What is it like to live in New York City?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “easy luck coffee & bodega“
What is it like to live in New York City?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “easy luck coffee & bodega“
Wow. That is hard to describe. First of all, it is incredibly expensive. My husband and I live in a 650 square foot apartment in Chelsea, which is a neighborhood in Manhattan, and we pay $4,000 a month rent. This rent is typical in much of Manhattan, unless you rent in a four story walkup. There are lower rents in Harlem, but that is starting to change.
It’s loud. Noise is everywhere. The traffic, beeping horns, the subway trains, sirens, loud people. It takes a while to adapt.
Work. It’s a hard working city. Many people put in very long hours, whether to make those large corporate and law firm salaries or working three jobs just to get by. It makes the city incredibly busy and focused.
Diversity. Well over 800 languages are spoken here, and the dress, habits and food are from almost every world culture. As a gay man, I feel safer here than anywhere I’ve ever lived.
Speaking of safety, NYC is the safest large city in the US and one of the safest large cities in the world. I walk around Manhattan, from Harlem to the Financial District, anytime night or day, and have never felt unsafe.
It’s a walking city. We don’t own cars, and if we can’t walk we use the trains. $2.75 and you can go anywhere, even to the beach. I ride trains almost every day. Crowded and not a great system compared to European systems, but it goes everywhere.
You entertain out in the city. People do not have friends “over” very often, because apartments are so small. You meet in restaurants, bars, parks, etc.
Oh, and the parks. Union Square. Washington Square, little Stuyvesant Park, Madison Square, the list is long and they are wonderful places to stop and rest and be entertained. And of course, Central Park. What’s not to like? You can spend a whole Sunday afternoon there walking and eating and going to the zoo and being entertained for free.
The weather is changeable, and there is snow in winter and humidity in the summer. But Spring and Fall are delightful. There are flowers everywhere and the breeze off the Hudson River in my neighborhood is sweet.
Water. Rivers, beaches, long strolls along the seaport. Seagulls. NYC is surrounded by water.
Food. It’s the best. From food trucks to fine dining, you can find about everything here.
Culture. Incredible museums (MOMA, Natural History, the Met, Whitney… ), you could never see it all. Wonderful small galleries. Opera, symphony, dance. And of course Broadway. Theater is just extraordinary. And the libraries: some are architectural gems as well as storehouses of knowledge.
I’ve lived in Charlotte, DC, Philadelphia and several smaller towns. But nothing (in this country) compares to NYC. I retired here (no Florida or resort condo for me), and I wake up every morning feeling incredibly fortunate to live here. And, yes, I do realize this answer is Manhattan-centric. And there are four more exciting and dynamic boroughs (well, maybe Staten Island’s not exciting!). But, it’s what I know.
A word of advice: don’t ever forget the expensive part. It’s best to have a job in hand when you come to live here, and expect to work hard. I am fortunate to be retired, but most people work very hard to live here. Cheers!
I lived in SF (well, specifically Berkeley) for a little over 3 months in the very early 90s, and have lived in various locations in NYC from the mid-90s until now.
Please consider my answer shaded by the times in which I lived there.
I’m not going to talk about the culture, or the food, or all the exciting creative things that you could easily travel a lot to find.
I’m going to talk about three specific day-to-day living things.
The first thing I noted about NYC vs SF is the honesty level. Seriously, NO CITY tells the truth like NYC tells the truth. If you’re not okay with hearing honest opinions, NYC is not for you. In SF? Even if I asked for an honest opinion, I didn’t get one. (Though I didn’t find that out until MUCH later, after the so-called honest folks were no longer friends with me because they didn’t like the behavior I had asked their opinion on.)
Kicker is? NYC folks usually don’t care if you don’t care about their opinions. They move on. Whatevs, as long as you’re still cool. Or if you’re not, we’ll just separate gently. SF? They CARED if I didn’t care about their opinions. Even if they weren’t their honest opinions. I got some major gossip behind my back that was a major distortion of something going on in my life at the time. In NYC? I only got that with people who were from New Jersey. 😉 Native New Yorkers? They got both sides of the story and never chose.
Second thing? NYC is, at heart, a city that cares for its own. The most immediate example of this is how much of a pedestrian city it is (even though there are many pedestrians killed here). Real NYCers drive like pedestrians have right of way no matter what. NYC pedestrians walk like they know exactly where they need to go. So plenty of people jaywalk, and we help each other do it. In SF, I was once pulled back from the curb, the gentleman saying “there’s a cop right there! He’ll ticket you for jaywalking!” I looked at him, boggled, and he whispered “I once spent a night in jail for jaywalking. I don’t recommend it.” And in NYC, I overheard a woman whisper to a man with a baby “go ahead. I’ll walk on the car side of you.”
By the same token, when I was ill in SF, needing help, I had to crawl several blocks down Shattuck before I could get anyone to help. The person who helped was a homeless man, calling an ambulance for me at a payphone using a quarter I gave him.
In NYC? I had a herniated disk and in the 57th St N/Q stop I was pressing my back up against some cold tile next to the stairwell to make it stop hurting.
5 people stopped within 15 minutes to ask me if I was okay.
A young East Asian woman in a fancy dress.
An old African American woman with a glorious hat and a cane.
A young, scruffy white skateboarding punk of indeterminate gender.
A middle-aged African-American suited man with diamond cufflinks.
A younger mixed-race man with backwards baseball cap. (He even stopped the rest of his friends, just in case, before I told him there was “nothing to be done, but thank you a thousand times”.)
And that wasn’t even the last of them. Those were merely the ones I remembered because it was so fast, and beautiful.
The incredible kindness of random NYCers to those in crisis CANNOT be understated. It’s not only crises like 9/11, where I walked home alone helped by 3 complete strangers, nor of the blackout, where I walked home with a friend and there were people handing out free cups of water along Broadway and there were bodegas giving out their refrigerated stuff for pennies. It’s also crisis moments like the day I saw a man have a seizure as he was walking down 33rd st between 5th and 6th, and when he fell on his face more than a dozen people surrounded him and tried to help. Even a woman falling on 5th Avenue got a ton of help, not just from me, when she fell down while texting and cut her lip open. I’ve seen it happen across race, class, status, orientation, and gender divides here. I admit there are still plenty of people who are cruel and awful here (see – Muslim businesses being vandalized in certain neighborhoods after 9/11, and black teens being beaten either to death or close to by white people), but there are so, so many of us who care about our city denizens, and we don’t care much who you are as long as you’re devoted to being HERE. I am endlessly encouraged by the fact that I’m never the only one to run and help complete strangers. Even in the tight-knit communities I experienced in California, Massachusetts, and elsewhere, they mostly helped their own… which excluded people of other races, classes, and religions.
Finally, New York City contains balm for the introvert, despite its crowds. For every intensely populated popular place, there are places where you can disappear. There are parks where you can get lost and not see a human face for hours. (Forest Park, Inwood Park). There are hidden meditative spots in Prospect Park and Central Park. There are restaurants where you can go and eat alone and no one will bother you. (Though there are some to avoid if you’re a woman.) NYC offers a ton of quiet, beautiful experiences for those who are not up for the hustle and bustle every day. In SF, I always endured crowds to experience great things, and I never found a restaurant in which I could eat alone and not have someone comment on it. The only other two cities in which I ate alone comfortably were Portland Oregon and Prague.
So all told, there’s a safety here I don’t find in other places.
As a final secret? If you fall in love with NYC and *it falls back in love with you?* You’ll be led to amazing things.
For me, New York was a city of firsts:
The first time I got drunk at a bar. (I was eighteen at the time. The place was El Sombrero.)
A half-decent relationship.
My first good job.
The first time I ever got serious about helping people who were not me.
A place where I finally developed some self-confidence.
Then the bad:
The first time (of many) I ever seriously questioned my existence on earth, and started to ask myself all of those important, existential questions.
The first time I experienced innocent people (that I knew) die from something so undeserved and so utterly horrifying that I began to really wonder if doing good in the world really mattered.
The first place I began to understand (but never be totally cognizant of) how totally privileged and enabled I’ve been my entire life and how most others aren’t afforded that incredible opportunity.
The first time I watched someone get absolutely steamrolled by the stress and status-seeking that’s become a sad, inherent part of the New York culture. Some people can hang, and they do well. But sometimes outsiders get chewed up and fist-fucked.
The first place where I seriously considered killing myself.
I couldn’t hang, but stress wasn’t the issue.
I just wanted out.
New Yorkers Are Tough
Whenever I mention to someone that I’m from New York (I lived in New York City proper a year, sue me), they suggest that it’s a
change of pace
. This is a change of pace, right?
No shit
.
But I also think the toughness thing is a bit of a misnomer, and kinda bullshit. (I wasn’t very tough, admittedly.)
I think
coarse
is much more apt. Tough implies that you’ve aged, like rock. You came up mica, and out the other side sapphire.
New Yorkers are rough, like #2 pencils — writing their jolly little notes in their Moleskine notepads, hoping that they don’t run out of graphite before they finish their thoughts.
Some people run out — of ideas, words, hope. They can’t write anymore. So they run on fumes. Or they kill themselves. Or they move.
It’s scary, and it’s miserable and it’s tough and you won’t make it. Most people don’t.
Nobody is happy. Everybody wants more.
And You Should Live There, Just Once
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“Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.”
— Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune
And yet I never regret living in New York, not once. I miss it, like an ex-girlfriend. I secretly wanted her to call me up and tell her that she misse…
In comparison to SF:
the weather is worse, but not as bad as, say, Chicago.
You will rely on public transportation much more. For everything, in fact.
Bars close at 4 am. This is huge. There is a great night life in the city, where you can participate in tons of normal city activities. in contrast to SF, where it seems everything shuts down at 9 pm.
You’ll spend more time in museums, plays, musicals, or whatever cultural event strikes your fancy. This sort of thing is way better than in SF.
You’ll miss burritos. But you’ll discover bagel & lox, so everything will be OK.
There will be much less majestic beauty of the type that is so abundant in SF. But this is compensated by the great amount of architectural beauty (for example, Grand Central Station).
It will be much harder to go outside the city for hikes and such, usually for the reason you don’t have a car. But you won’t need to go outside the city. I’ve done exactly two trips outside the city in the 7 years I’ve lived here.
All the neighborhoods will look the same to you. And they all look vaguely run-down and dirty.
You’ll be puzzled by some of the business you see. What kind of place serves both bagels & sushi? Why is there a burrito restaurant in Bed, Bath & Beyond? These are the kind of questions you’ll be asking yourself.
The quality of local fruits will disappoint you. There’s just no getting around this. You’ll also find the food in NY is more unhealthy in general than the Bay Area, and there’s way more chain fast food restaurants here. But there’s also more excellent dining options than you will have time to try.
Daily life for me is wake up, commute to work by subway, work, commute back, sometimes stopping along the way to pick up some food. My weekday life is pretty uneventful, since I have a family. On weekends, I take my family to a museum, or some interesting event going on (there are tons of things every weekend), such as a Japanese street fair.
I recommend the move, NYC is a fantastic place overall.
I grew up in NYC. There is always something happening. If you can deal with everything that you have been familiar with will change then this city is for you. There are many cultures. Every neighborhood is different. There is always some kind of activity since this is a 24–7 active city so you need to be open and able to adjust to change. For example the store or restaurant that was open last month may no longer be there or yesterday’s opportunity may cease to exist. As a result there will be new discoveries. Transportation is generally a given but there can be interruptions. There are many opportunities in both education and employment but rents and expenses are high. Forgot to mention, I’ve travelled to many places, and there is an energy here that doesn’t exist elsewhere.
Its a difficult question to answer comparison to what I mean New York is New York I’m a New Yorker. From Hell’s Kitchen but comparison to what it’s it’s Transportation public transportation is is the best in the world
If you want to have a peaceful commute, wake up around 5 am, which gives you just enough time to brush your teeth, shower, pick an outfit (if you didn’t the night before), make and eat breakfast, and if you have a pet, to walk them and feed them too.
This is from the perspective of a single person with a pet. There are also other factors, such as if you want to work out, and if you have children or a spouse.
Then there’s the commute which you have no control over when there’s a sick passenger somewhere and the entire train system is delayed.
After a 9 hour day working with people you don’t even like, you drag your butt home, where you take the pet out again, and try to get a workout in, to then try to get to bed early to do it all over again.
There are sporadic breaks where after a 9 hour day, you may meet up with a friend and complain about your life.
That right there, is truly the day in the life. I’d trade this life in for a quality life in North Carolina.
It’s like any city. Just got to get used to the life here where everybody is here and there in a NY minute especially during the early morning rush hour at 7am and 4pm every single day. You have to plan your day out very well in advanced if you commute to work, school, etc… by train, bus or driving, etc… Plus add an extra hour or so for anything unexpected. Very hectic especially if you must go through Manhattan to a 3rd borough for your destination. Not planning ahead will give you a headache and an upset stomach besides the fact you’ll be late getting to your destination. If you do not go through Manhattan, you still have to wait for a train from Manhattan back to the borough you live in to get to your destination. There’s no way around this, must wake up very early to prepare and get ready. It’s hard living here with too many people who don’t go by the (written and/or unwritten) rules.
1. If you work in NYC……
2. …And you like live performance of any kind (plays, concerts, etc)
3. …and….You appreciate these cultural activities (2 above) more than you appreciate living in a large space….
4. …and you like walking
5. ….and you won’t miss driving.
6. ….and you don’t need to feel or appear relatively wealthy,
You will like living in NYC!
If you answered yes to all of these and….
1. You appreciate having friends from all over the world.
2. ….I’ll say it another way…. You …
It’s awesome when you’re 20.
It starts to get depressing when you pass 30. Unless you’re from a well to do family or in one of a handful of well paying careers, this is when you start to realize that even if you ever manage to afford to own your own place, it will likely be small and far away from the best areas and you can’t afford the NYC life you wanted. This is when people start leaving for the suburbs and other regions around the country where finances are more realistic.
A big important city full of entertainment ,a rich city with full of proffecionals ,theatres ,Broadway shows ,a place for all ,noisy ,crowded ,full of restaurants ,people from all around the world ,bars and coffee shops never a boring place ,collages and universities ,full of businesses ,expensive and beautiful ,lots of places to visit ,friendly people and easy to get into trouble unless you are humble and behave nicely ,very difficult to park that’s why it’s advised to take public transportation ,some places are open 24 hrs per day ,best bagels and pizzas in whole country ,fun and always something to see or do ,so a place must see and visit.
I assume you mean NYC not NY state.
What is life like here? Amazing and horrendous. As soon as you are in the city by plane, boat or plane you feel an energy you Don’t feel anywhere else in the world. But then you stop to buy a hamburger and realize you’ve just spent a week’s salary.
You walk down the street and realize Tom Cruise has just walked by and no one cares.
You take the Staten Island ferry and look back and see the Manhattan skyline. But then memories come flooding back and you remember what a difference it is without the World Trade Towers and your heart drops.
Or you walk down 5th Avenue in midtown Manhattan and before you there stands Trump tower and you wonder who is President?
How can you forget magnificent Broadway even greater than London’s West End. But then you can’t remember the last time you were able to afford to see a show on Broadway or see a ballgame at Yankee Stadium. Bette Madder just finished a run on Broadway of Hello Dolly with top tickets went for $500 per ticket.
It used to be that Brooklyn was working and middle class and Harlam was a slum. Housing prices have skyrocketed in Brooklyn and people like Neil Patrick Harris and his husband are bought an almost condemned building and convered it into a mansion in Harlem.
Yes. I have a love hate relationship with Manhattan.
There’s no better place on earth. (Born n raised 30 years) It’s starting to suck though because everyone’s moving here. Sure maybe that means more business but that also means crowded trains and rent SKYROCKETING.
What’s it like to live here in one word? Convenience.
I’ve lived in NYC for 20 years and after we had kids, me and my husband moved down to SC. One of the main reasons is that the rent was too damn high to live there if you have a family.
However, If you are single or married with no kids, and have a job, you will flourish in NYC. Once you have the kids you realize you have to work twice as hard just to be able to get by and pay rent in a decent area. The pressure and stress is always there.
Imagine you’re born on to a family farm. You go to the town’s local private school. Maybe work a job here and there. Now imagine that the family farm is situated in a dystopian failed socialist state. A hypernormalized society right out of a strugatski novel in which the rich stay rich and the poor are perpetually fucked. Now imagine that in order to be rich you need to be a Russian billionaire Oligarch who fucked over a million people in Russia in order to steal their wealth and then buy a massive condo just to have a basic livable existence— you know three bedrooms in your apartment one for you one for guests one for your children, a back room with the washer dryer two bathrooms in the apartment a living room with a TV.
You’re at the heart of all of this economic activity. There’s never a dull moment. But, and remember this was your family farm, right, your home is available to the highest bidder. If not by your decision to sell, then by eminent domain or by a corrupt tax policy. You will never be the highest bidder because you don’t have any external source of income from anywhere beyond the city. And you probably never learned to drive. Sidenote: the billionaires are busy taking your parking away too. By being at the center of the economic activity that acts as a conduit for other economic activity, your ability to perceive the actual options for lucrative investment of time and energy (work) are minimal at best, and in practice nearly nonexistent. To this end, you live in fear that you will no longer be able to afford to simply stay in your home. You can’t move back in with your parents, because that’s not an option everything is too expensive. There’s nowhere to retreat to. Maybe you’ll meet a girl from a small town, she’ll see the city is a great place. But you know the truth, this is the worst possible place you could be. This city is bad for you, it’ll chew you up and spit you out.
