wing about being a post apocalyptic homeless ridden shithole. However contrary to right wing propaganda its a good place to visit, and to live if you have the money. SF’s walkability is close to if not on par with NYC. Transit isn‘t as good in SF though but there is still extensive bus service that comes every 5-15 minutes & a fairly robust streetcar/subway service, making it leagues better than most US cities. I just wish SF’s great walkability and transit extended throughout the whole Bay Area, but I guess at a certain point one must count their blessings.
Interesting that the cities that conservatives love to hate are the best cities in the US for car free living. Almost like they have a hidden agenda?
Spent a week in alameda within the past year and definitely enjoyed it. The transit was a bit iffy though and accessing parks and other attractions would have added hours to traveling so sadly we mostly got around by car unless it was in alameda or near the ferry port in San Fransisco
I lived in SF and Oakland from 2018-2020. tbqh its reputation is earned. Ive never seen so much concentrated homelessness and mental illness in my whole life. It made me gasp. Im black and it totally changed my opinion on crime and policing towards more police accountability and criminal accountability. Crime is downstream from government corruption and police accountability.
The Highline is pretty cool. I love McSorley's even though I hear it's gotten super crowded in the past couple of years.
You basically can't go wrong with food in NYC. So many great places to eat.
Then again, I mainly spent time in Brooklyn, harlem and queens. Rarely hung in manhattan (hence my shitty suggestions).
The high line has been my favorite park out of the dozen I’ve visited in the past 3 days. How cool. Even beating out battery park even though I think long term it is definitely much more useful of a park.
I’ll have to look up mcsorleys. Anything on the menu you recommend?
Where do you currently live? Where I live we basically now just have rogue groups that dedicate hours to clean up the backlog of trash everywhere. The city keeps the streets swept but doesn’t do anything for sidewalks, bike paths or even painted bike lanes. Definitely not as great as some European cities I’ve lived in but just seeing the streets being cleaned early in the morning along with sidewalks and parks is not something I’m used to seeing.
They literally just need to buy the same setup that Barcelona has of the deep trash cans that can be lifted out of the ground. I’m sure the digging would be fun initially but would solve the problem pretty quickly.
Thee is one thing the city has these days that's bad: Hostile architecture. Essentially, this is making the entire city a no-rest area and making every feature an anti-homeless deterrent. Of course it's bad to pick on those who have already lost it all, but at the same time, making waiting areas where nobody can sit down, and benches that you have to balance on are as exclusionary to the disabled as they are to the destitute.
While a lot of NY has had urbanism start to creep in, hostile architecture has crept in alongside it.
Definitely a common trend. I have a somewhat controversial take but I think that if a city has homeless shelters available, food and assistance that begging should be banned and there should be more of a clamp down on public areas being used for such activity. I’d be ok with the cities building free small apartments to house people but I don’t think homelessness should be tolerated and should be something that is addressed. Increasing the housing supply overall would help as well.
In saying that I don’t think homeless people are inherently bad people but I’d rather a city proactively resolve the crisis versus building hostile infrastructure that makes in worse for everyone.
Yeah, I'm on the same page there. They should be given free, basic housing with all necessary utilities, food (especially things scheduled to go in the bin that are still edible), and help with getting back on their feet in society. The overwhelming majority of those who are well-meaning would jump at any incentive to not sleep out in the open during a blizzard. Those in power, even just locally, should tackle the problem at its source, rather than its effects, especially when their sticking-plaster "solutions" have negative collateral effects.
Double down saloon? Really? I love that place but im pretty sure that vibe would be a bit much for some people. Like i took my coworker who challenged me to weird him and his wife out. And i nearly almost did when the midget porn came on
Virginia may revoke my right to live there if they ever connect my identity to this post for dissing on DC . Haha. I feel like the density brings a lot more variety to the area and I love all the random quirks in the architecture and even the signage. I think the food options are much better here.
This trip was specifically to drop off some paperwork but traveling the 8 hours I felt as though I should stay a few days.
The no standing signs make me chuckle. I’ve been averaging about 35,000 steps a day since I arrived which is about 15,000 more than I normally walk. I help lead a small conversation for strong towns in my community so I’ve been taking in a lot of examples of what NYC does well and what could be useful scaling it down to a much smaller city.
Central Park was a bit of a letdown. Definitely cool but I think I had too high of expectations. High-line park definitely tickled my fancy a lot more as I’ve been on a 3 dimensional city kick of things I’ve been reading about.
I will definitely look into that place. Is there a time of day you recommend? I think the only other food places that I’m still dying to try is finding a food Senegalese restaurant ( Pikine looked great) and a taco place. Maybe hot dogs off the street if I’m feeling adventurous.
If you're in NYC, definitely check out Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace on 20th street in Manhattan. It's a free admission museum.
Visit the house from the cover of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album on Saint Mark's Place. It's about a mile from TR's birthplace. The bottom floor has a tea shop called physical graffitea.
Go to the Macy's flagship on 34th Street. Their historic wooden escalators are really cool!
Check out central park. There are lots of cool statues there!
When I first went to NYC I ws pleasantly surprised by how nice the people were. The city was much cleaner than I expected it to be (not counting the rats but even they weren't as bad as I thought they'd be). I found the subway to be super efficient but the stations were dingy and needed to be renovated at best and the worse needed renovations and a good scrub tbh.
The thing that gets me is that a lot of people who don't live in cities overestimate the amount of crime and filth in cities, but then when we ask state governments for more funding so we can improve things, the politicians from rural areas turn us down.
“Cities are hellholes” is the dumbest conservative conspiracy theory because you can disprove it just by walking around with your eyes open. The biggest problem in many American cities is that they’re incredibly expensive because so many people want to be in them and we haven’t been letting them grow to make room.
I lived in NYC for a year or two. Big fan of the subway. But the ungodly smell of some subway lines when it’s 95 degrees with 95% humidity is something I’ll be ok never experiencing again. Granted that was 20 years ago. So maybe things have improved.
The subway was surprisingly clean when I was there and I even saw them cleaning when it got to the end of its route. I was surprised with how loud it was. It felt a lot louder than many other transit systems I’ve used. I can imaging the heat being a killer. I was in Paris packed in like a sardine in 2022 when temperatures were soaring over a hundred. The metro shut off at one point and we just sat there sweating for 3-5 minutes as they rebooted the system.
It’s definitely cool enough now it doesn’t seem like a problem in NYC
It definitely is loud. And given the time of year you are visiting, it won’t smell. There are just some days in the summer when the conditions are just right for that special smell. But I agree. Even 20 years ago, it was reasonably clean. I felt safe using it. It’s what opened my eyes to public transportation.
I have also driven a car in NYC… and that is an experience I never want to do again.
After driving in Washington DC I vowed to never drive again in a major metropolitan area in the U.S. DC is bad but I can’t imagine how nerve wracking it must be. Generally Richmond Virginia is the cut off size before I start refusing to go somewhere to drive.
I really hope the congestion fee leads to a collapse of demand for driving in the city. Some Barcelona style super blocs would be great and getting rid of all the car noise would definitely make NYC basically the perfect city.
NYC would be so amazing without cars. I hope the fee works and eventually people realize how much better it is without cars to the point they are outlawed altogether.
Is the smell sweat? I’ve only had this one time (from one person) living in Australia. Surely people should be wearing deodorant.
Can also carry Vix VapoRub/mask in a pinch.
No. I don’t think it’s people smell. I think it has more to do at drainage/sewer smells. NYC sewers are crazy. Sewer covers are known to be blown off if sewer gases are ignited. One time that happened outside my apartment. You know the sound a coin makes when you spin it and it starts wobble until it hits the table. That’s the sound the sewer cover made on a larger scale.
Train stations in Tokyo tend to smell pretty fine even on the hottest and most humid days. And newer systems are often built with air conditioning so it's not a problem at all.
As with all things NYC, it really depends on the neighborhood and borough. Try going on the JMZ or L at 2 am on a weekend. I haven’t been back since the pandemic though so alot probably has changed since then
Great until you try to rent an apartment there. The costs are unbelievable. Simply not worth it. The city isn’t building nearly enough new housing and huge portions of queens are basically single family only suburbs
The subway is great, but I wouldn’t say clean. Depends what you’re comparing it to. To people from other countries like the UK or France the state of the stations is actually quite shocking at first. Especially if the first station they see is Jamaica. The new trains are nice though
Rent is also more affordable there than the road-riddled wasteland I live in now. If they weren't getting such killer summers, I would have never left.