No offense everybody but I’ve been loving here my whole life, and that’s the truth.
New York City offers such a diverse array of experiences that the answer to your question will depend on many factors — what kind of things you do for fun, what kinds of hours your career will demand, how old you are, what your budget is (will be), whether you already have friends in the city, how easily you make friends, etc. etc. Most New Yorkers have a love/hate relationship with the city: they will glory and revel in living in the city one minute, then curse it the next. What triggers these shifts in emotion will vary from person to person.
I am going to guess that you are single, in your mid- to late 20s and that you will be working in finance. This means you will work long hours, and — though it might not seem so relative to your more senior colleagues — you will be making what might be considered an above-average salary. For you, the limitations on your New York experience will largely not be financial — they will be time. You can live where you want (and you will likely live somewhere in Manhattan), most restaurants will probably be affordable, and with the proper social skills, you will have just about any nightlife option open to you, whether you like velvet-rope celebrity-frequented night clubs, divey hipster bars on the Lower East Side, the hottest Broadway shows, whatever. What’s more, because everything — food, laundry, furniture, dry cleaning, booze, groceries — can be picked up and/or delivered for you, the city will be convenient — for a fee. And herein lies the trap of New York City: no matter how much money you make, the city has a way for you to spend it all without noticing it, and then spend some more. I’ve known guys making seven figures who would struggle to pay their bills because they habitually overspent, and not by routinely buying five-figure bottles of wine or other luxury goods. The fun challenge will be learning to only spend money on what you actually want, and not on things that kind of, maybe, sort of sound like a semi-decent idea.
Some generalities:
The city has an incredible energy. Some people thrive on it, while for others, it can be draining over the long term. After the first couple of years, I quickly discovered that while I love the proverbial hustle and bustle, I need to get completely out of the greater New York area at least once every few months to decompress.
The city is fast. You need to move, react, and adapt quickly.
The city is diverse. Anything you want, you can find it. Some obscure cuisine from sub-Saharan Africa? You can find it. An acupuncturist who speaks fluent Hindi? You can find one. A Latina kung fu master? Yep, you can find one of those, too.
Enjoying the city often requires work . I don’t mean earning money. I mean that odds are that everything that’s done well — food, theater, whatever — will attract huge crowds. Being able to afford something doesn’t mean you’ll get it — be prepared to work for your entertainment — to spend hours trying to get a reservation to a trendy restaurant, to cultivate connections so that you can get into the hippest clubs, to traipse to the far outreaches of Queens to sample that obscure cuisine from sub-Saharan Africa (see above). I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve had a friend pop into town last minute and ask me to take them to Masa or Balthazar or some play starring Scarlett Johanssen, only to get confused when I just laugh and tell them, “Good luck with that!”
Here’s my tl;dr version of my thoughts of being in both cities so far:
SAN FRANCISCO
People: laid back, physically active, pretty young and hip
Environment: green but streets smell like pee due to the homeless
Weather: nice year round
Food option: fresh
Social activity: reasonably priced, easy access to outdoor activities
Career aspirations: focus on tech
Diversity: a growing population of whites and Asians
NEW YORK
People: upfront, lots of workaholic, older than SF population
Environment: streets could be surprisingly dirty
Weather: Ice Age in the winter, hell in the summer
Food option: stuff your face! Expensive sometimes but stuff your face!
Social activity: you can do anything but it could cost some money
Career aspirations: focus on finance
Diversity: a true definition of a melting pot
Cost of living in both cities are among the highest in the country. However, I’d need to say that maybe there’s a reason why most superheros live in or are from New York.
Work, work, work, but amazing results. Your will likely be able to earn far above the national average and through work and luck you may attain a very high standard of living. Do know that space will be an issue if you live in the city center, but most people are fine with that given that everything that is luxury, prestige, education, healthcare, architecture, landscape, beauty, and entertainment is an …
It’s busy, fantastic, romantic, tough, sexy, chic, and extremely FABULOUS! You should visit!
As a blind New Yorker it is very easy to navigate the city due to the grid layout. The city has good accessible para transit. I can call for a taxi or bus to be able to go where i want which i am thankful for. The subway system is not that accessible yet. I do get annoyed with the heavy traffic due to Uber and Lyft and the amount of scafolding around. Also sadly probably due to online stores such as Amazon there are a lot of closed stores around. thats before the CoronaVirus.
I do like the atmosphere of NYC the summers are very hot and the pollution can get high along with allergens, and there is sometimes not much of a breeze. The winters can get cold but oddly enough this year it has been unusually mild.
There is a lot going on in the City especially during the summer, fall and winter. I do feel blessed living here it does feel special. I hope this helped answer your question in some way. New Yorkers have good personalities and are willing to assist.
My favorite exemplary New York story is from when my wife was injured and on crutches. It was raining. A crutch went out from under her, and she landed in the street in a large puddle, near the curb. She was dazed. A guy loading a truck was very helpful—he called over to her, “You can’t stay there, lady!”
That about sums it up.
After living our whole lives in New York (my wife on Long Island, me in Manhattan), we pulled up stakes and moved to America. It’s much better, here.
Terrible place to live.prices on every thing is gouged not based on supply and demand but based on who gets pay under table.the whole NYC is a scam ;high rents ,homelessness, transit, crime,even casinos, women’s beaty (are sure she’s a women?).
New York, New York…isn’t it the land of dreams? They say you can be anything you want in New York City. But what is life really like there? Forget the promises of opportunity and freedom for a moment, because we want to take a closer look at what living in New York is really like. The problem is, television has blessed us with shows like Friends and Gossip Girl and, amazing as they are, it gives us a somewhat warped view of the city. These TV shows have us believe that New York is this ultra cool, glamorous place where dreams come true. In reality, it has its bad sides too, just like any other major city in the world.
It depends on how old you are, where you live there and how much money you have. I loved it when I was in my teens and 20s. It’s a great bustling city with lots to do. Once you pass the age of going out clubbing or partying, it’s great for museums, then the next stage is that it’s dirty, crowded and not worth it…especially if you drive. Visit. It’s definitely worth the trip.
I LOVE NYC BUT …. Here’s my analogy. Living here you need to be on your guard and always carry cash because it’s so expensive also it is like living in a loud noisy nightclub all day, every day (aka The City that never sleeps), and then getting to go to a circus (shopping/malls/food stores, etc.), then after that you feel…
Every year, tourists flock to New York City to see what it’s like. Even as a tourist, you don’t always see the reality of life there. You tend to overlook the little things that make New York real, like hot dog carts, traffic jams and street garbage. Yet these are the things that, in many ways, make the city so fascinating. We want to see every side of this world-famous city: the good and the bad. Even New York City has its fair share of flaws and in this article, we intend to reveal them: the things tourists don’t see.
Bruh New York is the capital of the fucking world (both literally and figuratively, especially since we have the United Nations). Everything about New York is awesome. The food, the culture, the people, the night fever (very few cities have this unique quality to them). New York is diverse in area and ethnicity: u got Harlem, upper east side, soho, tribeca, inwood, south ferry, Wall Street, Hell’s Kitchen. U got people from all over the world living here. New York is a city of amazing grandeur, but it’s also the city of opportunity. Money talks here, and that’s a fact. New York is also privy to its own slang that other places in the US have only adopted. These words being deadass, brick, draggin, buggin, wilding, extra, mad, and a shit ton of other words that boomers don’t understand. Plus a New York homie is the realest homie you’ll ever meet.
We live on a reasonably quiet street in Bed-Stuy, and I feel my weekday life is pretty much the same as it was when we lived in suburbia down South.
Instead of driving to work, I take a bus or a train, depending on timing and weather. Instead of shopping at the MegaLoMart, we use the little Key Foods grocery store around the corner. When we need a car, we use Car2Go.
We’re probably upper middle class. Be prepared for a real shock to your expectations of that lifestyle in NYC. Everything is priced significantly higher, so you’ll definitely find yourself wondering where all the money went pretty quickly.
Biggest difference between life here and a life in suburbia is that you are forced to get up close and personal with more people in one day than you will in a year in your cul-de-sac.
Those people run the gamut from middle class working stiffs, to mentally ill. From gangsta thugs, to terrified tourists. Mostly they’re unconscious and aren’t concerned with anything outside their headphones.
Weekends, when you’re not wrapped up in doing the same weekend life-support stuff you had to do in suburbia (laundry, grocery shopping, chores), can be interesting. If you’re bored on a weekend in NYC, you’re either snowed in or you’re not looking hard enough for something to do.
There are some very good answers here. Being informed of the bad and the ugly are equally important. New York is not for everyone. It can be a cold, harsh lonely place.
One thing that I don’t think hasn’t been mentioned is that New York is a very transitional place. New York reminds me of a college campus. People are constantly relocating to and from the area, for understandable reasons. I saw people leave the city within as little as 2 months after first arrival.
If you were like me and drove everywhere (at the pleas of my girlfriend at the time, a native New Yorker), you will quickly begin to HATE the traffic, insanely high tolls and parking fees, construction, pot holes, car accidents, and parking tickets that comes with living in New York. You really have to drive like an moron in order to drive in New York.
It’s important to stay alert and not to become too comfortable and naive. Do not be deceived: New York isn’t the most safe place in the world. Thefts, muggings and beatings do occur, in part because people fail to stay alert or end up in a bad neighborhood. It is no big secret that New York is super expensive. With this said, it’s important to shop around in order to minimize the bleeding of your wallet. New York can be a real doggy-dog world. Honesty and integrity aren’t the best traits of the city, so it’s best to be assertive and firm. You’d be surprised to hear there are a lot of jobs that pay shit all over the city and that companies will try to low-ball you.
On a bright note: when I first arrived in New York, a woman explained that “the more fucked up you are as a person, the better…” In all honesty, there seems to be some truth in that. If you consider yourself to be a fucked up person, you will be relocating to the right place. There are people from literally all walks of life, and a lot of these people are really fucked up and are simply bat-shit crazy. For this reason, I chose to avoid dating. I wasn’t trying to be anyone’s sugar daddy and introduce a liability into my life. Fortunately, I was only able to run for so long. I eventually married a native New Yorker. LOL!
*New Yorkers can be suckers for those with British and Southern Accents.
When doing business in New York, you can’t really afford to half-ass. In spite of me saying this, I was constantly surprised at the rather large amount of people who failed to focus and have a game plan for success. New York is a competitive and cut-throat environment. There are literally thousands of people trying to do the same thing you’re doing. Even the job market, although strong, is very competitive. You really have to be several steps ahead of everyone else.
It is a rich, sweet life. By rich I mean your life in the city is conglomeration of experiences, people, and opportunities that are full of life, ambition and energy. There is a pulse moving through the city that is palpable and such a great thing to be a part of. If you are someone with big dreams and a strong work ethic: The city is your oyster. Jump in! Go for it! All good things are only a subway stop away…..
Let’s start with a phrase I’m sure you all must be aware of “Not all that glitters is gold” . Well, a bit add on from my side is “Not all that glitters or shimmers is gold or worthy to hold.” It clearly defines that you might think of things as perfect and lovely , not always the situation is like that.
New York city is referred to by some as “the city of dreams” is the place where life keeps moving at a pace and you must catch up with it in order for you to not be left behind. The city has a lot to offer you in terms of life, people, surrounding, eateries, and what not. You will find people on the streets everywhere.
The city that never sleeps actually does never sleep.
You can find people at all times of the day and night. People are mostly moving and trying to explore new areas of life.
Some of the points would help you understand more about the city and how is it like to live in it.
1. Ready to Go Culture : “No time to stop and always in a hustle” is what defines the New Yorkers. You will have to be precise and clear about your whereabouts to not be lost in the city. I would suggest you to be precise and clear to match up with the environment around.
2. Variations in Everything: The range of variety you’ll find in the city is enormous and unmatched. You can find 24×7 open stores so you will never have to think of sleeping hungry even at the midnight. The all time help available in every way be it food or medicine, is what makes the city life robust and worth living. Not only the places, but you can find people from all over the world in New York city.
The diversity is so unique and yet so beautiful and hard to find anything like that in anywhere else in the US.
3. Accommodation: Well as I mentioned earlier also that not everything that is beautiful is good in all aspects.
The rentals might cost you a lot as the places worth living are expensive. You can find cheaper places but if you are looking for a decent place to live, do come up with a good budget.
4. People Everywhere: I know you must be like why am I emphasizing on this too much. But, let me tell you.
This is the right way to put many things like you can’t think of driving and reaching anywhere urgently as you must plan your ride in case you are planning your personal car drive. Trains can take you to places quickly as compared to cars. So think wisely, as not only the city is surrounded by people, but their belongings also come handy!
These were some of my findings about the city, apart from that you must keep one thing in mind that the place would be worth living if you try to accept it as it is.
Also, these were just my views. You can have difference of opinion and I totally accept yours.
Never stop exploring and happy reading!
Dunkin’
I lived in the Bronx NY for 11 years before moving away to NC. Its was a roller coaster of a living ride.The subways….hot summer heat…dinning and restuarants….people of all races and color…etc. I am happy i lived there but it waa time to go.
It’s great. Otherwise I wouldn’t have lived here since the day I was born, despite many opportunities to live and work in other cities and countries.
Of course, NYC has its detractors, but those are the jealous ones without the intelligence and guts, entrepeneurial spirit and survival instincts to succeed here.
It’s not for nothing that the theme song of NYC includes the words “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere”.
It’s the bombdiggidy.
I’m fairly certain that all of us saying that are extremely biased, but whatever.
Everything is within the reach of you fingers! It’s amazing! Look for a specific type of activity in NYC, and Google will have tons of them just lined up waiting for you to pick. And if you get tired of one borough, leave it. Go to a different borough. If you keep borough hopping, you will never get tired if NYC. All you’re friends and family and just random people that you meet will be envious of you because you live in the ultimate city (unless we’re talking about other New Yorkers, who will instantly feel like you might be worth getting to know because you’re form the ultimate city, just like them)
The people here are super friendly. (Which a lot of people don’t know) And it’s easy to make friends and get to know them fast.
There are people from all over the planet here, and that makes it extra interesting.
the only problem with NYC is that once you arrive, you might not want to leave 😉
Expensive. It costs a lot here to survive. Basic necessities are big money as compared to say, out west. I have travelled all over the country wnd world. Medicaal attention here is top notch. Housing is outrageous. Food definately higher in cost. This is what eats up most of my money besides transportation .
This city will eat you alive!’ If you’re a New Yorker, this phrase has been shrilly uttered in your ears by concerned relatives or by lifetime natives themselves. And it’s true. Each day, New Yorkers are gobbled up by fierce yellow taxis and hungry subways, only to be spit back out into their non-stop, wild, and terrifyingly exhilarating city. A day in the life of a New Yorker is a normal, typical experience, really. It begins when you roll of bed and walk the entire length of your apartment to the bathroom with only one swift movement. You flick the light switch only to be courteously greeted by at least one creepy crawly roommate, yet it doesn’t faze you anymore in the slightest. You continue readying yourself for the day, donning your most weightless garments if it’s the exhaustingly humid summer, or layering coats, hats, and scarves like you’re Randy from a Cristmas story if it’s the frigid winter. With that, you step out of the apartment you had to purchase in, quite literally, a ‘New York minute’ and jump into the crowd bustling through the busy streets. Subconsciously, and over time, you have accumulated your stride to the New York gallop. You’ve become an intricate maze runner, able weave yourself through groups and roadblocks without so much as giving a second glance upward. Whether you’re a student, a part-time worker, or even a Wall Streeter, you’re more than likely on your way to the subway for transport from point A to point B. As you arrive at your subway stop, you’ll observe visitors struggling with the kiosks to obtain a Metro card; you’ll provide directions to a hopelessly lost soul at least once; and you’ll more than likely assist someone in hauling a suitcase or stroller up the stairwell. As you make your way to class or work, your affinity for the street car vendors will overpower your desire to maintain punctuality. After all, what new yorker begins a day without a cup of coffee and a cronut? You arrive to contribute to the daily grind, only to utilize your lunch hour to escape into a quiet café or independent coffee house, like Grounded or Cafe Grumpy for your next fix of caffeine. As you ready yourself for your voyage home after a long day, you reenter the vast, now exceedingly hectic subway system, and if you know which car to enter, you avoid the battle at the closing doors, and you’ve found yourself a seat. Although you have the best intentions of heading straight home, you remember that the bar on the corner, Pounds and Qunces, is having their daily two-for-one happy hour special, and two craft beers and a few laughs later, you’re finally on your way home….Well this is a really Wonderful CITY, you just need some time to get acquainted to it’s really wonderful life! And have no fear! Success loves the brave ones!
I have just recently moved to San Francisco however I lived in New York for 7 years. Best 7 years of my life.
In all honesty, San Francisco feels like a suburb when compared to NYC.
Food: Thai, Chinese, Ethiopian, Indian, Ramen, Buffalo Wings, Burgers, Mediterranean, Bagels – in every neighborhood. $10 delivery minimums in most cases. I think I cooked 3 times while I lived there – 3 days.
The images of my life there were:
frisbee in central park, dates in the lounges of the Lower East Side, dates on the rooftop of the MET, midnight dinners in weird japanese restaurants with pornographic material for artwork serving bulls penis(kenka), raves in Brooklyn, running on the Brooklyn Bridge, beach volleyball in central park, family style meals at Carmines, playing soccer at 103rd street, indoor volleyball at brandeis high school, kayaking on the hudson for free, Dave Matthews in Central Park, CBGBs, the clubs of the meatpacking district, movies at bryant park, mega parties on Randalls Island, the Bike NY – 50 mile tour of NYC, rock climbing on the upper west side, throwing a football around Sheeps Meadow, startup meetings at Shake shack , eating fried dumplings in chinatown at 6 for $2, cocktails at the Gansevoort or speakeasys where the host will call you by name when you arrive, 10 different rooftop bars with just spectacular views (ink48 is the best), happy hour lychee martinis at Verlaines for $5, gyms which are open 24 hours, being friends with people from all over the world, swing dancing at the Linc, ice skating at the Rockefeller center, friday night salsa, high end clubs, basement clubs playing only rock, indian “desi” parties, Sounds of Brazil (more to come as they come to me).
And theres a lot of stuff that you can do just outside of the city – kiteboarding in the Great South Bay, sailing in the Long Island Sound, snowboarding in Vermont, hiking in upstate new york, kayaking in Pennsylvania.
There’s so much to do, so many places to explore, so many restaurants to eat at, such diverse people and drop dead gorgeous women everywhere. Its just one intense action packed life if you want it to be.
Yes you will work like crazy and miss a lot of what New York offers but work will eventually ease up and you can enjoy the city again.
Everyone should live in Manhattan for some part of their lives – no not Jersey, as a lot of software engineers make the mistake of doing, Manhattan.
I was shocked at how slow and laid back San Francisco feels. Dont get me wrong – I enjoy running at Ocean Beach and the incredible views in different parts of the city and the great (few?) restaurants but yeah I miss New York dearly…
There’s an energy here that I’ve never experienced in any other city. Like someone said in What is it like to live in New York City? , everywhere else almost feels like a retirement home after living in NYC. It’s probably the most diverse and cosmopolitan city in the world and it’s never boring.
Downsides are:
* Winter is cold
* People work too hard
* Apartments are tiny and expensive (but hey you don’t need a car).
I agree with all the advantages people list here for NY. Of course, NYC is unrivalled in thiz country when it comes to art/music/culture. And its subway is the largest in the world. However, as someone being evicted, I can say that, at least in terms of housing, there’s little affordable in both places, and people on both NY and SF put up with horrible housing conditions if they have low rent. A friend lived in one of those coveted rent controlled apartments for years. She put up with holes in the walls that were maybe .25 inch wide, so wind whistled through. I would like to say, in SF’s favor, while a much wider range of food is available in NY, the quality of the produce is overall better. At least, I noticed a difference when I moved. CA grows a lot of America’s produce, so it stands to reason your berries or corn or carrots don’t have to travel as far, are fresher and taste better. The east coast has great apples and a few other items, but I think if you compare farmers markets in August, SF wins.
You walk, and use mass transit which means that most residents are aware of when their means of transit will arrive to take them to their destination. It also means that you shop for food more often (you have to carry it and your storage space is limited) and are likely to eat in a restaurant or take-out more often (though that is changing as more people who depend on their automobile are too busy to cook at home).
Wow it’s amazing to see all these happy shiny answers, but it’s not all fun for everyone. For the millions of blacks who live here its not much fun. On the streets of Manhattan you would think that no blacks lived in New York at all. There’s a strange aura that exudes from non-blacks that’s says, Get Back. It’s a true caste system with Blacks at the bottom. The conversations that I hear whites having among themselves are very different than the ones they have with me. They speak down to me like they are explaining something. They seem very eager to maintain a hierarchy with me below them. When they find out that I am educated it seems to annoy them. They immediately begin to undermjne me by attacking me as a person. Part of what makes New York so interesting to Whites is the diversity. People are often eager to “swap” notes about their respective cultures, but it is usually not like that for me. All I feel is a constant downward pressure to keep me in my place. This is a very status conscience city. Everywhere I go I feel the pressure. In school it was the white students who seemed upset when I did better than they did. Like I had broken some rule. In interviews it’s the odd look I get that’s says, “We don’t really want you here” It saps my vitality. It takes away much if what makes life worth living. Its ok to sweep the streets but anything above that invites backlash. Technically anyone can do anything here, but the reality is very different. If you are Black here your chances for realizing the benefits of an education are virtually zero. Even if you get a good job the non-blacks will collude to get rid of you. They know you are “out there” by yourself. There are some exceptions but that is what they are , exceptions. Blacks know their status but live in denial. Many of us are leaving. Every day brings a new humiliation from blacks getting shot and strangled by the police to watching Bill Cosby get destroyed by the media. We are literally being attacked. Yeah, New York sucks.
I don’t live in NYC, but we visited before the pandemic (since most of my family lives there, Florida, or Italy) for a week or two, sometimes less whenever we got the chance, and visited a lot during the summer. My mom grew up in Manhattan, Chelsea to be exact, “the projects”, in the 70s, and she describes it as a ‘beautiful city with crowded subways and huge skyscrapers that actually scrape the sky’, and the apartment she lived in was decent. Staten Island, poor underrated Staten Island, is mostly suburban, and is where my nona (not a typo) and uncle and aunt live. Queens is nice, also a more suburban feel, and is where my other uncle and my great aunt live. I’ve never actually been to The Bronx, or if I have I don’t remember because I was too young to, but it’s like a downscale Manhattan. Brooklyn is like a combination of Manhattan and Queens, has a lot of brick buildings. Living in it is really cool because you have so many cool, famous things a subway or boat ride (because cars are impractical) away. It’s just a beautiful city.
It is awesome . . For me, that is. Like no other city I’ve ever lived. Tough, yet exhilarating at the same time. Energizing because everything is going on here. The energy level is palpable. You either love it or hate it. Try it you might like it!
Peace
Very costly. Also, The Bronx is a very different experience from the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Expect to see the strangest sights and the oddest people without blinking an eye. Expect to learn bits and pieces of two dozen languages. Expect to be stressed and maddened, but never bored.
As a lifelong New Yorker, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Yes, it’s outrageously expensive, crowded and parking is impossible, but for me, the benefits outweigh those issues by far. I have access to the finest dining, the most varied cuisine, and I can eat somewhere every hour of the day. I can, and do, spend perfect days: a few hours at a Met exhibit, followed by a stroll through Central Park to the Museum of Natural History. After that, dinner at one of hundreds of restaurants and on to a Broadway show.
If I become ill, the best medical care in the world is available to me. I obtained my undergraduate and graduate degrees here, and from an Ivy League University. There is very little I want that hasn’t been available in my own back yard and, while I love to travel, I’m always glad to come home.
There really is no place like New York.
I’ll never changed the fact of walking and living in a free environment, full of diversity, culture and life like NYC. It’s like I read in different comments.. expensive but well worth it. Like no other place around the world and I travel and living in different countries. This place is magic and full of history
I am here, living in NYC since 1992… and I absolutely love it.
But, I was told very early, that loving NYC is very much like being pregnant… either you are, or you are not… there is no in-between.
I have met people that hate NYC…, visitors that come here and said it’s interesting, but they could never live here… reason of course is that they know only the tourist areas in Manhattan, which are crowded, hectic and loud… they don’t know the quieter, more artistic enclaves in the city itself, they don’t know the tranquility of some areas of the outer boros. They don’t know the nature preserves of Riis Park, the beaches, hiking opportunities… or that Bear Mountain is less than one hour north of the city…
The people are overwhelmed and either love the atmosphere and energy of NYC or they don’t.
I love the city, because you have everything… including the seasons… all cultures are represented with their own neighborhoods… a very rich art and music scene, from opera to indy rock events in some cellar.
Bustling city to a quiet beach with public transportation, tons of hiking nearby… all sports can be played… and having a coffee on a park bench, watching people.
That’s NYC for me and I hardly can imagine living somewhere else.
I come from Europe, with parents from Eastern Europe, I have been to 17 countries… New York City is my true home!
The movies and T.V. shows have always glorified New York, the city of dreams. Everyone wants to walk through Park Square, relax at Central Park, and finish off with a fancy dinner at one of the many famous NYC restaurants. Anyone who has lived in New York can tell you that it is unreasonable to expect that, for several reasons. However, I’m going to tell you the story of the time I lived in New York City.
A couple of years ago, I moved to the Big Apple after college, hoping to make it big. I lived on my own in a private rental room in NYC that I found online and found a gig doing some part-time music and art to help fund my masters. This city literally broke me down and built me back up from scratch to the point where if you told me five years ago that this is who I would be now, I would’ve laughed at you.
New York has taught me a lot of things, and I couldn’t be more grateful. They only show you the good times on social media but never want to show you the struggles. Because let’s be honest, struggling individuals are not glamorous.
I always believed that the more challenging your life is, the more resilient you become, and that’s what happened to me. In my first few months, I was nearly broke. I was living paycheck to paycheck and had about $150 in my account as a contingency. You don’t know how many times I considered leaving and going back home for good, but my drive and ambition kept me going.
New York gave me so many of my firsts and memories that I could never forget. It was the first time I truly lived to the fullest and met so many amazing people. It was the first time I had a serious relationship (which we shall not talk about since it didn’t have the most incredible ending). It was the first time I questioned my existence and beliefs, and most of all, it tested my passion and made me feel things that I didn’t know I could ever feel before.
I entered New York as a kid who was just done with college , and when I finally left, I was an adult filled with life’s wisdom. I’ve seen things hard times, great times, and thankfully all it served to do was make me mentally tougher to the point where I think I could survive anywhere on the planet.
I hope everyone gets to experience New York for what it truly is because it will challenge you, push you to your limits and test you every day till you’re finally ready to leave, and when you do, I most certainly hope you like where you end up.
Well … let’s define what you mean by New York City. NYC is five difference counties, four on three different islands and one one the mainland. The term NYC can also some of the immediate counties next to it (Nassau/West Chester, even Suffolk/Orange).
(More to follow)
I’ve lived in SF for a long time now, but there are several things I remember well from New York, both good and bad, and I travel back frequently.
Better in New York
The pizza is outrageously good compared to the lame attempts here in SF. Pizza seems to get worse in a concentric circle as you head out of New York City.
The bagels and lox are also so much better than what passes for “bagels” here.
Things are open later and there’s many more things to do at all hours.
Public Transportation is leagues above SF. I drive or bike everywhere in SF because the transit is so awful. The powers that be in SF seem to know this, too, as they try to disincentivize driving by making it more difficult rather than improving transit so people will WANT to use it.
Way way way fewer hassles from the homeless. You can sit in a park in New York and be left alone and *maybe* only asked for spare change once. You’ll probably be asked for directions more often than you are for spare change. In SF, you HAVE TO wear headphones if you want to sit in any type of public space undisturbed.
People in New York are much more direct vs. the passive aggressiveness here. If you interview for a job in New York and you’re not what they’re looking for, they’re fairly blunt about it. In SF they often do this weird dance of ignoring you while pretending to really care.
Live theater is leagues above anything we get here in SF. Only London rivals NYC for theater quality and it’s a fight between the two re which is better.
Christmas in NYC is much more fun and it FEELS like Christmas (though Times Square on New Year’s Eve is WAY overblown as a thing to do).
Central Park is much nicer than Golden Gate Park and is very well maintained. You won’t find tents of people living in Central Park (or at least I never did).
The flight to London is much shorter.
Better in SF
New York is nowhere near San Francisco in terms of bike friendliness. Here in SF, I can ride almost anywhere on a dedicated bike lane. It’s much harder to ride in New York.
The burritos and sushi are so much better in SF.
The weather is better in SF. I miss the idea of winter of more than the reality of it.
There’s tons of natural recreation completely surrounding the city: hiking, biking, running, etc. There’s nothing like going for a bike ride from Crissy Field over the Golden Gate Bridge and down into Sausalito.
The gyms are better here. NYC’s gyms are small and crowded. Here, there’s room to spread out.
Both cities have excellent restaurants, but in SF you get a bit more personal space to enjoy them while in NYC sometimes the tables are only a couple inches apart.
It’s easier and cheaper to get tickets in the first 10 rows of most music gigs. For live shows in NYC, there’s much more competition for tickets and you’re going to pay a lot more.
SF is less claustrophobic than NY. Both cities are very expensive, but you get more space here in SF.
The flight to Hawaii is much shorter.
Depends on Your Point of View
The social contract between people seems stronger in New York. There’s more respect for other peoples’ opinions and viewpoints, and more respect for their personal space. In SF anything that deviates even slightly from being considered “progressive” is shouted down and vilified.
SF is an easier place for introverts. There’s plenty going on, but you can also be left completely alone when you choose.
SF is much more of a nanny state than NY, though, in fairness, you can pretty much ignore any law you don’t like in SF whereas in NY the police are much tougher. I’ve even seen someone getting a jaywalking ticket in Manhattan, which, if it happened here, would likely result in weeks of protests outside of city hall.
It was pretty shitty and awesome.
The shitty:
Rent’s too damn high – I was sharing a studio with 2 guys near the Upper East Side. When a 1 bed unit opened up, we moved in and brought in another one of our friends because the rent was ridiculous. A Mayorial candidate ran his platform on the “rent’s too damn high” motto.
Food’s expensive as F – When I moved to NYC, a chicken chipotle bowl was $6.25 in CA. In NYC it was $8.25.
It’s crowded and dirty – Probably because there’s 8M people living in a small part of NY state. Still blows my mind why so many people decided to stay on this tiny island of Manhattan.
The people – Nobody is trying to make F.R.I.E.N.D.S in NYC. People can be superficial and cutthroat, only befriending you if you have some sort of social status. While it’s a huge city, it’s also a city of strangers. Took me a while to find a solid group of people who I could call friends.
Lifestyle – Super fast paced. Feels like time goes 2x faster in NYC than any other place. People are working 60 hour weeks and can go many months without even seeing the sun (come in around 7am and leave around 2am).
The awesome:
The seasons – NYC is beautiful in the fall, cold as F in the winter, lively in the Spring and hot as F in the summer. The holiday season was my favorite – you could really see the city light up with smiles and giving.
The diversity – You can meet all kinds of people and eat all kinds of food. When I went to Chinatown for the first time, I thought I was back in China. Got to practice my Mandarin.
The bustling – There’s a lot going on in NYC from the political to the financial to the media. There’s no shortage of events/things to do. Many times, I would find myself immersed in some sort of event just by walking around the city. One time I took a company car home at 3am and saw the city still lit up. It’s truly a city that never sleeps.
The subways – No cars needed, just take the subway to get around. The subways are super convenient and runs all night. You learn to develop a love/hate relationship depending when you take the subway and what subways you take. For me, the G train played hard to get with me at times.
The people – Not all people are mean. I found a good group of friends in Brooklyn and a great squad through church. People are generally receptive if you put in the effort to show them that you care.
While it was tough living in NYC, it was a great life experience in hindsight. I learned a lot and met a lot of really diverse and smart people. I can testify that if you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere.
If you’re in your early 20s, go suffer and live it up in NYC 🙂
Me and bunch of clueless 20-somethings with their big boss Mayor Bloomberg.
New York City has something for everybody, no matter how weird you think you are. Being such a culturally diverse city, no matter where you are from, there is a little bit of home here. NYC is probably the best place in the world to get your life started if you don’t mind the fast pace, because there are so many people to meet, get feedback from, or collaborate with. If you are generally outgoing, there is a lot of opportunity to meet people from all over, and if you keep to yourself, then you’ll find that despite the population density, NYC can be pretty impersonal too. New York has a reputation for being a fairly expensive place to live in, but we all manage to make due and find our way around without breaking the bank. I’ve been here for ten years now and the thought of leaving makes me sick. I find new things to love about the place on a daily basis. If you’re having a crappy day, or anxious about a deadline, or late getting somewhere, then you’ll likely see something hilarious or really sweet happen that will make you forget about it immediately and restore faith in humanity.
There is anything quite like living in New York City. It’s an amazing place with so much inspiration and activity!
You can think of anything you want to do and it’s here in this city. There are endless opportunities, deep history, and the most impressive is the diversity of people and cultures, it is incredible.
I walk out of the building from where I work in Mid Town Manhattan and I hear three different languages. I walk another fifty feet and I get hit with an amazing whiff of Mediterranean food from the cart vendors.
I take the subway everyday and I love it. The grit, beautiful tile art work, (Here is a great article on the tile work) the people rushing, and never needing a car. The New York City subway has 472 stations serving 27 subway lines – more than any other system in the world.
But!! The NYC subway needs some major revamping and updating. It’s one of the oldest metro systems in the world. You’re bound to have a rough commute every now and then, especially in the summer. There is no ventilating in the subways, but on the carts there is, thank goodness! You don’t want to be on the platform when your train is delayed, waiting on a crowded platform in your work clothes, sweating at 8am.