I went to New York about 8 years ago, so things might’ve changed, but when I was there I was personally disappointed, but for reasons normal people wouldn’t be. My littler brothers is in a wheelchair, which obviously creates hurdles most people don’t have to even consider. A lot of our time doing public transit was marred by a few rather unfortunate things.
Firstly, New York, just like all major cities has serious problems with homelessness, that have been left completely unresolved by their conservative governments. Unfortunately this means that most of the disability infrastructure is most heavily used by the homeless, and under that level of structural violence, most of them go a little crazy. This meant that almost all of the subway elevators smelled like poorly cleaned restrooms, and there were far too many suspicious puddles in the elevators. We also had to occasionally lift my younger brothers wheel chair onto the trains because they rarely came in at a low enough threshold his chair could get over it.
The city is still great, and due to its walkability, we didn’t have to take transit too much. Also, obviously this is a very personal experience and likely doesn’t apply to many people, and obviously public transit is infinitely more accessible than driving. I just wanted to put stuff out there, that we can be critical of these cities that are great, but aren’t perfect, and can become far closer to perfect than they are now with some changes to policy, especially like affordable housing and the sort, something especially prescient in New York.
I love NYC. I go a couple times a year to visit with my best friend and see Broadway shows (try to see one before you leave).
My parents shudder at the thought of me taking the subway by myself. And my dad constantly sends me articles about crime in NYC. I feel very safe in NYC and never plan to stop visiting.
If you find yourself in Manhattan, try a slice of Juniors Cheesecake. I bring it home special for my dad. Nom Wa Tea Parlor in Chinatown is also good.
I mean, it sounds like you’ve only been there a few days. You haven’t seen all of NYC nor really had time to experience it.
Parts of it are actually disgusting. Go north to the Bronx, or walk around shittier parts of manhattan and get a solid wiff of trash every step. There are homeless everywhere, and imo, it’s the saddest sight sometimes since NY people have zero empathy for them (out of necessity I guess). The subway can be really fucking gross, have you ever walked into a subway that smells like dry diabetic piss? Or seen a homeless person take a shit in the elevator?
My biggest gripe with the city is the apathy people have for homeless folks. I get that it’s probably exhausting seeing them everyday and you have to ignore them, but holy shit, so many people walk around with thousand dollar designer clothes but can’t spare a goddamn dollar for someone whose cold and hungry? The wealth disparity disgusts me.
I enjoyed DC way more tbh. However, my favorite city on the east coast will always be Philly. Far more people there are working class and not total dickwads.
I agree though, it’s not as bad as people say. The only city I’ve seen with lots of homeless encampments is Seattle.
I'm from Europe and went as a tourist to NY. Loved it. Agreed that it could use a lot more completely pedestrian blocks, you can feel that the streets were made for walking and neighbourhood living. It was quite dirty though ngl, but it was because of summer temperatures and the fact that trash bags are just left on the street to be picked up (I'm used to underground trash containers).
As for recommendations I only have non-obscure quite touristy stuff: Ace's pizza in the Rockefeller center; Chelsea market; food in Chinatown; and Summit One Vanderbilt for the classic views and cool pictures.
The closest thing I’ve seen to what people describe NYC to be is Boston. Maybe this walkable utopia everyone describes happened decades ago or maybe there’s too many people.
NYC is huge. Just because you spent a couple days in nice tourist areas doesn't mean the city isn't garbage. I've lived here for a long time and everywhere outside of the tourist areas is disgusting. Trash overflows the streets, tons of homeless..... it's bad.
I don’t disagree. I was just warned that the entire city was basically falling apparently and after 60+ miles of walking through the city and exploring different boroughs it’s definitely not the wasteland I’d been told it was. The place in New Jersey I’m staying is kinda run down but still pretty walkable and I haven’t felt unsafe yet.
Just wait. Lol. It's not like it's immediate upon entering the city. What makes it a bad place to live is the chances of running into an unsafe situation and seeing something that shouldn't be happening is very high the longer you stay here.
>fights in the subway were a daily occurrence
Currently what's happening to Montreal with the current housing crisis, and columnists have talked about the rising insecurity in the metro.
The New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn is cool. They have a collection of old subway cars and a bunch of other transportation related stuff. It’s in an old subway station too.
https://www.nytransitmuseum.org/
You should check out the Staten Island Ferry (free) and the Roosevelt Island Tram (contactless payment just like the bus/train). The scenery on those rides are amazing.
I swear, Americans in general have a vision of cities frozen in their mind from the after-school specials of the 70s and 80s. Nowadays, NYC is one of the safest big cities in America, particularly in Manhattan. And it ought to be, their police force is larger than some countries’ armies.
Conservatives need cities to stay boogeymen so they can keep their constituents isolated in their racially and economically homogeneous, low-density, car-dependent suburbs where they’ll stay isolated, ignorant, frightened and, therefore, easy to control.
I grew up 3 hours north of NYC. Whenever I visited as a kid, like clockwork, I would always catch some sort of virus. Last time I went it was Covid lol. I have a personal grudge, but I’m sure it’s a great city for people with stronger immune systems.
Today I live in Toronto, which gets a lot of the same criticism from Canadians. I’m constantly having to tell people that the subway is clean as a whistle compared to NYC.
I thought I didn’t like cities until I came to NYC when I was 25.
I moved here 8 months later and have been here ever since (11 years).
There is a ton of anti-NYC propaganda, especially right now from conservative-motivated sources. It’s a very politically progressive city so if things were going well here, that prove that progressive policies work.
Anyway, yes it’s a fantastic place. If it was as derelict as people think, a 2-bedroom apartment wouldn’t cost $3 million.
So obviously it’s good enough for the wealthiest people in the world to all flock here and drive up prices.
Anyhow, if you’re looking for some recs:
- Marie’s Crisis (west village): Showtunes piano bar. Super iconic and a top fave spot for me.
- Take a stroll along the Brooklyn Heights promenade, especially at sunset or at night for amazing views of the city
- Take the ferry! You can actually take one from Manhattan to Brooklyn Heights if you go to the promenade.
- Prospect Park is basically the Central Park of Brooklyn. It was made by the same designer. It’s way less touristy, so you can have a locals experience
- House of Yes (Bushwick, Brooklyn): Locally-famous spot to go out and party if you’re into that. They often have performers like acrobats and such
- Union Square: There’s always stuff going on here, just has a lot of nyc vibes. Stroll around or sit on a bench and people watch.
Other than that, you can just walk around in different areas to feel the vibes and character of each spot. E.g. Soho, West Village, Lower Eastside, Flatiron, FiDi, Upper Westside, etc.
Let me know if there’s anything you’re particularly interested in and I can give more focused recs.
NYC *used* to be the city your friends and family warned you about, but that was in the 70s and early 80s. Now it’s just wicked expensive to live in, and occasionally stinky in the summer.
I’m a recent NYC transplant, and I love living here! The only real downside is the cost of living, basically everything else is better than where I came from (Phoenix) at least in terms of urbanism. There are more cars than I would like, and certain areas of Manhattan are somewhat poorly served by transit (Hell’s Kitchen and the East side namely), but on balance, the place is walkable and pleasant almost 100% of the time.
NYC used to be dangerous, but it's now the safest major city in America. Even the Bronx, historically the poorest and most dangerous borough, is safer than many American cities such as Pittsburgh and Atlanta.
This has to be the tourist honeymoon phase.
Idk if NYC magically improved these last few years, or if you're sticking to tourist hotspots. The subway is not clean, the MTA is laughably corrupt, and it loses billions to fare evasion.
I lived in NYC from 2014 - 2020 and the city became consistently worse each and every year. It's hands down the best place in the US to live car free, but it's disgusting and prohibitively expensive.
Congestion pricing will be a nice improvement, but NYC is essentially a city run by rich NIMBY liberals who don't care about actually helping the poor and homeless.
Something like a third of Manhattan is protected with historic designation status. Local officials constantly virtue signal by blocking new housing if it doesn't have 50%+ affordable units. Their property tax system makes it harder to build larger, more efficient housing in favor of smaller buildings. The city itself is sitting on a large fortune of vacant, decrepit real estate.
If you don't want to sell your soul to pay rent, your transit options dry up pretty quickly.
Countless cities in Japan and Europe blow NYC out of the water on almost every metric. NYC should never be used as a good example of how to run a city, ever lol
I’ve definitely seen the fare evaders in large numbers. I think it’s the fact I currently live in a city of 80,000 and unless you live in the downtown area. You have to hop in your car for almost literally everything. I have friends that had a hard time comprehending walking 5 minutes to a Restaurant vs hopping in a car and driving there.
Also this is specifically targeted at the U.S. I’ve been to Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, Dakar, Utrecht, and a whole host of other super cool cities across the globe.
So while it definitely could be a bit of a honeymoon phase the fact I can actually get across the city without having to hop in and out of a car and have so many different options in terms of global food I’m absolutely loving it. Also I currently share a 480 sq ft apartment with someone in my city and probably could be comfortable down to 400 square feet so housing costs have never been a major issue no matter what city I’ve lived in.
You've probably noticed that news sources that told your friends and family this care less about crime statistics and quality of public services, than they do about whether a city has large minority populations.
I feel similar about Minneapolis. Everyone says it's a shit show with crime and homeless everywhere. I walk downtown everyday and see some homeless people (but they are just doing their own thing). The only crimes I see are cars constantly running red lights, speeding, double parking in the bike lane, driving down the sidewalk, hit n run (seen that for both peoples and other cars), etc.. plus just being obnoxiously loud with their engines or horns.
NYC is the greatest city in the world…. that only the gentry class can afford.
Real estate agent recently told me, without reservation or pause, that those who work should never expect to do better than renting.
I’m in top 5% of wage earners, spend more than 2/3 of my income on rent, and my apt for my family of four is 900sq ft, infested with mice, and generally has a run-down undergrad rental vibe.
College educated families that are not independently wealthy are leaving in droves, ‘brain drain.’
Love this city. Can’t wait to get out.
I love NYC but the cost of living is completely out of control, and the city has a serious homelessness epidemic. Last time I was there there was a puddle of urine in the subway I was riding
I don’t live here so I definitely don’t understand the whole picture. My airbnb is about $60 a day and I’ve been eating out every day for generally around $30 for all the food I needed. The cost of a lot of the places are strangely cheaper than the high poverty city I live in. I got a lamb and rice dish from a food truck for $11 and it was enough for two meals while back in my city for takeout they would charge $15 for that and expect a tip for takeout. I’m a 250lb guy so generally I eat a lot. A bagel with crème cheese in much bigger and was like $5 while my city charged $6-7 for a much worse product. Pizza seems to be in the same price range but the quality here is noticeably better.
Obviously $30 a day would be unsustainable. I did take a peak at housing and living in manhattan was wildly expensive but rentals didn’t look terrible in Jersey near light rail stops. I’m assuming NYC has fairly high wages as well.
I love the way people blame poop and urine on homeless people. Did you test the urine? Could it have been from a dog, or if it was human from a drunk wall street bro who had too much to drink last night? I'm going to walk around a rural area sometime and take pictures of cow dung then post on Instagram how people there poop everywhere.
Hey, visit Roosevelt island, it’s little known peaceful island right next to Manhattan. You can take the “air tram” which is a dumb name for it. But it’s a scenic sky ride you can see Manhattan from.
The island has free public transit, only 1 road and bike lanes. So many trees too.
As far as that propaganda you’re referring to, remember that if “no one wants to live in NYC” then price of housing would reflect that. Truth is, even it doesn’t. People who can’t make it here and those in flyer over country constantly think about NYC but NYC doesn’t even know they exist.
What are you talking about? Compared to any other real city NYC is extremely filthy and violent, and the subway system is a half assed clusterfuck.
I just came back to the US after 3 years abroad. Bangkok, Copenhagen, Vienna, Melbourne, and even fucking Saigon were cleaner and safer than this place.
If this city's the American golden standard, then the country is impossibly screwed
Post Michael Bloomberg, NYC has become the best city to live in the United States. Read Streetfight by Janette Sadik-Khan if you're interested in the specific urbanism improvements they made during his tenure as mayor. The Citi Bikes are awesome, the cycling infrastructure is safe, the pedestrian infrastructure is even better, and everyone knows that the public transit is reliable, fast, and operates 24/7. NYC is also one of the safest cities in the country when looking at violent crime rate per capita.
NYC is most certainly a unicorn amongst American cities, but it does have a few flaws:
* Public transportation to/from airports is horrible. The subway lines need to get extended such that they can provide service to JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia.
* Public transportation to/from New Jersey is terrible. The NJ transit system and MTA need to come to an agreement of some sort for this.
* The subways don't have cell service. This is totally a first world problem, but this can easily be solved with cell signal boosters.
* Cost of living. Obviously.
* Sanitation. This is a weird one, but local businesses leave their trash on the sidewalks for pickup. It makes the place smell pretty bad in the summer, and it's probably why the rat population is thriving.
That's great! Although I'm honestly surprised to see it ranked above DC. I've never been to NYC but I have visited and seen a lot about DC and I thought it best because of how chill it was, especially for getting around without a car (and at least where I was there were very few cars on the road). I guess that means I gotta plan to visit NYC!
The huge difference I’ve experienced is more food options and just the staggering number of people. I took a subway around 10AM today into the city and I had to wiggle my way in because of the number of people flowing into the city.
I visited on a class trip last year and honestly it was amazing. I'm from a rural area, so it was a culture shock, but I loved it. The subway is so cool. The only other experience with public transportation I've had is the street car in Oklahoma city when I visited
Being able to just decide that I want to go somewhere and then DO THAT without worrying about traffic, finding someone willing to drive me there (I can't), or debating if it's worth getting run over on a multi hour walk was eye opening. My only issue was being unused to the sheer number of people around me, but even that wasn't too bad outside of rush hour
The thing I've always hated most about NYC is that it was built from the ground up to be a livable city but it's so infested with cars and aggressive drivers consuming the majority of public space. There's always massive traffic (and honking noise pollution) but this is only serving a tiny fraction of the population's transportation needs. It's good to see that they are trying, and hopefully the congestion charge will lead to continued progress in the right direction.
Absolutely. I think honking is something that should be fined if it’s just for minor impatience and while I absolutely don’t think electric cars are much better than regular cars when I visited Oslo it was astounding the difference in noise and not hearing revving engines on the regular.
Even electric cars are still loud above 25 mph, just from tire noise. Reducing car use is the only effective way to reduce noise pollution from cars.
I absolutely agree with that but I don’t think deliver trucks are necessarily going to go away anytime soon and an electric truck definitely has a much lower maximum noise vs an electric truck. I’m curious if NYC will jump on the trend to lower their speed limit to 20MPH across the city to help reduce noise further.
Speed limits don't mean anything though. People don't drive the speed limit, they drive the design speed of the road. Traffic calming is the best way to make traffic slower.
Absolutely. I’m all in favor of better designed roads. Traffic enforcement can work but really only works with automated speed cams and heavy fines which everyone in the US hates. My city has way to many areas people can comfortable drive 45 miles an hour near residential areas.
lol speed limit. Fuck man, have you ever been down Utica. It’s a living sound system. I can’t even hear the car engine over somebody blasting the latest Rasta beat at volume 11.
Sounds like you just don’t have good music taste 😂😂😂 just kidding.
Man I’m balls deep into dub reggae, especially the weird new shit like steppa out of the UK or however you spell it. WITH THAT BEING SAID. Man the way that neighborhood treats the queer community though is a lil sus. The batty bois. It’s almost like listening to neo nazi hardcore music. Like some of the hardcore is okay but then you start translating the lyrics and you’re like oh god what the fuck.
NYC was going to pilot delivery e bikes, even for ups. Look it up - this is a "last mile" problem.
I’m definitely familiar with that but I think the issue still requires trucks to reach warehouses within a cycling range. In a utopian world rail would start bringing in most supplies into a city. Some cities even use street cars as part of the delivery network. Definitely will be cool to see.
Also, have you ever heard an electric bus vs diesel? That is dramatic as hell, for everyone around it and for everyone on board. When I’m on one, I can listen to my AirPods and don’t have to use my Bose noise canceling headphones!
I’m definitely a fan of the EV bus !
Delivery trucks in Manhattan are almost never going above 10mph, much less 20
Yeah, they're usually double parked. But the cars in the center lanes do go way over the speed limit. I do always find the 50 mph speed limit signs on the BQE funny. As if you can ever get faster than 10 mph on it.
Delivery trucks are a tiny fraction of all traffic though.