For me, it’s all an adventure and I try to really embrace where I live. And, remember, when you come to NYC, there is more to the city than Times Square! There are 5 boroughs: The Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. In any of the boroughs you can discover local restaurants and neighborhoods, and find great food and people. A few safe and interesting neighborhoods to see are Park Slope Brooklyn, Williamsburg Brooklyn, Astoria Queens, and Harlem which is upper Manhattan.
I grew up in Connecticut which is very close to NYC, and every time I visited it felt like I was in a different world, even though it was a two hour car ride.
New York City has always felt like a world with passionate people, endless adventures, and a place you can be yourself.
I love being a New Yorker!!
I’m going to answer this question for living in New York City. I have lived in NYC for the vast majority of my 27 years, all on the Upper East Side (UES) – here’s my take.
There will always be people that really love the city (“I have everything I need in a 3-mile radius – why would I ever leave?”) and people who really hate it (“The rent is too damn high”). Most people who live here for more than a few years fall in between and it’s a love-hate relationship.
Let’s start with some things to hate:
1. The rent is too damn high.
It really is – apparently only second in the nation to San Francisco. There are a number of reasons for this, but the point is clear – it’s just expensive to live in the city, anywhere in the city. And if it’s not expensive, it’s because it’s either (a) small or (b) far from Manhattan. And at some point, the financial headache of paying so much in rent, for basically a tiny box, really starts to grate on you. And on that subject, it’s not just the rent that’s high – everything is expensive. Please don’t throw your cocktail at the bartender when you see the tab – that’s how much it costs everywhere in NYC.
2. It’s crowded.
Most places are pretty crowded, especially (a) touristy areas (e.g., Times Square, SoHo) and (b) rush hour trains (my personal hatred). There are a lot of people, everywhere, and maybe you get used to it, but maybe you don’t. Or, more likely, you avoid those areas when possible. It also means a lot of places smell, especially in the summer. Oh god, the smell. Unavoidable with so many people and so much trash. Summer in the city can be miserable, especially if you commute – few things are closer to hell than being stuck between sweaty people in a small metal box under the ground, and the air conditioning stops working.
And yet, despite the crowdedness:
3. It can be very impersonal.
A NYC classic. Your brain just can’t deal with seeing and meeting so many new people, and so you learn to just ignore people. Sometimes to the point of being rude, but more often it’s just apathy, and it’s very easy to get jaded with the city. People you don’t know just generally won’t care about you. The skyscrapers are cold steel and stone. It can actually be pretty hard to meet new people here if you don’t actively try. And everyone is in a rush to get where they’re going.
But, that said, here are some things to love:
1. I have everything I need in a 3-mile radius – why would I ever leave?
NYC is surprisingly good at keeping you in the city. NYC is very walkable (thanks to the grid-system of the streets), and almost anything you would need to live here is within walking distance or easily reachable by the (crowded) subways. Good food can be had at all hours, often just a few blocks away. Banks, pharmacies, hardware stores, entertainment, friends – all within (generally) easy reach. And, if you know where to go, there are even oases of quiet (i.e. the north part of Central Park). The taxis (and, now, Uber) are also great to get you where you want to go if you don’t want to wait for the subways (but, seriously, avoid rush hour).
2. The food.
So much great food, everywhere. So many places and cuisines to try. It is really a waste to live in NYC and eat only fast food or the same places. The variety is just outstanding and unmatched, and, again, available at all hours. Cuisines from all around the world, with the best chefs around. It can be expensive, but there is a lot of great food that can be had for cheap (you just have to look for it!) One of my favorite things to do is just walk around downtown getting small things from a number of places.
3. It’s New York City.
There’s no other way to put it – you’re in THE city. If you’re willing to get away from the touristy spots (and they’re crowded anyway), there’s a lot to explore and do and see. Even the outer boroughs aren’t so bad (and again, great food is to be had). There’s a lot of history, everywhere, there’s a lot of excellent architecture and art and food (I may have mentioned this already). It’s vibrant and alive, and when the weather is perfect (Autumn!) and you can just walk around and see everything, you know, it’s pretty all right. If you’re bored, you’re probably doing it wrong. Go see a Shakespeare play in the park. Go sail. Go on a food adventure (see 2. above). Go to a cafe downtown and people-watch. Go to the museums (AMNH and the Met, while touristy, are really quite good). Just walk.
Maybe you don’t want to spend your life here, but there’s nothing quite like living in NYC.
I would have to agree with Mathew Kennedy . Depending on the industry you work in, you might work from 9–13+ hours a day. You have one work outing that you actually enjoy. And you’ll do 1–2 social events a week, one might include family and the other friends. You have 1 or 2 shows that you are addicted to and love to talk about at work or friends.
I think this will vary by age, marital status and financial means.
20–30 year olds are living and partying with roommates doing cheaper things like two-for-1 happy hours and random free event invites by their friends while they are paying off school debt. They are milking their seamless accounts for their meals and getting cozy at home, mostly, after taking their UBERs home from working late.
25–35 year olds are getting married and starting to breed. They are establishing themselves in careers, working longer days or more intently, going into the 2nd cycle of debt with mortgages and baby planning. They spend more time at home, watching tv/movies and having more subdued but enjoyable outings like dinners and planned events ahead of time.
40 -50 year olds are enjoying the fruits of their labour or working on their divorces. Dinner and drinks after shorter days at work. I think this group might get in some live entertainment, like music or a play, more regularly.
Weekends: It used to be people shopped and brunched on weekends over by me. Now people just shop online (I suspect during their workdays) and go out on Fri or Sat nights.
People around me are working on their properties, getting away to nature on the weekend, doing book clubs and livelier outings w/drinks, trying to get in at least one healthy or physically challenging event here and there, like boot camps, climbing or bouldering.
Typical is someone who has a job or routine. That is the majority of people.
When I don’t work and spend time in my studio there is no typical day. Your time is yours to do as you wish. Stay in or out. Drive or bike. Actors and artists do what they have to to produce work, get a gig or promote themselves. That might take networking, meeting new people everyday in random ways, spending time on their craft. Not sure what writers do…I see many people in cafes with their laptops for long afternoons. Is the cafe their office or are they just killing time? Are amazing novels being formed in this caffeine shops?
I was born and grew up in London, lived 4 years in NYC, and then moved to SF… it felt like a small town to me, and I couldn’t wait to leave. I like visiting SF, but can’t live there. And I miss NYC, sometimes so much it hurts.
At the risk of sounding factitious the words Typical and New Yorker can not really be combined.
How do you quantify a typical day when you are talking about 8.5 MILLION people…that’s double LA and triple Chicago and more people than 38 states in the US and every province in Canada with the exception of Ontario.
There are people that work nights and don’t get to bed till noon…others that fall into the 9–5 (8–6) crowd and everything in between. People on welfare and billionaires (and everything in between). And all are New Yorker’s.
I have long time friends who I rarely talk to who live close by but who are on such radically different schedules that all our “talking” in done through texting, VM and Facebook…many within a 5 minute walk of me.
I have friends that have union jobs, white collar jobs, blue collar jobs, retired, independently wealthy, public assistance and everything in between…and each have their own typical day (or Night) radically different from the next. And again they are ALL New Yorker’s.
We lived in Queens when I was considerably younger, before we made the move the rural west after the untimely death of my father.
I can only speak of my own long ago experiences, but I never thought about living in New York City: it was simply home, and our neighborhood was beautiful, quiet and downright boring.
When Dad occasionally took us into Manhattan however, it was akin to entering a different world.
Fast paced stressful and noisy, yet somehow exciting and wondrous all at the same time.
All in all, at least when we lived there it was a very good place to live: while we are happy where we now live, on some level we will always be New Yorkers.
It was like Freedom, you could do anything you wanted 24 hours a day. No more 9–5 actually the real NYC daze started around 7:14 PM. Everyone would party and crash out before dawn, some of us would even eat breakfast together. After hour clubs opened perfectly when others closed. I did the 10–4 thing at Variety, but I worked like a fiend saw a free Times Square movie for lunch then back to my accelerated sales pitches. In nyc hard work helps you grow and think clearly, but you need nightlife to unwind. Everyone you meet in nyc clubs branches into so many new flowing faces. So many people burn brightly and explode in every possible field. Nyc nightlife was the best social experiment I ever experienced. Pay whatever you need to be part of it, a smile and a shared joint can open up new dimensions.
It’s different from your average city. This isn’t Chicago, this isn’t Los Angeles, this isn’t Dallas. This is more than a city, this is the people who live in it. New York City is far more than the offices of Manhattan, the projects of the Bronx, the parks of Queens. It’s that family down the street struggling to pay their rent. It’s the 70 year old couple that immigrated here and never left. It’s that 21 year old who moved here from Pennslyvania, working late hours to pay for college. New York City is not just a city, it’s a collection of people who are strong enough to stay here.
People have different perceptions of our city. They think New Yorkers shop on Fifth Avenue in their free time. They think that we ride around in private Lincoln Towncars to get around. Well, woe to them, because that’s for the one percent on Park, my friend. In reality, us peasents use the public transportation system . What? That dirty abomination? Well, the subway and buses are’t always the cleanest, but they will get you where you need to go, trust me. Not always on time, but they are no doubt reliable (most of the time).
So why live here? Why put up with the expensive rent, the noise, the muggings? The answer is the same for all of the 8 million people living here.
They want to live here.
Don’t get me wrong. This city is tough. It will demand a lot from you. It will push you around, demand money, break hearts, and destroy dreams (Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating with the last one). But this city will make you stronger. It will build you up and make you into a strong person who knows how to deal on the streets.
There is just so much here to do, to see, to take in, to experience, to taste, to feel, to smell. Everyone who comes to visit will leave with a memory that they will never forget. There are so many attractions, plain in sight and hidden. There is so many resteraunts and food trucks that even I’ve never eaten from. It’s so easy to get around, that you could live in the Upper East Side, bike to and around Central Park, bike to a resteraunt, eat out, and be back home before 10. You can’t do that anywhere else. I have been here my whole life and been in every single borough, and yet have so many more things to see.
So to answer the question in a straightfoward manner, it’s captivating. You will never forget it, even if you visit for a day or a month.
Hectic, costly, exciting, dangerous, stimulating, intoxicating smells of food, everybody marches to a different drum beat, stressfully fun at times and stressfully crazy at times, vibrantly diverse in character and cultures, compulsive and tantalizingly strange at times, never a dull moment.
Can you dance to our beat?
New York used to be exciting, rough, diverse, and expensive in certain areas. Now it is obscenely expensive almost everywhere, not nearly as rough, still exciting (although the excitement now is mostly stress), and less diverse due to gentrification. It is not the New York of my youth, where arts and culture were valued over real estate.
It’s cool and convenient . Whenever you need something(food, entertainment, travel) it is most likely a few blocks away. Not all New Yorkers do is got to Yankee games ad Times Square(shocking I know). Many people live nice and humble lives. It just feels big and inspiring, you feel like you matter. I like how close everything is and that the children know how to get around the city well, too. I hate the way TV shows portray it sometimes. Go AirBNB there if you want to visit for real, don’t jus go to Ellis Island or Times Square, there’s lots more. I’d recommend Midtown manhattan.
The best city ever. Born and raised so my response might be a little biased. I’ve lived other places but always have to visit at least three times a year
It’s a mixed bag but all in all, it’s a wonderful place to work and live.
Being in New York is never dull, there’s something to discover all the time and the opportunities – for those that are willing to grab them – are endless.
I you’re looking for a property in or around the Big Apple, get in touch.
~Mr Marcelle
Here is a vide exactly on that topic. A New Yorkan basically boils it down to the most important aspects of life in New York City in her opinion. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day 🙂
there are a lot of low class people who live here and think they have a right to interfere with your life. Just look at the racial demographics
Either you love the fast paced dynamic of Manhattan or you don’t. The other 4 boroughs are less hectic & even more home based residential. Queens is described as “A Bedroom Community” for instance. Remember, when most people refer to “NY”, they’re generally only referring to the small isle of Manhattan, the center of major NYC activity. As with anything else, NYC simply isn’t for everyone. Plus, the cost of living there is & has gotten exorbitant! That’s a downside if you’re not “ deep-pocketed”.
It’s impossible to describe. I moved from New York 6 months ago and I still miss it. You will know what’s like to love in New York City not when you live there but when you actually leave the city.
I met lots of friends.
I went to thousands Free and paid events.
I explored each borough. Streets and areas you would never think are in New York City.
I learnt a lot about housing which is very unique in NYC.
I have hundreds locations in New York City with personal memories of dating Someone, losing something, good and bad memories etc.
New York is truly unlike anywhere else. It sounds cliché, but it really is such a unique city. Everyday is like an adventure, and I think a lot of people overtime become jaded, but if you learn to take each day like an adventure and soak up everything around you, you will keep that wonder. New York has infinite possibilities for dining, shopping, activities, cultural events, concerts, plays, etc. It is a huge mix of people from around the world. In the spring just about every weekend I was awoken by the sound of drums or marching from one of the local parades. You can either get pissed that the loud sounds woke you up, or go downstairs and partake in the activities and be thankful that you live in a city where you can experience such cultural diversity. I always chose the latter! 🙂
It is an expensive city, but it doesn’t always have to be. You can find cheap tickets to events, get free tickets to live shows like Late Night, Daily Show, America’s Got Talent, etc. which is pretty cool! If you’re willing to stand outside for 24 hours, you can even get in to see some free concerts at Good Morning America, the Today Show, etc. (I didn’t go this far).
You can walk just about anywhere. Everyday I walked from midtown to the West Village and back, and I loved it. The subway works well, but I enjoy walking. Even if it was snowing, I always made it a point to walk. It’s a great way to get exercise in and experience the city.
There are tons of vegan restaurants and vegan food which is great! You can find any kind of restaurant you want, and there are tons of ethnic neighborhoods like Little Russia, China Town, little Italy, etc.
The nightlife is fantastic and there are so many trendy rooftop lounges, bars, and clubs. You have to know which ones to go to though, because naturally, there are a lot of touristy places.
Running in Central Park is beautiful and especially when it’s nice outside. In New York, you really learn to appreciate the seasons too. I really do not like the cold at all, and I’ll admit, the winters in New York can be brutal and dreary, and some days you just don’t feel like going outside. But when those 60 degree days start coming around in spring you get so excited and you learn to appreciate them more. Before moving to New York, I used to complain that 60 degrees was cold (anything below 70 in Florida is considered cold), but after living in New York for a while, my standards definitely changed!
I also love running through the streets of New York. Even though I have to dodge baby strollers, zig zag between crowds of people, and jump over trash bags, I love it! It’s part of what makes it so special and adventurous. Sounds crazy I know, but its a blast.
New Yorkers have a bad rap for being rude and standoffish, but I have found many warm, welcoming people from New York. I think anywhere you go, there are rude people. The life is very fast paced in New York. I realized this when my mom came to visit and she was strolling down the sidewalk window shopping taking her time, and I was in such a rush to get to where we were going. I have always been a fast walker, but I noticed that I just did things much faster in New York because it takes time to walk from point A to point B and if you stop along the way you’ll end up spending hours. This definitely happened many times when I gave in and jumped into stores, thinking, “I’ll just go in here really quick,” and then I ended up spending an hour trying on clothes and walking out with nothing. New York is full of temptations! 🙂 But as long as you learn to manage your time, you can get it done.
I will say, one of the biggest differences about New York and other cities is grocery shopping. You may have to walk 20 minutes to the nearest grocery store and wait in line for another 20 minutes after maneuvering your way around the packed store, but again, it’s another adventure. You’ll probably also want to get a shopping cart, it is treacherous to walk home with 2 watermelons on your shoulder plus another bag full of stuff. And when it rains, definitely don’t go for paper bags, I made this mistake and had my stuff fall all over the sidewalk. You’ll also see so many interesting things go down at grocery stores, and sometimes it’s hilarious to watch. I once saw 3 guys with huge boa constrictors probably 1 foot in diameter each, just walking outside of Trader Joe’s in Chelsea like they were just going for an afternoon stroll. Or people at TJ’s getting into a full-blown argument about who was ahead of who in line.
Everyone’s experience of New York is different, you can make it your own. Each neighborhood is unique, with its own treasures, and you get to discover them along the way.
“Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t do.”- Alicia Keys
I agree with sanjay, and in fact, NYC is the last place in the US I would like to live, but of course that is my personal preference. Keep in mind too that America has many cities that are enjoyable to live in, so keep your options open. Good Luck!
I lived in two boroughs of NYC for last 39 years, I got my first kiss here,I had best friendship here first,I had major financial gain and ruin here, I loved it here,sometimes I hated it here,to me NYC is my school yard that educated me,controlled me,punished me and above all loved me. These days I go to Berlin often because I got myself a retirement visa but spending time there is such a piece of cake only because I have the experience of NY protecting me there.I have been to 17 countries, China ,Australia,Brazil,Chile ,Argentina, most countries in Europe ,my gut feeling is ,if you can live and love in NY you can be successful anywhere in the world. There is a saying in India that what does not exist in the epic Mahabharata does not exist in Bharatha meaning India. That is my NewYork,it is good ,bad and inbetween,it is sweet and sour,it is mayonnaise and peanut butter. Everything is in NYC and NYC is in everything, you just need to be ready when it hits you or gifts you more than you ever imagined.