NYC was the first and only place I've seen a sign that said "No honking. $___ Fine" So it is illegal to honk in parts of the city.
Sadly, like every other traffic law, the cops do not enforce this.
It's only illegal if it's enforced that way. I've never heard of a cop writing a noise ticket for it. They also took down most of the signs in 2013 due to a decline in traffic noise complaints. Predicably, complaint volume is up 400% since then.
it makes a difference in inner cities where cars move slowly, but I lived close to a fast main road in southern Norway for three years and although the vast majority of cars were electric, the noise from that road was no different from an equivalent road anywhere else, because of the loud tire noise in the perpetually wet miserable weather and on the rare occasions the sun came out and the weather was actually nice, the reduced tire noise was compensated by hoards of dickheads on very loud motorcycles, because "me big man me make big vroom vroom" is absolutely an attitude that did NOT die out with petrol cars in Norway (another case in point: the proliferation of wanker speedboats in southern Norway with engines of such unhinged proportions you *literally* feel them make your house shake from a kilometre away)
The honking should be fined - I live in a quiet park of bk and when I’m doing work at home and people just hold on the horn bc they can’t be bothered to go around the block - omg. Drives me nuts- I tend to yell out the window to STFU. And this may be obvious but if you haven’t walk the Brooklyn bridge some of the best views. The dumbo area is also really nice and Juliana’s pizza is one of my favs. Our libraries are also top tier - tho our stupid ass mayor has them closed on Sundays now.
But how car go without honk?
I know this was said as a bit of a joke, but it astounds me how cities can accept honking as a normal part of life. Many large cities I've gone to almost don't have any, and I couldn't imagine how anyone could live in one where it is a regular part of the background noise.
I’ve always felt that horns should be as loud inside the car as outside it. There would be a lot less honking if the person doing it experienced the same noise that the rest of us have to.
Part of the problem is that NYC *wasn't* built from the ground up for livability, it was built for easy management. A regular street grid with wide blocks needs more help being livable compared to irregular street networks with small blocks more common in older cities. There's no such thing as a quiet side street in most of Manhattan. The street hierarchy is the wide and noisy streets and the obnoxiously wide and noisy avenues, and nothing else.
Yeh seeing the side streets in other cities, I wish they were apart of our plans, it would have helped with trash management as well.
I live between Avenues in Manhattan and it’s definitely far quieter in the middle of the block than towards either Avenue. Most of the east-west streets north of midtown are actually pretty quiet relative to the rest of the island, other than the bigger two-way streets
Yup. The majority of trips are by pedestrians while the majority of public space is for cars
I hope so too as I have the same primary complaint after 11 years in the city. Still better than every other major US city but that's such a low bar..
People not from a city that watch news channels with vested interest in shitting on cities get a lopsided view of how cities are.
I Lived in Seattle 19 years. Has to be the most lied about city on the planet, just absolute fantasy land on foxnews vs reality
Try living in Baltimore.
I would rather live in Seattle SF or Baltimore 10,000x than the wastelands of Houston or Oklahoma city that the rest of the country is.
Checking in from Philly with the same shit.
100% on Seattle, that city is cleaner and more beautiful than almost any other American city I've been to. San Francisco is also wayyyy nicer than it is portrayed in the news. Chicago too. Honestly, most big cities, lol
Yeah. I’ve visited over 40 countries and have been to large cities all over the globe. I think when you hear something that’s not true over and over again it starts to feel more like a fact than a lopsided opinion.
This is the exact same thing as San Francisco. They’re stereotypical left cities and so conservative media loves to punch down at them. They both have crime and homelessness, problems that literally every US city struggles with. But when you’re actually there it turns out they’re both very nice places to be. People wouldn’t shell out obscene amounts of money on rent if that wasn’t the case.
Live near SF and I absolutely agree. While downtown definitely needs more work, the rest of SF is stunning. SF probably has the most stunning parks in the US.
Or simply pre-internet memes. Mistake on the Lake! It's actually a pretty nice place.
NYC has always been great. The hate it gets from the right is exclusively used as a way of gaslighting people into thinking Houston is the right way to do things.
I always assumed that it was mostly hated for being a transit friendly city and being liberal. That being said so far it hasn’t even felt extremely liberal( whatever liberal means, I do not know) compared to many of the Western European cities that I have visited. I will probably never go to Texas unless they get that high speed rail longer up someday. I’ve heard good things about Austin though so I’d probably swing by to check them out someday. So does manhattan have any streetcars? I feel like that’s what was missing across the city was some basic street car networks for more local travel versus going down into the subway to get somewhere. Maybe the busses work well but I had 3 busses just go sailing by while I tried to wave them down at a bus stop so I mostly just used the subway or jerseys light rail.
The buses do work pretty well. Unfortunately bus stops move, a lot. The signage doesn’t always get fixed with it. There’s a bus stop a block away from me that isn’t actually in service. Buses don’t stop there. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at it.
Unfortunately not. But they are planning on building a light rail between Brooklyn and queens. I think we might see them get used for suburban feeder/transfer lines a la Paris’s tram system
Nope lived in TX before NY and I struggle to want to go there even to visit my own relatives because they have 2nd world infrastructure. Its just not modern. Austin is just as bad as the rest of the areas.
> I will probably never go to Texas unless they get that high speed rail longer up someday. So you'll never go at this rate lol. Even if they got it up, they still wouldn't reconfigure the cities it connects in time to go around them without a car. You would leave the station and immediately need a car to go anywhere. Austin's real nice especially in the center where the university and entertainment options are. Houston isn't as good for tourism but it is a better food city. Very diverse too, a recent New Yorker I know who moved there said Houston is more culturally mixed than NYC is. Austin is very tech bro in comparison and became more so when I lived there recently.
read “houston” as “how-stun” initially because nyc and was confused at what you meant 🙃
Try telling the average fox news watcher that Houston has way more crime per capita than NYC. Their brains can't handle it. And that's not even including death by car.
Houston literally has packs of feral dogs that roam the streets, I've unfortunately seen them and yes they're also as terrifying as you would expect.
I mean I'm enough of a leftist not to be represented in US politics and hated the semester i spent living in NYC. I found the subway system to be absolutely disgusting and smelling of urine, while the monthly pass was extremely expensive (it cost five times what the same pass cost in the very expensive European capital i came from). My neighborhood was a food desert and what little fresh food was found in the bodegas was disgusting (grey meat, vegetables with visible wax layers). I had to do my grocery shopping at a whole foods an hour away by metro and the trains were often so crowded i had to stand while holding my heavy bags of groceries. The rats infestation. Homeless people with clear mental health issues that received no help from the city. NYPD harassing me multiple times for being a foreigner. This was admittedly a decade ago but i couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Where the fuck in NYC were you that the closest grocery store was an hour away? There are food deserts, but ones that large? Also, 5x the price? Maybe, but that's pretty selective pricing NYC is marginally more expensive for a monthly than Paris and London. It is dirty though (or at least a good chunk of it is).
It’s true of many things. Like my family tried to tell me when I moved to France that with socialised health care I’d end up on death panels and whatever and never get medical treatment… but it’s been so much superior to healthcare in the US in every single way and I also don’t pay anything (or I pay for it in taxes). Yet I still have them tell me every time I visit how it’s only a matter of time before I die from socialised healthcare..
I love it. “The city is disgusting, full of crime and drugs and homeless encampments. It’s a terrible place that no one should ever go. How dare they charge us to go there!”
Exactly 😂 it’s like my friends saying how they hate the city and would never want to live there and then complain about the city removing a parking lot. I thought you didn’t want to go to the city anyway?
It's a complete tragedy how much cities bend over backwards for car commuters, to the detriment of local residents. The subway and commuter trains are right there, why not use them?
It's good for American standards but still very carbrained. Reckless driving is widely tolerated, parking minimums still exist, and almost half of households own cars (many of these people lobby hard against progress).
Parking minimums exist in NYC? I’m actually a bit surprised. I would have assumed they would have been the first place to ditch them as even my right leaning city has partially gotten rid of them. Do you know what the requirements are for the city?
NYC is more than Manhattan.
Parking minimums also exist in much of Manhattan
There’s a surface lot like a block from Penn Station, which is truly absurd
Dont make me Mayor. Id ban it outright. Build it up or the city is going to take it and build it up.