Well I was born in NY and I have lived there for 20 years of my life until I moved to Connecticut. NYC is a beautiful place to be if you have a good job or are rich. It really is a city that doesn’t sleep. The beauty is the diversity and different cultures you can see. I truly miss NYC. My dad travels from Connecticut to NYC everyday to work. He works 18 hours a day in a food cart he owns.
Alright, so tons of people are going to tell you about the great things about NY, the sporting events, bars, restaurants, galleries, museums, so I don’t need to tell you about that. Let me tell you about some of the things less talked about. First, it’s expensive. For $3000 you get a 1 bed room. In TX, you get a full house, and a nice one. It can take you 2 hours to find a parking space during the day. People can’t drive. They make left turns from the right lane, stop suddenly, double park, and make dangerous maneuvers. Bicyclists, and motorcycles also have been very rowdy in the past 2 years and many of them will try to run over pedestrians. Crime, there is lots of crime. So it feels considerably less safe than other parts of America. I was actually surprised at how many people had to carry knives. It’s very noisy, drivers honk their horn, you hear fire trucks, police sirens, car alarms, people screaming. One thing I noticed about NY is the large amounts of mentally unstable people, so you go to deal with them on a regular. Then there are the homeless and beggars who are constantly asking you for money. Traffic jams, you can expect to get somewhere in an hour if it takes you 1/2 an hour in an average American city. Defensiveness. People tend to be more defensive. One woman from VA told me that she is more defensive when in NY vs when she is in VA. Another NY woman from the mid west told me she doesn’t talk to men at all because of her negative experiences. Overall, NYers tend to be less friendly than even people in south Jersey. It’s unlikely anyone will say hi to you, or even acknowledge your existence unless you are an attractive female. At least down south, people pretend to be polite. Not in NY. I once asked for directions in the village to 5 people, and 4 of them ignored me, didn’t even pretend not to know. Crowds, it’s more crowded. You will have to wait on line for a lot of things you don’t have to in other cities, whether you’re at the super market, post office, or doctors. If you don’t like people getting too close to you, then this is the wrong place for you. Cold. it’s very cold here in the winter, and it’s just ice all over the floor. You can’t really do much in those circumstances, leading many people to move south. Greed. NY is where the money is, so it attracts a lot of greedy people and you kind of feel it, especially with those people who charge money to take pictures in Time Square. A lot of them will get very aggressive with you if you take a picture. Being in NY or just big cities in general feels awkward. People were not meant to live in cities. NY has a lot of foreigners, many of whom don’t speak English, so it can often feel alienating to not be able to communicate with half the people in NY. Often times, you will have to take public transport, so you cant social distance and the air cannot flow as all the subway windows do not open, so if one person is sick, everyone gets it. A lot of people say that NYers are “real”. They’re not. Plenty of people in NY will follow you on social media, and then unfollow you. Many NYers will only befriend you if you can further their career. For someone who doesn’t really attend concerts, shows, or galleries, you better off being in Monroe, LA. For me, I like walking into a post office and recognizing people I know, and NY does not provide that. Race relations is also a thing that I noticed. They say that NY is multicultural, but what I have noticed is that NY is heavily segregated. I am surprised to see how they have “Polish neighborhoods”, “Asian neighborhoods” etc. It felt a lot more mixed down in Atlanta. If you go to some of the NY malls (ie Kings Plaza, QCM), you see Asians shopping with Asians, Hindus with Hindus, Hispanics with Hispanics, blacks with blacks, whites with whites. It just seemed more mixed in the mall of Georgia or mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge. Even amongst white people I found that out of town white people in Manhattan tend not to really mingle with outer boro white people from Queens, Staten Island, or the Bronx. A white guy from Nebraska would more likely befriend another white guy from Michigan than a white guy from Long Island. This ties into the social distancing. A lot of people are in NY only temporarily, particularly the white people from Michigan who live in Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Bushwick. There are even dancers who are in NY only for months. Because their stay is temporary, they’re less likely to want to cultivate relationships with real NYers or even anyone. So you kind of have that split between the white locals and white “expats”. It’s kind of like the town gown relationships you see in college towns where the townies don’t mix with the students. You see the same thing with the local and transient residents of NY, where you can count the townies as those speaking with the NY accent vs those who are from Iowa in NY for a few years who end up leaving. That on top of the racial divides you have between the other races from the outer boros.
Well, I was born and raised in New York for 40 yrs. And of course there’s been changes over the yrs. some good and some bad. Growing up then and now has been challenging but we learn to adjust and survive the concrete jungle one way or another so in other words I love living in New York. New York is where history is made and dreams come true.
It’s disappointing.
I’ve lived and worked in New York (Ok, lived in Yonkers 3 blocks from the Bronx, but it’s not like there’s a change to mark the border) for 2.5 years. I’ve lived in big cities across the country, from Chicago to New Orleans to Cleveland to San Francisco; each of those for >2 years at a time. Some of those are expensive, and I didn’t mind because I felt I got something out of it.
Here? Pay top dollar for grade F living experience.
Just getting someplace is expensive. Public transportation is inefficient, takes forever, and is full of batshit crazy folks. Add delays, and the general unpleasant experience of being crammed into a metal tube so tightly that you can’t breathe and you get the idea.
Driving is insanely expensive. 1 trip to Staten Island cost $45…. Just in tolls. The only public transportation is the Staten Island ferry, which while free takes forever because I’d have to pay to get to Grand Central, then pay for a Subway…not much of a better deal going both ways.
Add that drivers are unsafe maniacs too who can’t obey traffic laws and getting from point A to B is even worse.
People at default are rude and insulting. No manners, no class.
And icing on the cake is the smell of urine and garbage everywhere. Literally smells like the inside of a Portapotty on hot days.
Initially, hard. Very hard. But overtime you find your groove, meet people that interest you, experience new everything- from love to the new bar specializing in whiskey. I found it fun, exhilarating, stressful, happy, depressing, delicious, disgusting, and a million other words that probably don’t do the memories in my head justice. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Everyday was a learning experience on a personal and professional level. If you get the chance to go, do it.
Just don’t live in Times Square.
You’ll thank me later, after you’ve moved. Good luck.
Very busy place always something going on very expensive to live in nyc don’t rent a place unless you have a good job that pays well otherwise you be living in the slumps of nyc or homeless I live in ny but I live in upstate ny 200 miles from the city beautiful area country setting depends on what part your inn
New York, New York!! What can I tell you?
There’s no place quite like it in the world. NYC is a crash course in life.
And yes, let me warn you that this city will eat you alive.
A day in the life of a New Yorker is a normal, typical experience, really. I have managed to become an intricate maze runner, able to weave myself through groups and roadblocks with ease.
Whether you’re a student, a part-time worker, or even a Wall Streeter, you’re more than likely on your way to the subway for transport from point A to point B.
As you arrive at your subway stop, you’ll observe visitors struggling to get into cars; you are almost certain to provide directions to a hopelessly lost soul at least once in a day. As I am typing this away sitting at Starbucks, a lady just walked up to me asking for directions to Statue of Liberty. And you’ll more than likely assist someone in hauling a suitcase or stroller up the stairwell. Yes, I did that yesterday for a young College student moving into the Apartment complex where I live.
After all, what New Yorker begins a day without a cup of coffee. As you ready yourself for your voyage home after a long day, you reenter the vast, now exceedingly hectic subway system, and if you know which car to enter, you avoid the battle at the closing doors, and you’ve found yourself a seat. And a…
I lived in NYC for 4 years and then moved out for a better career opportunity.
As most of the other answers said, it’s simply Amazing! I will give you some reasons from my experience.
The city that never sleeps: like they say, for a city that never sleeps, a lot can happen in one night! It is does never sleep. I’ve stayed out till 3 am bar hopping with friends and then went to a diner at 4 am, still as busy as it can be. I have actually had food delivered at 2am using seamless, the food delivery app. The city transit does not stop at all, and in some parts of the city it stays crowded. Plenty of 24 hours gyms and people will actually go there at very early or very late hours.
Restaurants: they say including bars, there are some 40,000 places in NYC that you could eat at! So basically you could eat each meal at a new place every time if you wanted to. The price range varies but some places, the quality May surprised you. I love how in each neighborhood there is that small pop up place or tiny eatery where you get the best certain recipe. weekend brunches are big among New Yorkers and some places can have very long waits on Saturday/Sunday brunch times. Needless to say, you can get food from any part of the world.
Summers: Summers are best in NYC! Some days can be very humid but for the most part they’re great. A lot of companies actually let their employees work an hour or so extra daily but take Friday’s off so for some, every weekend is a long summer weekend. Central Park is so beautiful in summer, everyone is out in the park or on the street. There is a certain energy in the air and everyone is just in a happy place. On weekends, a lot of the people head to the beaches around the city to come back with a nice tan. If you want to go out of Manhattan but not too far, head to Brooklyn for a different sort of eccentric young crowd and good street food.
Rooftops are the best in the city, there are so many of them with amazing view but they can be very very crowded.
Winters: a lot of people worry about the winters in NYC but trust me, it’s nothing like winters anywhere else on the NE. You may be very few people on the street but walk into a bar and you feel as if winter never happened. My friends would have “hurricane party” whenever there was a storm warning which would basically be a sleep over with a lot of tv/movies and board games. The transit system runs most of the time during snow even unless it’s really really bad.
Daily life: well I was doing my residency there so I was very busy but typically, if I got off work early, I would go for a run or bike ride in the park, some days the gym. Then either eat in or go out for dinner with someone. Dinner was always followed by a walk and getting a dessert, either from one of the local bake shops or if nothing else, a brownie from Starbucks. Weekends were always busier than weekdays! Wake up, do laundry if you want to feel productive, go out for brunch with friends which would last for hours, with half the group buzzed from the bottomless mimosas, followed by a movie, more walking and dinner, followed by crashing at whose ever place was the closest.
The bad parts: there were a few things that I would like to mention:
it took a while to establish a good circle of friends. My theory is that the locals know that most people are in transit so it takes them a while to let you into your circle if you’re new to the city. But you will always find people who are new like you and very open to connect.
Rents truly are high, that applies to San Francisco as well I understand but I mean, I have seen studios for 3500–4000 in luxury buildings, which totally sounds crazy but at the same time, you can find a studio for 1300–1600 in neighborhoods like Harlem or Inwood.
Dating can be hard. There are so many options in NYC that ghosting is very common. People will just disappear on you. You do it to others and others do it to you. It’s almost understood and most people have experienced it so much that they don’t make an issue out of it. Then there are the tourists who are in the city for a few weeks but want to have a serious relationship with you… I mean, come on!
Traffic! Forget your car if you’re moving to Manhattan. It’s not just the expensive street parking and long term parking but it actually takes a lot longer to drive within Manhattan than to take the train.
Comparison with San Francisco: I have not lived in San Francisco, I visited for a week so my opinion is probably not valid. But here are a few things I noticed.
Uphill downhill is fun until you get tired of walking uphill again and again. I walk a lot in NYC. Half a mile to the train every morning, another half from the train to work. But in SF, going uphill was just a pain!
Homeless people, don’t get me wrong, I feel for them but just for the sake of comparison, there are many in NYC but SF was a bit too many.
Still had to cab or drive to some places with in the city. Everyone knows how extensive NYC subway system is.
Yes NYC is expensive, crowded and dirty, but there’s a reason no one wants to leave the city. I call it the curse of NYC, people will complains but then would never want to move out. I would definitely recommend living there to anyone be it for a few years, just for the experiences that you can get from living there.
NYC in my opinion is a city that you love or leave. The great thing is you can whatever you want to do in a city. If you can think of it, it is there and therefore if you love NYC no other place on earth will do.
However beside the cost of living there are other things to consider. I meet people from NYC who where totally exited for seeing a farm animal for the first time in there live (when being 30). While you have shake shake, you wait for 1h to get to the front of the line. Same with trader Joes. There is always something going on in the city but that means take the subway for 45 – 90 min to get there. I personally think that this spoils most things in NYC. It is a bit of having the new iPhone one day before everybody else. You can do it but you pay a price for it. (like there is a “company” that hires a homeless person for you to wait in line to get you whatever).
New York city is a very beautiful place to live. There are many reasons to live in NYC like
1.Convenience
2.diversity
3. neighborhoods
4. inspiration
5. opportunity and many more.
It is also good in real estate. Here, you can buy your house in good price with all the facilities. Here you can explore the list of houses that is for sale.
For more information, visit our website: house for sale in queens
I’m not really sure how life would be there, I just know that it’s cold, snowy, and busy, LIKE ALWAYS! I’m pretty sure you know that of course. But you could watch this teenager touring all around new york for the first time. NYC VLOG!
The thing I don’t like about this video is that creepy image before you play it.
Having lived in both cities, here are the differences I’ve seen:
Sense of humor: People in San Francisco are sooo nice (although sometimes passive aggressive). New Yorker’s sense of humor tend to have an edge. Seinfeld is not much of an exaggeration.
Social life: In New York, you might know someone for a decade and never see their apartment whereas I was always getting invited to have coffee, lunch, dinner at people’s places in SF. Also, it’s not uncommon to email a month in advance to set up dinner together. There is almost zero last minute wanna get a beer together sort of thing. Also, it’s common to talk about work in NY as opposed to talking about hiking, biking, etc. People talk sometimes about the gym they go to in NY, but we just don’t have the splendid nature of SF.
Culture: New York has lots of it and most of it is amazing! If you care about it, you will get to see a great deal of art, ballet, theatre, opera, etc.
Food: Fine dining is more expensive than in San Francisco. But, on the opposite spectrum, you can get really cheap eats too. You will be sad about the expensive, so so banh mi in NY. You will dream about the ubiquitous San Francisco burrito. But, you will gain great Korean, Russian, Indian, Albanian, Uighyur, etc….Oh, and there are still some decent Jewish delis left in NY. There’s not a bagel in San Francisco that can hold its place next to a true NY bagel. But you will be sad about the state of sourdough and other breads in NY. Then, you will have a slice of NY pizza. One problem with the food in NY — it’s segregated. In order to get really good Chinese food, you have to go to that neighborhood. Same for really good Thai, Korean, etc. I spend a lot of time riding subways for the destination amazing hole in the wall.
Mass Transit: People in San Francisco seem to have an inordinate amount of patience waiting for the Bart or Muni. In New York, people complain if it doesn’t show up in 3 minutes. The subway has greater reach. You truly can live without a car here (people told me that about SF — so not true).
Every year, tourists flock to New York City to see what it’s like. Even as a tourist, you don’t always see the reality of life there. You tend to overlook the little things that make New York real, like hot dog carts, traffic jams and street garbage. Yet these are the things that, in many ways, make the city so fascinating. We want to see every side of this world-famous city: the good and the bad. Even New York City has its fair share of flaws and in this article, we intend to reveal them: the things tourists don’t see.
This city will eat you alive!’ If you’re a New Yorker, this phrase has been shrilly uttered in your ears by concerned relatives or by lifetime natives themselves. And it’s true. Each day, New Yorkers are gobbled up by fierce yellow taxis and hungry subways, only to be spit back out into their non-stop, wild, and terrifyingly exhilarating city. A day in the life of a New Yorker is a normal, typical experience, really. It begins when you roll of bed and walk the entire length of your apartment to the bathroom with only one swift movement. You flick the light switch only to be courteously greeted by at least one creepy crawly roommate, yet it doesn’t faze you anymore in the slightest. You continue readying yourself for the day, donning your most weightless garments if it’s the exhaustingly humid summer, or layering coats, hats, and scarves like you’re Randy from a Cristmas story if it’s the frigid winter. With that, you step out of the apartment you had to purchase in, quite literally, a ‘New York minute’ and jump into the crowd bustling through the busy streets. Subconsciously, and over time, you have accumulated your stride to the New York gallop. You’ve become an intricate maze runner, able weave yourself through groups and roadblocks without so much as giving a second glance upward. Whether you’re a student, a part-time worker, or even a Wall Streeter, you’re more than likely on your way to the subway for transport from point A to point B. As you arrive at your subway stop, you’ll observe visitors struggling with the kiosks to obtain a Metro card; you’ll provide directions to a hopelessly lost soul at least once; and you’ll more than likely assist someone in hauling a suitcase or stroller up the stairwell. As you make your way to class or work, your affinity for the street car vendors will overpower your desire to maintain punctuality. After all, what new yorker begins a day without a cup of coffee and a cronut? You arrive to contribute to the daily grind, only to utilize your lunch hour to escape into a quiet café or independent coffee house, like Grounded or Cafe Grumpy for your next fix of caffeine. As you ready yourself for your voyage home after a long day, you reenter the vast, now exceedingly hectic subway system, and if you know which car to enter, you avoid the battle at the closing doors, and you’ve found yourself a seat. Although you have the best intentions of heading straight home, you remember that the bar on the corner, Pounds and Qunces, is having their daily two-for-one happy hour special, and two craft beers and a few laughs later, you’re finally on your way home….Well this is a really Wonderful CITY, you just need some time to get acquainted to it’s really wonderful life! And have no fear! Success loves the brave ones!
I often tell people that New York is a great place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit here.
Okay, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration—New York has tons for a tourist to do and see. But if you just plunge in unprepared, it can be chaotic and frantic and super-busy, full of people who have so much to do and not enough time and so everyone is rushing everywhere all the time.