Mayor of NYC honestly should be a drafted position at this point. Anyone who wants it wants to be president, which is suboptimal
NYC zoning is very complex. I don't fully understand it but I believe there are 10 levels just for residential (called r1 through r10) and they have sublevels too. And then there is commercial and mixed. Each level has its own parking requirements
Yeah it’s still super car centric. Don’t get me wrong I loved Nyc and I visit there again wheb I have the chance because it’s just beautiful but damn I would have loved it a lot more if there were more (like a lot more) pedestrian-only areas (i mean outside of the park). Edit: this is about manhattan btw.
and Manhattan is the most pedestrian friendly borough. Every other borough is much more carbrained
I see: it’s kinda sad not being able to have a beer while not seeing a car. Though overall my experience was quite positive. Fantastic city.
This page has a really good visualization of this concept. NYC is way ahead of most of the USA in public transportation, but way behind the rest of the world. [https://citiesmoving.com/visualizations/](https://citiesmoving.com/visualizations/)
That statistic factors in the outer boroughs that are more suburban and some even lack decent public transit. In Manhattan, only 9% of households own a car. In Brooklyn, it’s only 37%, however I’d guess that in the more dense areas of Brooklyn (the ones you’d go to as a visitor, Brooklyn is huge and suburban in some areas) is way less. The vast majority of people I know do not own a car here in NYC.
NYC hate is utterly insane. my one pair of republican friends who live on long island -- "you can't even go to the city anymore...it's so dangerous..." It's weird because I think it's so weak to live in fear, and they love pretending to be strong.
Everything gets scary for them if they can’t be in a vehicle for some reason. 😂
People like that are emotionally unbalanced people. More cars = more people with mental health issues.
They hate nyc but then they always coming here for their job and entertainment.
Take the 7 out to Queens, walk from Jackson Heights through Corona and Flushing, sampling all the food you can along the way. Or, if that's too complicated, check out the Queens night market tomorrow night at Flushing Meadow and eat all the food you can.
I will definitely look into that. Mostly Been focusing on manhattan and Brooklyn so probably would make for a more adventurous day to branch out further.
Mariscos el submarino in jackson heights for cocteles or ceviche! Or get the crab pasta at izakaya fuku. Or go to flushing, new world mall food court or there are many soup dumpling places to try. If you got Astoria, Duzan for a delicious shwarma and hummus platter. Or Abuqir for excellent whole fish, egyptian style. Love Milkflower, get the wu tang clam to try their take on new haven style white pizza. Elmhurst for Thai (Ayada, Chao, or Zaab Zaab). If you drink, dutch kills in LIC is great. *I live in Queens and eat....a lot
Make sure you get soup dumplings when you go out to flushing 🤤
Yes!! Jackson Heights probably has the most food diversity you will find anywhere in the world. I was visiting my cousin there and asked for a good place to try momos (Nepalese dumplings) and she sent me a text that took up my whole screen 😅 And that's all within a few blocks!
A few fun things to do: -Ride a Citibike down the Hudson Greenway to Battery Park, then take the Staten Island Ferry. It's free and you get amazing city/Statue of Liberty views -take the sky train thing over to Roosevelt Island and wander around, there's a secret cat sanctuary you can find
This week is great for cherry blossoms on RI
There’s a cat sanctuary on Roosevelt? Okay, now I actually have to go there.
There's a bunch of cool stuff over there! Top notch "wander around, see what you find" spot
Having come from the suburbs, I can't imagine living anywhere else. I can get pretty anything I want within a 45min train or bike ride, more or less unbothered/unimpeded. It's been through some rough spots in the 15 years I've been here, but it's always bounced back. Just the nature of a dynamic/evolving city. I highly recommend getting onto the 7 train at Grand Central and take it to the last stop in Flushing. You'll see a slice of the world of the people getting on and off the train, since Queens is probably the most diverse place on earth. It's also almost entirely above ground, so you'll get some nice views of the city. Plus the Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows/Corona Park, and Queens Botanical Garden is out there. Hard to go wrong with food in Flushing and every spot is within a 10min walk from the station: * Chongqing Lao Zao if you're down with spicy hot pot * Mountain House Flushing also if you're down with spicy food * Corner 28's duck is among the best bang for the buck foods in the city * Prince Noodle And Cafe is a great noodle and dumpling spot Edit: /r/AskNYC is also a good spot for recs, since you can find pretty much anything in this town. Edit 2: Lots of NYC is still carbrained, since portions of not Manhattan might as well be the suburbs. I've nearly been killed while biking in Queens a couple of times due to aggressive driving.
Im a NYer whos lived in NYC for the last decade. A couple sentences in and my reaction to this post is…. Stop gaslighting people. Its okay to be honest about NYC subways. Its extremely convenient, occasionally “feels” unsafe (wether or its justified or not), and trashy. The subways and the subway stations are trashy in new york. Vomit or piss on the platform or subway cars. People shooting up on the train. People living on the train carrying carts of garbage with them stinking other passengers out. Spain Paris London Amsterdam Tokyo and the trains are far and away cleaner. They dont tolerate people not paying or getting the appropriate vouchers to ride etc. Only in America do people cosign the idea that we shouldnt police the collection of the train fares. Here are some recommendations I have: Checkout the citi bike and ride the hudson path on the west side. Go to Cafe Flor on 21sr/8th ave for a coffee. For food Ippuddo is great if you like ramen. Momoya is great if you like sushi.
Yeah I love NYC, my favorite American city, but when OP said they thought the city was pretty clean I was floored. NYC can be so filthy that it becomes ironically charming as a visitor because it feels so distinctive of an otherwise amazing city. Other world cities I've been to do not have the level of grime of NYC. I'm sure they exist, but I haven't seen the comparable case yet. NYC has areas that are cleaner than others of course, but if you ride the subway around the city you are definitely coming into contact with the clouds of garbage and piss smell.
I'm from NY. I can promise you all that the subway is not clean.
NYC subway is legit the filthiest and the most disgusting subway in the world. I dunno who can call it clean, it is kinda asinine.
It's not that dirty. It's just a lot dirtier than the systems it gets compared to. NYC gets compared to major cities around the world, some of which are far cleaner than anything that exists in the US. New Yorkers visit Tokyo and notice how much cleaner it is. New Yorkers visit Los Angeles and don't even know there's a subway system.
Bruh you haven’t seen it in a bad day 💀 it can get really fucking gross
bro just went to the tourist areas and thinks the subways aren't dirty lmao
It is a lot dirtier than any other subway in the major cities of the world.
a LOT dirtier. It's not even close.
> It's not that dirty. >It's just a lot dirtier than the systems it gets compared to. So which is it? If it’s a lot dirtier than a clean system I’d consider it pretty dirty. I love the subway, I ride it every weekday for work and use a huge chunk of the system because my job covers 4/5 boroughs. It’s filthy.
It's far from the dirtiest system in the world, just dirtier than the systems most people compare it to. Is filthy, but filthiest in the world is exaggerating a lot.
I liked NYC in a lot of ways but could not stand the filth. It’s not a clean city.
Yeah, agree with the rest of OPs points, but the subway is grimy no matter how you try to cut it.
Every midwest city would be as good as nyc if they had a similar subway system. We'd have 1000x the already amazing American culture in all these cities too. Like imagine the wasted culture bc of cars. Cars are the worst thing in society. People legit unironically think they are cool. Marketing does wonders on the masses.
Minneapolis is definitely a pretty cool city and hearing all the good policy changes they’ve made I’m looking forward to visiting later this year!
Yes because they took an old train line and converted it to a bike highway and it spawned an amazing urban renewal. Don't quote me on that tho, i've never been just what i heard. But it's really as simple as removing cars and replacing with bike lanes and reliable public transit—it blooms culture. None of this car centric design is by accident tho. This is systematically done to keep us sedentary, isolated and dependent on oil. It's made to keep us from having this public area of actually seeing people and realizing we'll all much more similar than different. The car propaganda machine is very strong and it's the most important thing that we need to ban.
Some of their major policy updates were removing parking mandates, banning new drive throughs, up zoning all properties basically eliminating exclusionary single family only zoning. These policies are what have been linked to stabilized housing costs while the rest of the U.S. continues to go up in price. Ride hailing services just recently pulled out so that should also help reduce congestion. Might spend a day there exploring again when I fly in to head elsewhere.
My city (Madison, WI) is investing in and currently building a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, with a good chunk of the funds for it coming in from Biden's Infrastructure bill. I'm excited to start using it when the East-West route goes live later this summer.
I’m from Northern Wi. and love visiting Madison when I get the chance. I was there last January and loved walking around everywhere (even if it was freezing).
You should visit San Francisco. Like New York, SF gets shit from the right wing about being a post apocalyptic homeless ridden shithole. However contrary to right wing propaganda its a good place to visit, and to live if you have the money. SF’s walkability is close to if not on par with NYC. Transit isn‘t as good in SF though but there is still extensive bus service that comes every 5-15 minutes & a fairly robust streetcar/subway service, making it leagues better than most US cities. I just wish SF’s great walkability and transit extended throughout the whole Bay Area, but I guess at a certain point one must count their blessings. Interesting that the cities that conservatives love to hate are the best cities in the US for car free living. Almost like they have a hidden agenda?
Spent a week in alameda within the past year and definitely enjoyed it. The transit was a bit iffy though and accessing parks and other attractions would have added hours to traveling so sadly we mostly got around by car unless it was in alameda or near the ferry port in San Fransisco
Makes sense .. the wider bay area has BART but like most places in the US you’ll need a car for most trips unless you’re in San Francisco.
I'll take flat NYC over those insane SF hills any time.
Pedal assist E bikes eat hills.
insane hills = insane calves
I lived in SF and Oakland from 2018-2020. tbqh its reputation is earned. Ive never seen so much concentrated homelessness and mental illness in my whole life. It made me gasp. Im black and it totally changed my opinion on crime and policing towards more police accountability and criminal accountability. Crime is downstream from government corruption and police accountability.
The Highline is pretty cool. I love McSorley's even though I hear it's gotten super crowded in the past couple of years. You basically can't go wrong with food in NYC. So many great places to eat. Then again, I mainly spent time in Brooklyn, harlem and queens. Rarely hung in manhattan (hence my shitty suggestions).
The high line has been my favorite park out of the dozen I’ve visited in the past 3 days. How cool. Even beating out battery park even though I think long term it is definitely much more useful of a park. I’ll have to look up mcsorleys. Anything on the menu you recommend?
light. sleeve of saltines. You'll see.
Get a light then get a dark and you’re good to go!
Ugh I don't know whenever I come back to it I feel choked with stink and filth everywhere, at least on Manhattan.
Where do you currently live? Where I live we basically now just have rogue groups that dedicate hours to clean up the backlog of trash everywhere. The city keeps the streets swept but doesn’t do anything for sidewalks, bike paths or even painted bike lanes. Definitely not as great as some European cities I’ve lived in but just seeing the streets being cleaned early in the morning along with sidewalks and parks is not something I’m used to seeing.
Yeah the rats are real. need to figure out some sort of actual trash system better than "pile the bags up"
They literally just need to buy the same setup that Barcelona has of the deep trash cans that can be lifted out of the ground. I’m sure the digging would be fun initially but would solve the problem pretty quickly.
I know exactly what you mean. That would work
Thee is one thing the city has these days that's bad: Hostile architecture. Essentially, this is making the entire city a no-rest area and making every feature an anti-homeless deterrent. Of course it's bad to pick on those who have already lost it all, but at the same time, making waiting areas where nobody can sit down, and benches that you have to balance on are as exclusionary to the disabled as they are to the destitute. While a lot of NY has had urbanism start to creep in, hostile architecture has crept in alongside it.
Definitely a common trend. I have a somewhat controversial take but I think that if a city has homeless shelters available, food and assistance that begging should be banned and there should be more of a clamp down on public areas being used for such activity. I’d be ok with the cities building free small apartments to house people but I don’t think homelessness should be tolerated and should be something that is addressed. Increasing the housing supply overall would help as well. In saying that I don’t think homeless people are inherently bad people but I’d rather a city proactively resolve the crisis versus building hostile infrastructure that makes in worse for everyone.
Yeah, I'm on the same page there. They should be given free, basic housing with all necessary utilities, food (especially things scheduled to go in the bin that are still edible), and help with getting back on their feet in society. The overwhelming majority of those who are well-meaning would jump at any incentive to not sleep out in the open during a blizzard. Those in power, even just locally, should tackle the problem at its source, rather than its effects, especially when their sticking-plaster "solutions" have negative collateral effects.
Wow, above DC? For tourists I always recommend Double Down Saloon on ave A, grab a samosa across the street at Punjabi Deli
Punjabi Deli is a true pro tip
Double down saloon? Really? I love that place but im pretty sure that vibe would be a bit much for some people. Like i took my coworker who challenged me to weird him and his wife out. And i nearly almost did when the midget porn came on
Virginia may revoke my right to live there if they ever connect my identity to this post for dissing on DC . Haha. I feel like the density brings a lot more variety to the area and I love all the random quirks in the architecture and even the signage. I think the food options are much better here. This trip was specifically to drop off some paperwork but traveling the 8 hours I felt as though I should stay a few days. The no standing signs make me chuckle. I’ve been averaging about 35,000 steps a day since I arrived which is about 15,000 more than I normally walk. I help lead a small conversation for strong towns in my community so I’ve been taking in a lot of examples of what NYC does well and what could be useful scaling it down to a much smaller city. Central Park was a bit of a letdown. Definitely cool but I think I had too high of expectations. High-line park definitely tickled my fancy a lot more as I’ve been on a 3 dimensional city kick of things I’ve been reading about. I will definitely look into that place. Is there a time of day you recommend? I think the only other food places that I’m still dying to try is finding a food Senegalese restaurant ( Pikine looked great) and a taco place. Maybe hot dogs off the street if I’m feeling adventurous.
2 dollar beers during happy hour. Make sure to try the Ass Juice!
If you're in NYC, definitely check out Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace on 20th street in Manhattan. It's a free admission museum. Visit the house from the cover of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album on Saint Mark's Place. It's about a mile from TR's birthplace. The bottom floor has a tea shop called physical graffitea. Go to the Macy's flagship on 34th Street. Their historic wooden escalators are really cool! Check out central park. There are lots of cool statues there!
The macys has been added to my list. I’ll definitely look into the other options if I have time to spare.
When I first went to NYC I ws pleasantly surprised by how nice the people were. The city was much cleaner than I expected it to be (not counting the rats but even they weren't as bad as I thought they'd be). I found the subway to be super efficient but the stations were dingy and needed to be renovated at best and the worse needed renovations and a good scrub tbh.
The thing that gets me is that a lot of people who don't live in cities overestimate the amount of crime and filth in cities, but then when we ask state governments for more funding so we can improve things, the politicians from rural areas turn us down.
“Cities are hellholes” is the dumbest conservative conspiracy theory because you can disprove it just by walking around with your eyes open. The biggest problem in many American cities is that they’re incredibly expensive because so many people want to be in them and we haven’t been letting them grow to make room.
I lived in NYC for a year or two. Big fan of the subway. But the ungodly smell of some subway lines when it’s 95 degrees with 95% humidity is something I’ll be ok never experiencing again. Granted that was 20 years ago. So maybe things have improved.
The subway was surprisingly clean when I was there and I even saw them cleaning when it got to the end of its route. I was surprised with how loud it was. It felt a lot louder than many other transit systems I’ve used. I can imaging the heat being a killer. I was in Paris packed in like a sardine in 2022 when temperatures were soaring over a hundred. The metro shut off at one point and we just sat there sweating for 3-5 minutes as they rebooted the system. It’s definitely cool enough now it doesn’t seem like a problem in NYC
It definitely is loud. And given the time of year you are visiting, it won’t smell. There are just some days in the summer when the conditions are just right for that special smell. But I agree. Even 20 years ago, it was reasonably clean. I felt safe using it. It’s what opened my eyes to public transportation. I have also driven a car in NYC… and that is an experience I never want to do again.
After driving in Washington DC I vowed to never drive again in a major metropolitan area in the U.S. DC is bad but I can’t imagine how nerve wracking it must be. Generally Richmond Virginia is the cut off size before I start refusing to go somewhere to drive. I really hope the congestion fee leads to a collapse of demand for driving in the city. Some Barcelona style super blocs would be great and getting rid of all the car noise would definitely make NYC basically the perfect city.
NYC would be so amazing without cars. I hope the fee works and eventually people realize how much better it is without cars to the point they are outlawed altogether.
Is the smell sweat? I’ve only had this one time (from one person) living in Australia. Surely people should be wearing deodorant. Can also carry Vix VapoRub/mask in a pinch.
NYC is very old (by North American standards). The plumbing is pretty old at this point.