But living here? New York City is a lot more expensive to live in than most anywhere else, so you’ll have tight living quarters, but in the end it’s really all about neighborhoods. You don’t live in NEW YORK CITY, you live in your own neighborhood, where you get to know the shopkeepers and they get to know you, you know who walks dogs and which is the best dry cleaner and which are the nicest parks and all the other small-town-ish neighborly things you’d find anywhere else.
I’m presuming you mean NYC and not NYS? Life in the city can be either the most amazing and wealth generating experience imaginanle right through to the poorest of conditions. So it very much depends upon ones profession, wealth, interests. And which area one chooses to live.
If one is a professional, top in their profession, a global leader, or in an industry like Theatte, Media, Finance, or Fashion then life is incredible as one has the NYC income tomgo with it. It is not uncommon for residents in Manhattan to be earning over $300,000 a year. Or more.
But if your average or poor then it’s a very different experience.
Thst saud. NYC is energetic. Amuve. Dynamic. And lots going on always. What most outsiders don’t realize is that NYC is slso full of parks. Greenspaces. Concerts . Food. Beaches. Etc
It depends on your line of work, I think, but I can use myself as an example.
Wake up around 8 – out the door by 8:45
Work from 9–6ish
After work – networking event or happy hour with the team or meet up with friends or yoga.
Happy hours and networking events are a huge thing in NYC. Also, expect to do the most random shit after work. Some things I’ve done include book crawls, live shows and concerts, lectures/seminars, exhibits. Broadway week and restaurant week also come around a few times a year – you can get discounted meals/experiences with some of the top restaurants.
It’s overwhelming how much there is to do.
The other night I told my spouse I’d prefer sushi to our usual Friday night pizza. We then had a brief argument over whether we should choose the place across the avenue from our building, the one a block up the street behind our building or maybe try the fusion place on the same side of the avenue as our building. In the end we chose none of the above and opted for the one that’s on the same side of the street as our building but half-a-block east. It was really good.
Depends in terms of what borough you are looking to move in NYC.
I’ve lived in Brooklyn for some time and love it here. Let me give you 3 of the top reasons why:
Forget Manhattan Skyscrapers- in Brooklyn you can see sky!
You Can Train for Jobs and Get an Education in Brooklyn- You can study law, medicine, architecture, design, Chinese or become an EMT in Brooklyn.
You Can Stay in Brooklyn on The Weekends for Movies, Music, Culture, Bars and Fun. – You can feed your inner culture vulture with visits to the incredible Brooklyn Labs ( Daniel Kaufman | I am Daniel Kaufman, Founder of Hatch. )
It depends on a lot of factors. People of all types and incomes find a way to make it. There is a lot to see and do within the bubble of the city. It’s very convenient in that you can often find a variety of things within a 15–20 min walk of wherever you are. You don’t need a car. The amount of diversity in types of people, food, scenes, etc. is great. If you’re on top of your career, there are many top companies HQ’d here.
That said, it’s expensive, often feels very overcrowded, is very noisy, the diversity isn’t a utopian melting pot as people are heavily divided by income/wealth, profession, where they live, etc., the weather can be miserable in winter and gross in summer, it often feels very dirty, the subways have all sorts of issues that just keep getting worse with no sign they will ever get better, taxes are among the highest in the US, people have too many distractions and other people competing for their attention to make good friends or a serious relationship with (it does happen, but far more often you’ll have acquaintances and dates that don’t last long), and lastly, it feels like a city that exists mainly for yuppies and the rich while the rest struggle to make it, usually in jobs serving the yuppies and rich, living in their pockets in the boroughs.
It’s so hard to answer succintly. There are almost 9 million of us and everyone has a different story. It’s crowded, loud, impersonal yet somehow intimate. A walk down the street can be an adventure. Or it can be like anywhere else, just denser. We’re street smart, smart alecky and we walk fast.You can be anyone you want to be and no one will say boo.
New York is so much more than a Big Apple. In fact, when I started to look beyond the shops and the skyscrapers, I found a garden of Eden bearing fruits which were in no way forbidden, but totally ripe to be picked. The reason we all know New York’s postcode to be NY,NY is because New York City is just one small part of New York State.
I’d rather be dead in New York than alive in Arizona.
Great!
Each city has its own look and feel and culture.
I adopted NYC as my home 60 years ago at age 20 & I would find it hard to leave, which is to be expected at this point. I live in a very nice neighborhood on the top floor of a walkup building, so the daily flights have kept me fit—and they’re worth it because I live in a large rent-stabilized apartment. Of course, that skews my viewpoint a bit, because my rent is relatively low, though my income is relatively modest so it evens things out a bit. In short, I like living here.
In the well-worn cliche, in New York you live in a neighborhood, period. How easily you get around the rest of the city depends on how close your living-quarters are to the all-important public-transportation system: If you’re fairly close, New York is a breeze to get around in.
On an everyday basis, it can be a drag getting to work if you work 9–5 because the subways can be Hell at those times. A co-worker showed me—when I was very young—how to get around it. At 5 O’Clock one is desperate to get home—but at what price? She suggested waiting—in a coffee-shop, bar, or in one of the little parks that crop up between corporate structures. At 5:30, things really do settle down. Also, spurn overly crowded trains. At rush-hour, trains run pretty close to one another.
Find a restaurant near your house (or bar) and adopt it. Once you come in a few times, you have “tamed” it and it will be your friend in need. Start to say hello to people in the ‘hood whom you see more often. Having a dog to walk helps a lot, but even patronizing a dry-cleaners, pharmacy, etc., anchors you. When I first moved here, the proprietors became my “parents”: I’ll never forget Mr. Estroff in Estroff’s Pharmacy on Second Avenue & St Mark’s Place!
It’s pretty hard to find an apartment of your own these days, so no doubt living there requires having roommates but be sure, within that framework, to have a private space—there’s too little privacy in NYC as it is!
When I first came here, I would make weekly pilgrimages to Central Park, but ultimately I found suitable breathing space closer by. It’s important.
If you’re too broke to take advantage of the cultural activities here, you might get to wonder what it’s all about. But for me, the importance is the intelligent people who became my friends, and the worldliness and diversity all around me.
Oh, yes—apart from the clubs and concerts and dance recitals and theaters and restaurants—there are the wonderful, interesting shops and stores and even the great department stores! And even for natives and assorted long-term denizens, some of the tourist spots are well worth frequenting. I don’t spurn Rockefeller Center and the bar at the Hotel Pierre is very much my cup of tea!
Living in NYC
New York City occupies a special place in the American consciousness as the tumultuous seat of our financial markets and the buzzing capital of our culture. New York is celebrated for its wealth of nationalities, ethnicities and languages. But why would anyone want to live in NYC? It’s insanely expensive, there are too many crazy people, it’s bundles of energy and famously, “If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.” And lots of people love the challenge! Most important, it’s the city that exemplifies American pluralism, the “melting pot” that attracts new immigrants looking for work and college graduates drawn from their hometowns by the promise of excitement and opportunity. Its appeal hangs on its image as a city where everyone can try, get, and be anything . It has been my home for more than 40 years and I love it for its social and economic freedoms. My education and computer technology background fit right in and I found great career and social successes. Am I wrong or what?
But NYC is not a panacea, it has its own problems just like any other city. First of all, it’s terribly expensive, living costs are very high, you live in a small apartment that cost a fortune or commute from far away distances. Taxes are high to pay for all the social services, city employees and infrastructure support. The New York City government’s budget is the largest municipal budget in the United States. In 2016 the NYC city government had a budget of $80 billion a year. The best jobs are in NYC and unless you are wealthy, you must commute and the hours required while being stuffed on packed trains and subways which are actually a frustrating second job. Second, the City is densely crowded. People are piled on top of one anther. Third, you will never get a good job unless you have a great education, NYC is comfortable for skilled and educated people only. Others scrape by! NYC is also being seriously gentrified, wealthy people move in to replace poorer people who are moving out.
On the other side of the coin, NYC is certainly a playground for adults. There’s never a dull moment in NYC. It’s the city that never sleeps. It offers a thousand different interesting things to do every day. Besides high paying jobs for the talented in the business, banking, financial, advertising, business, performing art’s world, there is Broadway, Greenwich Village, China Town, Little Egypt, parades galore – St. Patties Day, Halloween, Macy’s Thanksgiving, street theater and theatrical Flash Mobs, thousands of restaurants, bars, night clubs, museums and parks to pleasure your life away. Living or commuting to NYC is like being a member of Delta Force. It ain’t for everyone but if you can do it life is great and you are a very special person.
So let’s talk about NYC. The New York City immediate Metropolitan area represents the largest city and metro in America with more than 20 million residents. New York City has an extraordinarily diverse population. Half of the residents are immigrants. It is one of the few cities in the country in which four different racial/ethnic groups each make up at least 10 percent of the population. Put it in perspective, and you end up with the conclusion that New York City is by far the most ethnically and racially diverse city in the world. It has the largest number of blacks, close to 3.5 million in the USA. (Atlanta is second.) This is almost 9% of the entire Black population of the United States. New York City proper has more than 2.4 million African Americans.
According to the 2010 decennial census, 33 percent of New York City residents are white, 26 percent are Hispanic, 26 percent are black, and 13 percent are Asian. Altogether, 47 percent are immigrants. Some neighborhoods are mixed, but most are of the same ethic/racial groups. Expensive neighborhoods like most of Manhattan and lots of Brooklyn and Queens are white. Immigration from the Caribbean and Central America are diminishing the dominance of Puerto Ricans, and among Asians, where new arrivals now are more likely to be from rural China or Southeast Asia rather than Taiwan or Hong Kong. In joining the ranks of American cities where whites are a minority, New York, in its diversity, is more like Los Angeles and San Francisco than cities like Detroit and Newark, where black majorities replaced white ones.
New immigrants do not simply replace old residents in the same jobs. They alter the economic mix. Look at the way Italians shaped the construction industry or, more recently, how Koreans have changed greengroceries. The succession of wealthy and skilled Blue Collar European groups who founded New York and dominated it for centuries have now become a racial minority. Whites are the racial minority residents in NYC itself. And they tend to be wealthy too to afford the expensive skyscraper multi million dollar condos and $3000/month apartments being built by the hundreds to accommodate the huge world migration to NYC. People have their priorities and if one of the top ones is living in Manhattan then they make it happen. Lots of people live in 2 bedroom apartments with 2 or 3 other people they don’t know so they only pay $1,000 month each. I don’t know how people move to NYC from anywhere else because the amount of living space you’ll end up having is just a fraction of what you’re probably used to . . . but for us NYers it’s just what we are used to. It’s also a very different lifestyle. There are a lot of singles and couples, it’s exciting, active, socially diverse, people get along, tons of things to do any day with lots of entertainment choices, Very few families live here (in Manhattan).
Lots of the people renting are struggling actors or such and they sacrifice space for location. I have friends who live in only a small room and share bathroom and kitchen. I know people who commute 2 or 3 hours to work . . . I am one of them, which is ridiculous but I have six kids and wife Upstate in the Catskill’s mountains, so its worth it. If you know the right spots to look and the right people you can get something affordable in this town . . . but for most people you’re better off moving somewhere else. It sounds crazy but it’s just life here.
Most New Yorker’s don’t own, they either rent and/or live in the burbs & commute. When I first moved here, I lived in Hell’s Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan and then moved to Jamaica, Queens. I worked in the Village and spent one hour on the F Train each way to and from work. The average rent for a Manhattan apartment was more than $2500 in 2005 and it’s only gone up since. It would be more realistic for you to look for a studio, deep in another borough and even then you will have a hard time finding something acceptable that is that cheap. There is an affordable housing crisis in NYC and things are bad for everyone. Luxury skyscraper condos are sprouting up for sale everywhere but nothing affordable to rent. You could always try renting a bedroom in a share situation. It’s possible that you won’t find much less than $700/800 since you don’t want to get shot or have an hour commute.
NYC is a commuting culture. Millions of people commute to Manhattan every day, they ride trains, take ferries, subways or buses to Manhattan and there are tens of thousands of amenities to accommodate them. They come from Westchester, Long Island, Connecticut, Hudson Valley, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Upstate. This Metro area is more than 30 million people. Consequently, transportation is everything in NYC. But if you live in Manhattan, don’t even consider a car unless you’re wealthy, because you’ll have to pay big time to keep it in a parking garage which cost around $800/month. You can get around by train, subway, taxi and bus. Subways go everywhere but are full of smelly homeless, hot, dirty, loud with rude people, constant beggars and candy sellers etc. But the entertainers at the stops are great. The A Train travels the entire length of the city, from the Bronx all the way through Brooklyn. It is quite the ride . . . a bucket list thing. Busses aren’t bad but it tends to be slow. Living in Manhattan or Brooklyn and having a car is suicidal. A car is needed if you live on Staten Island. In Queens a car is helpful, and not a pain. For most of the Bronx, forget it, except for Riverdale. Manhattan and parts of other boroughs have alternate side parking, which means you have to move your car every day except Sunday and find a new parking spot. Loads of metered parking also.
When I moved to NYC, I kept my car. I love the freedom that driving gives me and I hate having to rely on public transportation. My only issue with cars would be traffic & parking. It’s HORRIBLY hard to find parking in Manhattan. And no one drives a nice car in NYC, just whoopdees that suffer lots of dings and dents. Your car is also apt to be hit or sideswiped so if you’re very anal about the way your car looks, you’ll have to pay extra to fix it . . . And yes, insurance is expensive.
As for “deals” on apartments, some neighborhoods are cheaper and some more expensive. Location counts for a lot. I, for one, always was more interested in space than in location. I was always willing to live on off blocks (but never dangerous ones, just skuzzy looking ones) to get a bigger place. Right across the Hudson, Hoboken is a great pace to live. Hoboken is a very up and coming place, lots of young people who commute to Manhattan, lots of bars, restaurants. It’s just so clean, quiet and friendly here. There is the PATH Subway and ferries to take you to work in NYC.
Speaking of commuting, New York City has one of the most extensive public transit systems in the world. The New York City Subway System is one of the largest subway systems in the world with more than 700 miles of tracks covering the four out of five boroughs of New York City. It is the only subway system in the world that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Penn Station is the busiest railroad station in the world, with more than 800,000 commuters in it every day. In addition it hosts the Long Island Railroad, which bring million of the commuters from the eastern suburbs into the city daily. Grand Central Terminal is the largest railroad station in the world. The GCT is home to Metro-North Railroad, which operates train from this fame rail hub to the Hudson Valley, the northern suburbs and Connecticut. And now also the Long Island Railroad to Manhattan’s east side.
Other form of transportation operates to and from New York City, they included The PATH, NJ Transit, Amtrak, and both national and regional buses departing from and arriving to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. There also five airports, (Newark, LGA, JFK, Newburgh, and White Plans), as well as an extensive ferry system that include the Staten Island Ferry. So there is definitely no way you’ll need a car to get around New York City. Manhattan squeezes people in skyscrapers and more are built every year for business, condos and apartments. Most people who work in those tall Manhattan skyscrapers of Manhattan live in Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens, or even the NJ cities. Asking whether the City or New Jersey right across the Hudson is better is like asking if surfing is better in the Great Lakes or the Pacific. Stay away from Long Island, New Jersey, Hudson Valley, etc. if you’re not looking to start a family, or simply do not prefer some of the most exciting activity in the world.
NYC is heavily minority but overall, whites are much better off – they are better educated, have significantly less out of wed lock births, suffer less drugs, idleness and do much less crime than minorities. The evil doer whites steal unethically at the top in Wall Street and the blacks steal violently at the bottom on the street. Social progressives are always trying integrate the neighborhoods and schools, but it is the old story, how do you mix poor minorities with educated affluent whites? So the melting pot image belies the reality that much of the city remains divided along racial or ethnic lines. In dozens of neighborhoods, a single racial or ethnic group predominates, at rates of 70 percent to nearly 90 percent.
New York schools are the most segregated in the country according to a new study. More than half of New York City’s public schools are more than 90 percent black and Latino, But these numbers don’t mean very much when placed in the context of the demographics of the school system as a whole – more than 67 percent of all students in the NYC system are black and Latino to begin with and live in their own neighborhoods. There just aren’t not enough white kids to go around and integrate. And the white kids come from a different demographic too – more wealth, better educated and less dysfunctional homes. Sounds like Atlanta to me too! This is the worrisome inequities hidden beneath the New York’s glowing facade.
There is a “tale of two cities” and the growing gap between the city’s haves and have-nots, which all too often follow racial lines. Indeed, racial segregation in New York is frequently accompanied by socioeconomic segregation. Across the state, the typical African-American student “attends a school where 69% of students are low-income.” For the typical Latino student, that number is 65 percent. For whites, less than 30 percent. Mandatory efforts to force integration – such as busing – are unlikely to gain political traction today. This causes great anger among whites and they move out.
New York’s elite high schools are some of the city’s crown jewels, are the best in the USA, renowned for their merit-based exclusivity. Changing admission requirements to the city’s top schools for the sake of feel-good social justice would erode the schools’ tradition of excellence in the service of dubious ends. Absent a massive program of busing, or forced population transfer, there aren’t enough white people to satisfy the social progressives. And many of the best-regarded public elementary schools are getting whiter.
More than a third of the 100 most diverse schools are high schools, reflecting the city’s practice of allowing students to apply to any high school. The Mathematics, Science and Engineering High School at City College is the most diverse. Every year about 80,000 students will soon receive high-school acceptance letters, and for many this time marks the culmination of months—sometimes years—spent hitting the books, meeting with tutors, and sprucing up resumes. That’s because admission into one of the city’s 400 or so public high schools is rarely automatic: Each kid ranks and applies to as many as 12 schools, and recent statistics suggest that less than half of a year’s applicants get into their first-choices, while 10 percent of them—nearly 8,000 kids—don’t get a match at all.
Then there are the crème de la crème of New York City’s public high schools: the nine prestigious “specialized” institutions that are often seen as informal feeders for the Ivy League. Only 5,000 kids are offered admissions to these college-prep schools, which students can pursue in addition to their 12 choices. You get into them by passing a test – a 150-minute multiple-choice test known as the SHSAT. But critics say the test encourages a culture of exclusivity – one that, matched with the schools’ notorious lack of student diversity, has been subject to intense debate over the years. Social progressives suggest new desegregation efforts that link “choice” with “key civil rights standards, such as strong public information and outreach, free transportation and no admissions screening.” Personally, I think that admission screening is a must unless you want to water down academics.
NYC is the epitome of capitalism and socialism – called Plato’s Utopia – in the USA. They are conflicting values, but everyone on both sides gets along. In such a highly people packed environment, where ten thousand people work in one skyscraper, getting along is a must. Immigrants, entrepreneurs and business make the world turn, the socialists want undeserved economic equality.
I am old school – you work for what you get – and I do not agree with much on the progressive social agenda that I equate with giveaways and guarantees for the free lunch crowd. I don’t have a problem with providing a “hand up” but dislike the handouts that never go away and encourage laziness and dependence on the government. Excellence starts in the home and grows stronger in the schools. I do not favor increased social welfare spending – life is sweet but can be hard, getting educated and keeping a job and your nose clean is perquisite for the good life. In another words, “personal responsibility” counts more than welfare spending. Social progressive wanted to eliminate tests and merit-based criteria for schools, busing to mix populations, reserved housing for minorities in wealthy areas, etc. I totally disagree with any of that. I say stimulate the economy, create jobs and that will eventually take care of most of the problems.
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New York City is so large and diverse that I don’t think there really is a “typical”.
I leave my apartment for work at about 730 each morning, Monday through Friday. I work until 6–8 pm barely taking time for lunch, return home, eat dinner, and pass out. Saturday I recover and Sunday I play.
However, when I do take a day off to relax or go to a doctors appointment, I am always amazed at how many people have completely different lives. The streets are full of people at 10 am or 2 pm on weekdays. What are they doing and where are they going? When I fly I to NY in the middle of the night and take a cab to my home in Brooklyn at 3 am there’s traffic on the highways. Who are these other people and why are they awake at that hour? There are plenty of different answers to these questions. I’d say about 8 million of them.
I really think it varies a lot depending on where you live. I grew up and still live in a part of Brooklyn which Manhattanites might consider rural. LOL! It requires a ride on the Q train and one of two buses from the train station. For me growing up here was like the best of both worlds: the hustle-bustle of the city when I wanted it, and quiet green space when I got back home. My parents both work in schools so they were off in the summer. We had a routine of “Friday trips” to various cultural institutions like the Met, MOMA and other places. I of course took this for granted as a child but now I realize what a privilege it is to have these world-renowned museums within such close reach. I don’t mean to sound snobby but I think I am more educated and sophisticated because of this environment. The diversity is also amazing. You can get every type of ethnic food you ever wanted. And I mean real authentic places: tacquerias, Korean BBQ, stinky tofu in Flushing, Jewish deli, you name it. The diversity of the food obviously reflects the diversity of the people as well. I go to Brooklyn College and I have friends from every corner of the world. I feel connecting with them has enriched my life and understanding of different cultures. I worked for a major city agency in the summer and I also met so many people from vastly different walks of life. I learned a lot from the other workers. So yeah, there’s always something to do and something to learn. For me this was encapsulated by one anecdote from a few months ago. My friends and I went to an event in the Upper West Side which ended near midnight and we were hungry after so we went to get halal and there was a line even at that hour.
If you live on Staten Island you might either drive or bus to the ferry for a cheap ride (it used to be a nickel) to Manhattan. What most people really mean when they post these silly questions is: “What’s it like to live in Manhattan and to work in Manhattan?” I lived at 85th and B’way for 40 years. I sometimes had 9 to 5 jobs in Midtown (30s to 50s?) and I’d pick up the Times and take either a bus or a subway (45 min.); sometimes I walked. On my way home I liked to pick up some Chinese take-out and cold beer. In the evening my wife and I would sit and watch TV with our cats.
I think everyone should jump at the chance to live in New York at least some point in their lives. There is no where else like New York. The energy is electrifying.
If you have enough money, power, relationships and pedigree, you will enjoy all that New York City has to offer from events, real estate, culture, musicals, museums, restaurants, people, etc. Weather might not be best compared to Los Angeles, but for all the perks NYC offers, it really overrides the weather.
For business and career, there are so many opportunities for you to expl…
Everything depends on your age and your financial situation. Just like no matter where else you live. No two people are alike. No matter where you live if you are financially secure your life is going to be 100% better than the person who is not.
If you live in New York City and you’re young and financially secure I would say that New York City is probably a wonderful place to live. However if you’re not young and or you’re not financially secure or you are ill or whatever then it wouldn’t be such a great place to live.
New York City used to be a wonderful City at one time. No longer. Now it is noisy dirty and you have three times as many people on any given day on the street so need I tell you more? Did I mention the bumper to bumper traffic on the main avenues and sometimes even on the side streets at any time of the day or evening?
Did I mention how expensive everything is especially restaurant food? And even food in the supermarkets in general.
As a native New Yorker I would say that if you wanted to get particularly deep about it than it should be broken down into a few different questions? Whats was it like to live in New York City today Vs before around the year 1995. Or what I like to call NY 1.0 vs NY 2.0. As the two are vastly different places. Second question would be, ‘Whats it like to grow up in NYC?’ Again. Vastly different experience to the person who moves here as an adult. Im honestly not trying to be smug or difficult. But these things do make a difference. For example. Simply walking or living between Ave. A and Ave. D up until the early 1990s was a vastly different experience than it is today.
After living in Manhattan for the past 9 years, it’s easier to describe by reverse: compared to NY, the rest of the world feels asleep to me. When I now visit the suburbs where I grew up, or even other cities, they seem slow and inconsequential, like retirement homes. I realize that’s insulting, and I apologize, but that’s how it feels.
(And also scary … in NY, there are always people around and lights on, even at 4 am, and this feels safe to me. Now when I visit the suburbs or rural areas, it feels super creepy at night. I visited SF for the first time recently, and just started wandering around one night. Soon enough, I was in really sketchy areas. It didn’t occur to me that might happen, since in Manhattan, I have never felt this.)
You also don’t realize how weird cars are until you go without for a few years. Cars are really crazy, everyone. They cause all these problems, but everyone’s just gotten used to them. “Oh yeah, he was killed in a car accident. Oh well, I guess there’s nothing we can do.”
I’ve only visited a few cities in the world that can compare with NYC (Chicago, Berlin). As several people noted, it makes most others look like provincial backwaters. Time loses meaning and you feel there are more productive hours in every day, because it is truly the city that never sleeps. And there are people thronged everywhere, all the time. Two am on the subway to Coney Island, or on any bridge in or out of they city, or in restaurants and clubs. When I moved to Boston after six years in NYC, my first thought on going downtown was “where is everyone?!” Then it was – “what do you mean the the club/restaurant closes at 11 pm and the subway shuts down at 1 am?!” The difficulty in getting out of the city (or even crosstown), frankly anything involving a vehicle (parking, taxi drivers, traffic), the absolute filth in places and on people (homeless people in Boston look upscale in comparison), the tiny grocery stores, and the expense mitigate your enjoyment over time. And it’s hard to go back – a year or two later and I was back to feeling like a tourist. But to live in NYC is truly to live – to be 25 and live in NYC is to feel invincible.
When I was a teenager it use to be awesome. My friends and I attended Art and Design High School and there were such a number of things to do in New York. We had the best transportation system. If we wanted to go to the movies we would just hop on the train underground and be in broadway in a few minutes. If we wanted to see the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island we could ride the Staten Island Ferry for a few cents. If we wanted to hang out by the river we could walk by the East River, set up a picnic, play handball with friends, jog, sprint and walk to one of numerous candy stores or bodegas to get our favorite candy. If we wanted to go swimming there were numerous pools we could visit on the West side, or East side like pitt street pool, or 23rd street and sometimes I would get on the ferry with my friends and around ten of us would go the pool right across the river in Staten Island. It’s a pleasant 1/2 hour ferry ride and you can sit outdoors and watch the river and the skies, and eat a sandwich or get a hot dog as your moving. Enjoy sports? Go to the major fields where New York Mets, Dodgers or other teams play. Go see the New York Jets and Giants play. In the summer we could visit Central Park for concerts and walk around, lay in the open field of grass or go to the famous children’s zoo or the fancy restaurants like Tavern on the Green. Sometimes you might even see a celebrity at the park. You want chinese food, barbecue, bagel and lox, polish food, soul food and some of the best Spanish food in the world. Go to china town on the lower east side with it’s many restaurants and get some pork fried rice and won ton soup. You wanna talk about making money get a job in the financial wall street district. You wanna fight, we can do that to. If you want to see the major movies on major movie screens go to Times Square and then go next door to play video games, or get a Nathans hot dog and fries at our famous Coney Island amusement park. Anyways, I have great memories of New York. New York was always, always exciting.
Being in New York is exciting because you feel like you’re a part of something important, like a larger experiment that can go wrong at any moment, but doesn’t. There’s a sense of wonder that comes from observing just the mundane operations of the city, because by all stretches of reason, the New York we know shouldn’t exist. Things like the density and diversity of people, the crumbling infrastructure, and the vehicular chaos on the streets should result in utter disorder, yet New York runs like a magic trick. It’s this razor thin edge between chaos and order that’s so dazzling; it’s the symptom of progress.
Yet like the magic trick, there’s a small part of you that wonders if the hype of New York isn’t just the result of some mass delusion. New York City has the impression of being the crowning jewel of urbanism. Both people from in and out of New York City love New York, which is further propelled by stories, photos, and videos on YouTube and social media. When everyone thinks your city is amazing, how do you know whether your experience of New York City is the result of a genuine quality of excellence or the result of a reputation of excellence? Is there a difference?
As a native New Yorker for 51 years and having always lived here, there are some definite pros and cons to living in New York:
Pros
1) in my humble opinion it’s the cultural, happenin’ center of the world
2) the people are warm and no nonsense (even if they are in a hurry)
3) THE BEST food bar-none in the whole country
4) Anazing cultural diversity
5) Within an hours drive of NYC you can be in the suburbs, the beach, anywhere in the tri-state area with a completely different atmosphere and experience
Cons
1) Very fast pace of living
2) High cost of living
3) Traffic and congestion
4) Winters can be tough
Great place to live and grow up. I am in my 70’s now but spent 50+ years there and even as much as I enjoy Arizona, no where else offers the diversity and opportunity thatNYC offers.
It’s fantastic and it’s terrible. I’ll give you my own take, as with a city of over eight million (almost 20 if you count the metro area), it’s impossible to generalize too broadly.
I was at varying times in New York a lowest-level office employee, a student, an employee at a non-profit, and a corporate attorney. I’ve lived in an 8’x9′ closet space up to a quaint (read: tiny) apartment in the West Village, and I’ve done my fair share of couch surfing between apartments and boroughs.
As a student (and at occasional times thereafter), I was able to do anything I wanted that was free. This is a lot in NYC: seeing luminaries in art, politics or business, exploring historical wonders or simply enjoying the view. There are parades, free concerts and some of the greatest parks in the world. There is no place better than New York if you want a mix of cultures, history and opportunity.
And for the right price, there is almost no limit to what you can do in New York. That’s the rub that I found. With all that there is to do for free, it’s not easy to afford the things that people in other cities take for granted. You want to eat out or have drinks with a friend? Expect to pay twice as much as other cities, if you can get off work in time. Family members in other parts of the country asking why you haven’t seen that new sensational musician/play in town? Probably because you do not have $300 to spend on it. As one grows older and things become more expensive – be it kids or simply a desire to have a lawn – the draw of less expensive cities becomes stronger. This isn’t just a financial point, everyone pays a price for living in the city – be it a long commute, a cramped living environment or being a germaphobe who’s shoved into a subway car with someone’s armpit or other body part in your face.
Even with the price associated with the city, there are still millions of people who cannot wait to get a piece of that action: to be a part of the most vibrant, exciting city on the planet. There’s something to living in New York City – for me it was the knowledge of what has happened there and what could happen there – but it really boils down to just being where the action is (even if you’re missing that action sitting at home or at work), and the hope that tomorrow, you WILL be there.
ORIGINAL QUESTION ANSWERED: What is life like in New York City right now?
Not bad.
I hear road construction works outside of my bedroom window, creating more noise than usual. I guess not that many are affected by this as most of them are at work, or on their way to work.
I’m preparing breakfast soon, to take my supplem…
After having read these answers, I must say I am so confused. All of the “Why is California Living So Great” answers claim to have all of this and more. Where is NYC’s ski-in-the-morning and surf-in-the-afternoon? With all of the built-up hype between Blue England on the East Coast and the Left Coast, I’m happy to be sitting here in the Great State of Texas and avoid all of that.
I was raised in California, the SF Bay Area to be exact and switched coasts for my undergrad. I instantaneously fell in love and though I have moved cross country a few times since then, I now plan to stay in The City for as long as they’ll have me.
Daily life
My typical day starts the night before by checking the weather.
Quick overview:
choose outfit
determine how much earlier/later I should leave my house depending on weather conditions
If weather is bad I wake up 30 minutes prior to normal wake-up time to give extra lee-way for
bundling
public transpo
If weather is ok, I wake up at my normal time but still check transit conditions because I refuse to be tardy.
Other than weather, it is almost like SF life. Though there are way more things to do in NYC.
Differences
Vibe hustle, high strung, stressful, whatever term you choose, the feel of the city is different. Frankly, I’m all about NY where people tell you straight up how they feel -good, bad or indifferent- and passive aggressive behavior is a rarity. Almost zero ambiguity; which I love and hate at the same time.
Life is much easier in SF than it is in NYC — especially as an Asian.
From a blog post I wrote a while back:
[…] it took almost a year to adjust to East Coast life. You see, I was guilty of living in the California bubble — for a lack of a better term, and realized how rainbows and butterflies California is after I lived out of state. I rarely experienced racial divide. I am Asian (Japanese), and in California —especially in the SF Bay Area— blatant racism is non existent. People never outright called me names until I got to the East Coast. Why people thought it ok to go back where I came from or call me derogatory names was beyond me. I couldn’t understand why strangers hated me so much.
Another huge adjustment was witnessing socio-economic divides on a daily basis. Like, in my face. In California, our cities are separated —or shall I say segregated— and the socio-economic lines are rarely blurred. Ghetto? What ghetto? Oh, urban areas I mean; don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable by being politically incorrect.
I was raised in a wealthy area and my friends and I were taught to stay within our city and area limits. Everyone abided except me. I’ve spent time in Hunter’s Point, EPA, and the Mission — areas that are predominately Black, Mexican, Samoan or Tongan, and was never afraid walking down the streets. Scared, maybe, but never afraid. On the East Coast, there are parts where I am terrified of my well being (i.e. deep in Brooklyn or New Jersey.) The more states I visit, the more I realize California is a very special place.
…that’s all I have for now but will add if I think of anything else.
I lived in NYC for years and I had some amazing times there. However, I don’t think it’s a question that can really be answered – everybody’s experience is different. I had some of the best years of my life there and thought it was exciting, stimulating and everything that a city should be. My ex husband thought it was loud, people were rude and it was overhyped. I recently visited Seattle and was beyond bored – but that’s just my personal take. Visit NYC some day and see for yourself
Each borough is different, but living in Manhattan is like living in a Woody Allen movie.
FYI, its expensive, very much so, but the cost of living in Gotham is worth it. Its a worldly city. Walking down any given street you will hear countless languages and people dressed in many cultural garbs, you see mega wealth and you see homeless. you see beauty and you see the harshness of life as well
Are you a millionaire? And by millionaire, I mean super millionaire. Like at least 8 figures millionaire. If you are in the 8 figures club, then you have enough money to enjoy the “real” NY. Full of high rise condos/apartments, regular Broadway shows, and having your favorite sip of wine while chilling in front of an Argo Tea in Central Park/Columbia Circle.
Are you simple a “bearly millionaire” in the 7 figure club? Just move to the Lower East Side or the newly gentrified Harlem. Are you pulling in 6 figures a year? You can live around the rich people, but you can’t live LIKE the rich people. Be prepared to stress about making rent as if you were making $7 an hour at McDonalds. Else get real and move to Brooklyn. Not the cool Brooklyn. Adjacent to East New York or Bedstuy is where you go. You still have a “quick” 45–60 minute train ride into the city.
If you’re making anything other than 6 figures in NYC, be prepared to get your bubble bursted. Think you’re going to live like Friends and/or Seinfield? Only the fabolously rich live like that in NYC. You real day to day in NYC will be commuting from the many outer boroughs to work your job in the city. You’ll need to walk 7 blocks to the nearest train station every day. And be prepared to stand most of the time on musty overcrowded trains. Then be prepared to hike back home to your crappy apartment in the borough which will be another 2 hour commute. Well, it could be more because the MTA sucks.
The reality of the matter, New York is only great if you’re rich, or if you’re visiting. To the normies, it’s just a grind, and an excercise in frustration. You’ll be spending your time chasing down trains, buses, working, and going back home. Repeat the cycle ad infinitum. Of course you can avoid all of that and just move to NJ or out of the area altogether.
You only go to NYC to actually live if you have a specific reason to be there. Either you’re trying to start a business, and want access to the top talent. You’re in fashion or theater in some major way (meaning you actually are getting work, not just “dreaming”). Or you’re in the city trying to pad your resume to get a better job in a city that is a lot less insane. But definitely don’t expect to live like Sex In The City. That’s a fantasy.
Nes York city has so much to offer. Museums, art galleries, theatre, shopping, the list goes on and on. Its great just walking from one neighborhood to the next. There are many great things to do such as walking through Central Park or sitting at an outdoor cafe.
New York is such a huge city with very little accessibility. It would be difficult to live there if you are a daily wheelchair user like myself. People don’t move for you they are actually very rude. Some streets don’t have a way to get on the curb unless you pop a wheelie.
I did notice no one waits on the lights to change so it’s very fortunate you don’t see many cars hitting pedestrians.
Back to accessibility, you have to travel a distance just to find a subway entrance that has an elevator. Most stores have a step or a very steep ramp.
Traffic is hell and Uber’s are expensive.
Time square is something to see but everything around it is expensive. I paid $10 for a cheese pizza wtf?
Everyone is trying to sell you something. There are people filming movies everywhere. It can literally be a Hollywood star right next to you and you not even know it.
With all that said New York is not the best to live in if you are paralyzed or a everyday wheelchair user. It is great to visit but make sure you don’t go alone because you will need help.
Intro
Just fine. How’s life by you?
For someone who wants to experience new things, or to have regular moments of splendor or beauty, New York is the place to be.
In New York, you can’t be bored unless you want to be.
There’s just so much to experience here!
Art is around every corner, because businesses large and small commission artworks to beautify their buildings. Some examples:
Mural in a cinema downtown
A Murakami in a 57th Street office building
The ‘Chinatown’ Mural in Chinatown
OY/YO at the Brooklyn Museum
Cultist inlay art in the streets
A Banksy here or there
Get the picture? Art is EVERYWHERE.
Architecture: we’ve got Zaha Hadids, Jean Nouvels, Bjärke Ingels, Cass Gilberts, James Renwicks. If you stand at the corner of 57th & Madison you can look over at I M Pei’s Four Seasons Hotel or south to Philip Johnson’s AT&T (now Sony) building. We can look straight at seven former World’s Tallest Buildings and One World Trade, the tallest building in the Western hemisphere.
Former World’s tallest building The Woolworth Tower, now used as MACUSA in Harry Potte…
I haven’t lived in Manhattan since 1989, and I love the place I live now, but I still miss Manhattan every day.
New York City is a great place to live if either of the two following conditions applies to you: (a) you are young and energetic; or (b) you have lots of money. When I lived there I had very little money but I was young (right out of college) and loved every minute of it.
It would be harder for me today, mainly because the living spaces are small. I am 20+ years older, have more books and other possessions, and have become accustomed to more living space than I could afford there. My last apartment in Manhattan was a 300 square foot one bedroom. My house in Portland, Oregon is almost 14 times that big (if you count the storage space in the basement).
Like a rush of adrenaline. All the time.
Things I love about NYC : Diversity, public transit, easy access to services, abundant culture (e.g., live music, theatre, museums, architecture), haute cuisine, delivery everything
Things I hate about NYC: High cost of housing, homeless people, crowds (but only sometimes), snow, ridiculous tourists
Cold weather, have fun with the snow, and frostbitten feet, icy windows, no houses, just ugly depressing box apartments that cost a fortune, so small you cannot swing a squirrel around, let alone a cat, mean cold materialistic people who have no time for you, they just push for the gold toilet they need in their house, no parking, horrendous traffic, and just 1 park central park.
I have lived accumulatively exactly 16 years in SF and 16 years in NYC. Both have a lot to offer, and are very different in certain ways.
When I moved back to SF from NYC in 2004, I experiences culture shock. There were certain things I had become accustomed to in NY that SF was sorely lacking in. It took a while to settle back in to life in SF and accept it for what it is: not New York.
Examples of some of the differences:
In NYC, jaywalking is normal, and there is a certain flow that happens between cars (mostly taxis) and pedestrians, an unstated understanding that, for example, as a pedestrian I will walk across the street in the middle of the block, and I will keep walking as you (cab or car) will whiz by as I barely clear your rear bumper. It is efficient, no one needs to stop, slow down, or gaze into each other’s eyes to be recognized and respected.
Not so in SF. Here, we must acknowledge each other (often involving actually looking at each other), lest we get that SF glare (which is hopelessly wimpy compared to the Boston glare). SF is a town of humorless finger waggers. Behavior that somehow is acceptable here never flies in NYC.
When you first move to NYC, you will inevitably be exhausted after every day just being there, regardless of how much actual ground you covered. To me this is because there are so many people that you see, from so many backgrounds, that the energy it takes an outsider to absorb all that is phenomenal. Eventually you learn to put blinders on. If you don’t, you will continue to be exhausted at the end of every day.
SF is sadly homogeneous, not just with race but with background and economic class. Yes, NYC rents are expensive too, but there is a far greater diversity of class there. This is not just a recent development, SF has been heading in the direction of non-diversity for decades (and as others have noted, no other large city will ever be as diverse as NYC anyway).
Food: NYC has a much better selection and quality of on the go food, despite the rise of great food trucks in SF. In just about any part of town in NYC you can get a great falafel, pizza, or sandwich and have it in your mouth in less than 3 minutes.
Both cities have very good high end restaurants.
Both have great “ethnic” restaurants but NYC has more diverse ones of quality. Never buy a “California Style” burrito in NYC though. They do not exist. Also never buy a “New York Style” bagel in SF. Same thing.
Both cities have good micro breweries but SF has a better selection of “local” “artisanal” brews available.
Proximity to real outdoors: SF beats NYC by a long shot here. Not only can you go in just about any direction from SF and within 20-30 minutes be surrounded by nature, but you can also just SEE it surrounding you by climbing the next hill in the city itself. This gives SF a huge plus, and is in part why it is such a beloved city by tourists and residents alike. In NYC you can travel for 2 or 3 hours and still not find a dramatic display of natural beauty. Oh, look, we are in the Catskills! There is a sad river and some hills.
Daily Life: In SF you can wander out of your apartment in sweats to walk your dog, or even to go to the store. A lot of people here, especially in the Marina (you never see this in the Mission), go SHOPPING while wearing work out clothes. It has been a few years but this was just not common in NY while I was there. When you leave your apartment in NY, you must be dressed. SF still has the slob style. I am a slob so that works for me.
Political Correctness: In SF there is an almost unreal atmoshere of walking-on-eggshells or we-all-agree-about-every-political-topic when discussing anything to do with diversity in race, class economic status. To the point where there is no real discussion (and God forbid any humorous discussion) about how people really feel about this stuff. It infects every aspect of social and political life here. I found NYC to be much freer when discussing (and especially joking about) race, for example. I learned a loosenss in humor around these topics from people who were from diverse backgrounds, not from people like me. I think this has to do with SF’s silo-like profile.
Public Transportation: NYC wins.
Traffic and parking: SF wins. To hear people here in SF complain about “traffic” and “parking” always makes me laugh. And I live in a “bad” parking neighborhood.
Weather: NYC big loser here.
New York is exciting all of the time and the home for our family and all of our friends and community.
You make friends at restaurants, all over.
As a NYer born & bred, for me, the convenience & independence of living car free outweighs the expense, crowding, humid sumers/freezing winters here.
As costly as NY is, SF is even more so. NY also has the options of co-ops which California doesn’t.
So, despite SF’s ideal climate & beauty, NY’s practicality is the one that floats my boat.
amazing people and city. I chose to commute into manhattan from nj with a studio 3rd floor walkup – 2 hours commute, and i still loved it. only paid 650 and could see the ocean
So wonderful if you can find a way to afford it. There is always a way to get around the high rents. Roommate situations abound. People keep insane work hours. And often don’t get paid extra for it. Hence, the statement “”If you make it here, you can make it anywhere.” I love the diversity and I don’t know if I could live without it anymore.
With all due respect I can tell you a better answer. I lived in the nicer and ugly sides of NYC all my life. Unfortunately, it’s not that pretty. Before I move from Williamsburg to Canarise in Brooklyn it was quiet and it was very comforting to live there. But boy the city is a drag! People are rude and honestly it’s all show it’s a hard life to live here if you don’t come from money. It’s not worth spending 2,000 and more for a crappy apartment your neighbors show no respect and your landlords are assholes. Don’t get started about the subway they keep raising the fair for crappy service like my train line is completely down for an entire year! Yes it’s pretty but it’s not pretty to live and it’s a hard life. Most people live in crowded slum apartments and public schools aren’t safe. People who live in Manhattan say it’s safe cause it’s Manhattan. Once you go towards Washington Heights and Harlem it loses that safety. Queens is decent but again boring and the white people took over the center of Brooklyn so the surrounding areas of the borough have gone to shit. Don’t move here especially with kids it’s not worth the headache save yourself some piece of mind move to a better city maybe like Dallas.
Got to specifi what new York?well as for me i love brooklyn New York, for so many reasons always something to do and go,Manhattan new York also so many things two,
“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”
-John Updike
Fucking amazing! The hardest part was getting in there. Then it was figuring out how to stay in there. Then it was figuring out what am I really doing here. Finally it was why am I still here? In between, it was an amazing decade of the most real, unreal, visceral, poignant, amazing and awful experiences that truly helped define me as a person for the rest of my life.
It’s exciting.
Period.
You know the one about the blind men and the elephant? Each person feels a different part of the animal, and each one reports that it is a very different creature from what his companions describe. So it is with New York.
There are five boroughs, each with many different neighborhoods, and one of them, Staten Island, is virtually indistinguishable from suburbs anywhere. Even so, there are things that are true for most people, in most neighborhoods:
It’s fast, loud, and has a high population density, so crowded, although for different variables of the word.
It really does run 24/7. The subway never shuts down, and in many, if not most neighborhoods, there is something open around the clock, even if it’s a deli. Most businesses are open later than you’ll find in other places.
There’s an enormous demographic diversity, with literally hundreds of nationalities represented.
It’s expensive.
It’s exciting.
And in the words of developer Robert Moses, “Every true New Yorker believes with all his heart that when a New Yorker is tired of New York, he is tired of life.”
I have never lived there, but have spent time there. My daughter lives there now. It’s an awesome place, but very expensive. So much culture, diversity, wonderful food and a large beautiful park right in the center.
Wondrful if you can handle the pace and cost. Best transportation,sports,culture of all kinds,theatre,parks ,jobsand diversity.
Except for my time in the U.S. Marine Corps, I have lived in New York my entire life. Born in Manhattan, grew up in Queens, lived in Nassau County for 40 years, and lived in Orange County for 6 years. I have traveled extensively throughout the US and Europe and have visited and stayed in for weeks such cities as LA, Chicago, Miami, Dallas etc. plus smaller places in every state in the US. In addition, I can drive in London without a map and have spent time in Paris, Venice, Rome, Munich, Salzburg etc.
New York is without question in my mind the greatest city I have ever been in. I admit that I have no experience in Australia, Japan or China. No Rio, no Buenos Aires, no Brazillia, no Tierra Del Fuego, nowhere in Africa so my opinion is hence somewhat limited.
New York City is vibrant, hip, exciting, competitive (I worked for Wall Street firms for 32 years in a very “cut throat” aspect of the securities business) – calling on major Fortune 500 companies and large organizations. I had a major insurance company as a client, a Major League Baseball team (in NYC), one of the largest food producers in the world, a top toy company and other major clients, including a Swiss based pharmaceutical manufacturer. So I met with many CEOs, CFOs, and Boards of Directors. Consequently my answer includes opinions given by many major senior executives.
My point with all this background information is that I have experience living in NY and having social and business intercourse with countless major executives. The only folks I ever met that had negative views of NYC were Swiss businessmen and small town people who had virtually no NY experience except for the occasional visit.
It is impossible to describe what mid-town or Wall Street feels like on a business day. There is excitement, vibrant activity, tremendously varied eating establishments. Since 9/11, you can’t walk more than a block or two without seeing NY police prescence.
In New York City, you feel ALIVE. Just listen to Frank singing NEW YORK, NEW YORK. Every word is true.
If you are writing about New York City, come stay in a hotel for a week or two and just walk around day and night. You’ll get it. New York State? One of the most beautiful states in the US from the forests and mountains of “upstate”, to the beaches and villages of Long Island. From the state parks and state lands to the little towns like Rhinebeck, Hyde Park, Saratoga Springs, Hudson to the larger towns and small cities like Albany, Buffalo, and Rochester you’ll discover a diversity found just about nowhere else. Great wineries, superior lakes and rivers and just about anything you might want can be found in New York outside New York City.
In London, I used to “run the bridges” – start at Tower Bridge near The Tower of London and cross back and forth from north to south and bridge to bridge. In New York, drive the bridges of the Hudson Valley, east and west and back again over the Hudson River. Stop at the little towns and villages. Youon’t want to leave the state.
It is not possible to write a comprehensive answer to your question without writing a book. Hope my comments help. One other thing, Brooklyn is Brooklyn, Queens is Queens – both similar but absolutely different. Bronx – has its own distinction. Staten Island is a world on to itself. When most people refer to “The city”, they mean Manhattan.
One other point, unless you have real money, you’ll never be able to experience the “city”. Dinner at a good restaurant, a Broadway show plus parking or taxis for two people, you are looking at 5 to 6 hundred minimum. Make it an excellent reataurant, tickets from a scalper and you better have 1500 to to 2000.
As a New Yorker I will tell you my experience with positive and negative things
1.sometimes the people in nyc can be very cruel which doesn’t surprise me since everyone is so stressed about their rent their work etc
2.New York city has a lot of iconic landmarks that you would usually see in movies and are stunning up close
3.The city is beautiful at night, spectacular lights that is just great to look at when your thinking about important things here’s a little problem with that thinking part there is so much noise pollution you can’t even really get a peaceful sleep on the week.
4.This city has so much diversity it is what makes it unique,if your looking for Asian culture we got that,if you want Hispanic culture we got that as well,you want African culture we got it all.There is so much diversity it’s like a small part of that continent was put into the city.
5.I have two opinions to if you should come to Nyc if you like a easy going spaced out life you should come and visit but Thats it.
6.if you want a speedy life where your always running for work or running for the train or bus this is the place for you if you aren’t a people person this place is perfect for you listen if you want a fast pace life this is the place.
-I hope I done my best at telling you how life is on the east coast of America.
Compared to New York, the rest of the world seems asleep to me.
NYC feels like an engine powering the world, and by living there, you are a cog in the engine. Living anywhere else makes you a passenger.
Some less metaphorical differences:
1. The diversity
I think this is by far New York’s biggest difference and biggest strength, but I don’t see it mentioned nearly often enough. New York City might be the most diverse place in the world. The racial and ethnic diversity is obvious, and anywhere else in the U.S. now seems overwhelmingly white to me when I visit. But there’s also a lot of diversity of age, economic level, and industry. When I visited SF, it seemed like everyone worked in Tech. Here, it’s the center of finance, marketing, publishing, fashion, you name it. Each person you meet is likely to be different from you in every single facet possible.
2. The activity
The “city that never sleeps” certainly does sleep – try walking around the east village at 7 am – but it’s still much busier than anywhere else. Residents tend to avoid the crazy places tourists frequent, particularly Times Square, but we still pass by thousands of people every day.
3. The creativity
Living in New York is being surrounded by creative types – tech entrepreneurs, actors, dancers, designers, directors, painters, authors. The city itself is a constant reminder of others’ creative accomplishments, from the beautiful (and wildly diverse) architecture to the ads for new shows, bands, parties, meetups, museums, and more. Just being here is inspiring and can generate more creative ideas than you could hope to complete in a lifetime.
4. The accessibility
This applies mostly to food, but also to any other product or activity: you can find anything at any time of day. There are 24-hour coffee shops, drug stores, grocery stores, hardware stores. Even the Apple store is open 24 hours, for some reason. I use Seamless to order meals, and it tells me there are over 400 restaurants that are within delivery range of my apartment. Down the street is a Sri Lankan restaurant, a Vietnamese restaurant, Thai, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Belgian, Mexican, Afghani, Lebanese … and countless superb bagel and pizza places. There are bookstores open till midnight here. And as a comic book reader, there aren’t any other places in the