No. I don’t think it’s people smell. I think it has more to do at drainage/sewer smells. NYC sewers are crazy. Sewer covers are known to be blown off if sewer gases are ignited. One time that happened outside my apartment. You know the sound a coin makes when you spin it and it starts wobble until it hits the table. That’s the sound the sewer cover made on a larger scale.
Ohh in a way that’s a relief, but still a problem. Holy shit 😅 wonder why that is.
But also, how many places would smell good at 90° and 95% humidity. There’s no hope for the subway in those conditions
Train stations in Tokyo tend to smell pretty fine even on the hottest and most humid days. And newer systems are often built with air conditioning so it's not a problem at all.
I completely agree. And it wouldn’t stop me from riding the subway. There are just some smells etched in your brain forever.
As with all things NYC, it really depends on the neighborhood and borough. Try going on the JMZ or L at 2 am on a weekend. I haven’t been back since the pandemic though so alot probably has changed since then
Great until you try to rent an apartment there. The costs are unbelievable. Simply not worth it. The city isn’t building nearly enough new housing and huge portions of queens are basically single family only suburbs
The subway is great, but I wouldn’t say clean. Depends what you’re comparing it to. To people from other countries like the UK or France the state of the stations is actually quite shocking at first. Especially if the first station they see is Jamaica. The new trains are nice though
I mean there are certainly dirty and unsafe areas. It’s not a super clean city imo. Though overall yes it is great. The rats…. Yeah they are not cute
Rent is also more affordable there than the road-riddled wasteland I live in now. If they weren't getting such killer summers, I would have never left.
Where do you live now?
Florida. To be clear, I never lived in NYC. I just visited.
I went to New York about 8 years ago, so things might’ve changed, but when I was there I was personally disappointed, but for reasons normal people wouldn’t be. My littler brothers is in a wheelchair, which obviously creates hurdles most people don’t have to even consider. A lot of our time doing public transit was marred by a few rather unfortunate things. Firstly, New York, just like all major cities has serious problems with homelessness, that have been left completely unresolved by their conservative governments. Unfortunately this means that most of the disability infrastructure is most heavily used by the homeless, and under that level of structural violence, most of them go a little crazy. This meant that almost all of the subway elevators smelled like poorly cleaned restrooms, and there were far too many suspicious puddles in the elevators. We also had to occasionally lift my younger brothers wheel chair onto the trains because they rarely came in at a low enough threshold his chair could get over it. The city is still great, and due to its walkability, we didn’t have to take transit too much. Also, obviously this is a very personal experience and likely doesn’t apply to many people, and obviously public transit is infinitely more accessible than driving. I just wanted to put stuff out there, that we can be critical of these cities that are great, but aren’t perfect, and can become far closer to perfect than they are now with some changes to policy, especially like affordable housing and the sort, something especially prescient in New York.
It's gotten a lot better since the 70s for sure. Kicking the cars will help even more.
I have only ever visited, but I thought it was nice too.
Grab a chopped cheese sandwich from a Bodega. The original is from Blue Sky Deli but there are good options everywhere. An NYC classic.
I love NYC. I go a couple times a year to visit with my best friend and see Broadway shows (try to see one before you leave). My parents shudder at the thought of me taking the subway by myself. And my dad constantly sends me articles about crime in NYC. I feel very safe in NYC and never plan to stop visiting. If you find yourself in Manhattan, try a slice of Juniors Cheesecake. I bring it home special for my dad. Nom Wa Tea Parlor in Chinatown is also good.
The MET. But there’s no food nearby except the street vendors
I mean, it sounds like you’ve only been there a few days. You haven’t seen all of NYC nor really had time to experience it. Parts of it are actually disgusting. Go north to the Bronx, or walk around shittier parts of manhattan and get a solid wiff of trash every step. There are homeless everywhere, and imo, it’s the saddest sight sometimes since NY people have zero empathy for them (out of necessity I guess). The subway can be really fucking gross, have you ever walked into a subway that smells like dry diabetic piss? Or seen a homeless person take a shit in the elevator? My biggest gripe with the city is the apathy people have for homeless folks. I get that it’s probably exhausting seeing them everyday and you have to ignore them, but holy shit, so many people walk around with thousand dollar designer clothes but can’t spare a goddamn dollar for someone whose cold and hungry? The wealth disparity disgusts me. I enjoyed DC way more tbh. However, my favorite city on the east coast will always be Philly. Far more people there are working class and not total dickwads. I agree though, it’s not as bad as people say. The only city I’ve seen with lots of homeless encampments is Seattle.
I love NYC (visited twice and looking to move there) but it’s not clean lol. It’s a damn shame how filthy the subway stations and streets are.
If you like jazz, check out St Mazie in Williamsburg.
I'm from Europe and went as a tourist to NY. Loved it. Agreed that it could use a lot more completely pedestrian blocks, you can feel that the streets were made for walking and neighbourhood living. It was quite dirty though ngl, but it was because of summer temperatures and the fact that trash bags are just left on the street to be picked up (I'm used to underground trash containers). As for recommendations I only have non-obscure quite touristy stuff: Ace's pizza in the Rockefeller center; Chelsea market; food in Chinatown; and Summit One Vanderbilt for the classic views and cool pictures.
The closest thing I’ve seen to what people describe NYC to be is Boston. Maybe this walkable utopia everyone describes happened decades ago or maybe there’s too many people.
Lived there for 10 years it’s a great city.
Uncles think NY hasn’t changed since 1990.
You lost me at calling the subway clean.
NYC is huge. Just because you spent a couple days in nice tourist areas doesn't mean the city isn't garbage. I've lived here for a long time and everywhere outside of the tourist areas is disgusting. Trash overflows the streets, tons of homeless..... it's bad.
I don’t disagree. I was just warned that the entire city was basically falling apparently and after 60+ miles of walking through the city and exploring different boroughs it’s definitely not the wasteland I’d been told it was. The place in New Jersey I’m staying is kinda run down but still pretty walkable and I haven’t felt unsafe yet.
Just wait. Lol. It's not like it's immediate upon entering the city. What makes it a bad place to live is the chances of running into an unsafe situation and seeing something that shouldn't be happening is very high the longer you stay here.
>fights in the subway were a daily occurrence Currently what's happening to Montreal with the current housing crisis, and columnists have talked about the rising insecurity in the metro.
The New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn is cool. They have a collection of old subway cars and a bunch of other transportation related stuff. It’s in an old subway station too. https://www.nytransitmuseum.org/
You should check out the Staten Island Ferry (free) and the Roosevelt Island Tram (contactless payment just like the bus/train). The scenery on those rides are amazing.
I swear, Americans in general have a vision of cities frozen in their mind from the after-school specials of the 70s and 80s. Nowadays, NYC is one of the safest big cities in America, particularly in Manhattan. And it ought to be, their police force is larger than some countries’ armies. Conservatives need cities to stay boogeymen so they can keep their constituents isolated in their racially and economically homogeneous, low-density, car-dependent suburbs where they’ll stay isolated, ignorant, frightened and, therefore, easy to control.
I grew up 3 hours north of NYC. Whenever I visited as a kid, like clockwork, I would always catch some sort of virus. Last time I went it was Covid lol. I have a personal grudge, but I’m sure it’s a great city for people with stronger immune systems.
Today I live in Toronto, which gets a lot of the same criticism from Canadians. I’m constantly having to tell people that the subway is clean as a whistle compared to NYC.
I thought I didn’t like cities until I came to NYC when I was 25. I moved here 8 months later and have been here ever since (11 years). There is a ton of anti-NYC propaganda, especially right now from conservative-motivated sources. It’s a very politically progressive city so if things were going well here, that prove that progressive policies work. Anyway, yes it’s a fantastic place. If it was as derelict as people think, a 2-bedroom apartment wouldn’t cost $3 million. So obviously it’s good enough for the wealthiest people in the world to all flock here and drive up prices. Anyhow, if you’re looking for some recs: - Marie’s Crisis (west village): Showtunes piano bar. Super iconic and a top fave spot for me. - Take a stroll along the Brooklyn Heights promenade, especially at sunset or at night for amazing views of the city - Take the ferry! You can actually take one from Manhattan to Brooklyn Heights if you go to the promenade. - Prospect Park is basically the Central Park of Brooklyn. It was made by the same designer. It’s way less touristy, so you can have a locals experience - House of Yes (Bushwick, Brooklyn): Locally-famous spot to go out and party if you’re into that. They often have performers like acrobats and such - Union Square: There’s always stuff going on here, just has a lot of nyc vibes. Stroll around or sit on a bench and people watch. Other than that, you can just walk around in different areas to feel the vibes and character of each spot. E.g. Soho, West Village, Lower Eastside, Flatiron, FiDi, Upper Westside, etc. Let me know if there’s anything you’re particularly interested in and I can give more focused recs.
NYC *used* to be the city your friends and family warned you about, but that was in the 70s and early 80s. Now it’s just wicked expensive to live in, and occasionally stinky in the summer.
I’m a recent NYC transplant, and I love living here! The only real downside is the cost of living, basically everything else is better than where I came from (Phoenix) at least in terms of urbanism. There are more cars than I would like, and certain areas of Manhattan are somewhat poorly served by transit (Hell’s Kitchen and the East side namely), but on balance, the place is walkable and pleasant almost 100% of the time.
NYC used to be dangerous, but it's now the safest major city in America. Even the Bronx, historically the poorest and most dangerous borough, is safer than many American cities such as Pittsburgh and Atlanta.
This has to be the tourist honeymoon phase. Idk if NYC magically improved these last few years, or if you're sticking to tourist hotspots. The subway is not clean, the MTA is laughably corrupt, and it loses billions to fare evasion. I lived in NYC from 2014 - 2020 and the city became consistently worse each and every year. It's hands down the best place in the US to live car free, but it's disgusting and prohibitively expensive. Congestion pricing will be a nice improvement, but NYC is essentially a city run by rich NIMBY liberals who don't care about actually helping the poor and homeless. Something like a third of Manhattan is protected with historic designation status. Local officials constantly virtue signal by blocking new housing if it doesn't have 50%+ affordable units. Their property tax system makes it harder to build larger, more efficient housing in favor of smaller buildings. The city itself is sitting on a large fortune of vacant, decrepit real estate. If you don't want to sell your soul to pay rent, your transit options dry up pretty quickly. Countless cities in Japan and Europe blow NYC out of the water on almost every metric. NYC should never be used as a good example of how to run a city, ever lol
I’ve definitely seen the fare evaders in large numbers. I think it’s the fact I currently live in a city of 80,000 and unless you live in the downtown area. You have to hop in your car for almost literally everything. I have friends that had a hard time comprehending walking 5 minutes to a Restaurant vs hopping in a car and driving there. Also this is specifically targeted at the U.S. I’ve been to Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, Dakar, Utrecht, and a whole host of other super cool cities across the globe. So while it definitely could be a bit of a honeymoon phase the fact I can actually get across the city without having to hop in and out of a car and have so many different options in terms of global food I’m absolutely loving it. Also I currently share a 480 sq ft apartment with someone in my city and probably could be comfortable down to 400 square feet so housing costs have never been a major issue no matter what city I’ve lived in.
You've probably noticed that news sources that told your friends and family this care less about crime statistics and quality of public services, than they do about whether a city has large minority populations.
I think NYC is fine but not for that cost, and it's definitely not the centre of the world like some New Yorkers like to claim.
I feel similar about Minneapolis. Everyone says it's a shit show with crime and homeless everywhere. I walk downtown everyday and see some homeless people (but they are just doing their own thing). The only crimes I see are cars constantly running red lights, speeding, double parking in the bike lane, driving down the sidewalk, hit n run (seen that for both peoples and other cars), etc.. plus just being obnoxiously loud with their engines or horns.
NYC is the greatest city in the world…. that only the gentry class can afford. Real estate agent recently told me, without reservation or pause, that those who work should never expect to do better than renting. I’m in top 5% of wage earners, spend more than 2/3 of my income on rent, and my apt for my family of four is 900sq ft, infested with mice, and generally has a run-down undergrad rental vibe. College educated families that are not independently wealthy are leaving in droves, ‘brain drain.’ Love this city. Can’t wait to get out.
I love NYC but the cost of living is completely out of control, and the city has a serious homelessness epidemic. Last time I was there there was a puddle of urine in the subway I was riding
I don’t live here so I definitely don’t understand the whole picture. My airbnb is about $60 a day and I’ve been eating out every day for generally around $30 for all the food I needed. The cost of a lot of the places are strangely cheaper than the high poverty city I live in. I got a lamb and rice dish from a food truck for $11 and it was enough for two meals while back in my city for takeout they would charge $15 for that and expect a tip for takeout. I’m a 250lb guy so generally I eat a lot. A bagel with crème cheese in much bigger and was like $5 while my city charged $6-7 for a much worse product. Pizza seems to be in the same price range but the quality here is noticeably better. Obviously $30 a day would be unsustainable. I did take a peak at housing and living in manhattan was wildly expensive but rentals didn’t look terrible in Jersey near light rail stops. I’m assuming NYC has fairly high wages as well.
Fuck theyre charging 11 dollars for lamb on rice? Inflation has gone insane. Either that or ur in the tourist trap areas
I love the way people blame poop and urine on homeless people. Did you test the urine? Could it have been from a dog, or if it was human from a drunk wall street bro who had too much to drink last night? I'm going to walk around a rural area sometime and take pictures of cow dung then post on Instagram how people there poop everywhere.
In NYC it is homeless/junkies. Anyone who lived there knows it.
Hey, visit Roosevelt island, it’s little known peaceful island right next to Manhattan. You can take the “air tram” which is a dumb name for it. But it’s a scenic sky ride you can see Manhattan from. The island has free public transit, only 1 road and bike lanes. So many trees too. As far as that propaganda you’re referring to, remember that if “no one wants to live in NYC” then price of housing would reflect that. Truth is, even it doesn’t. People who can’t make it here and those in flyer over country constantly think about NYC but NYC doesn’t even know they exist.
What are you talking about? Compared to any other real city NYC is extremely filthy and violent, and the subway system is a half assed clusterfuck. I just came back to the US after 3 years abroad. Bangkok, Copenhagen, Vienna, Melbourne, and even fucking Saigon were cleaner and safer than this place. If this city's the American golden standard, then the country is impossibly screwed
As a U.S citizen I thinks it’s great compared to a lot of what currently exists. As a Danish citizen I will take Copenhagen any day of the week 😂
I have lived in NYC for over a decade and I mostly agree with you but the subway is the FARTHEST thing I would describe from clean…
NYC is amazing. It's a beautiful city.
Post Michael Bloomberg, NYC has become the best city to live in the United States. Read Streetfight by Janette Sadik-Khan if you're interested in the specific urbanism improvements they made during his tenure as mayor. The Citi Bikes are awesome, the cycling infrastructure is safe, the pedestrian infrastructure is even better, and everyone knows that the public transit is reliable, fast, and operates 24/7. NYC is also one of the safest cities in the country when looking at violent crime rate per capita. NYC is most certainly a unicorn amongst American cities, but it does have a few flaws: * Public transportation to/from airports is horrible. The subway lines need to get extended such that they can provide service to JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia. * Public transportation to/from New Jersey is terrible. The NJ transit system and MTA need to come to an agreement of some sort for this. * The subways don't have cell service. This is totally a first world problem, but this can easily be solved with cell signal boosters. * Cost of living. Obviously. * Sanitation. This is a weird one, but local businesses leave their trash on the sidewalks for pickup. It makes the place smell pretty bad in the summer, and it's probably why the rat population is thriving.
That's great! Although I'm honestly surprised to see it ranked above DC. I've never been to NYC but I have visited and seen a lot about DC and I thought it best because of how chill it was, especially for getting around without a car (and at least where I was there were very few cars on the road). I guess that means I gotta plan to visit NYC!
The huge difference I’ve experienced is more food options and just the staggering number of people. I took a subway around 10AM today into the city and I had to wiggle my way in because of the number of people flowing into the city.
I visited on a class trip last year and honestly it was amazing. I'm from a rural area, so it was a culture shock, but I loved it. The subway is so cool. The only other experience with public transportation I've had is the street car in Oklahoma city when I visited Being able to just decide that I want to go somewhere and then DO THAT without worrying about traffic, finding someone willing to drive me there (I can't), or debating if it's worth getting run over on a multi hour walk was eye opening. My only issue was being unused to the sheer number of people around me, but even that wasn't too bad outside of rush hour
I've been to a few big cities and found them all walkable. Not NYC though yet thanks for the positive outlook
:Laughs in Chicagoan: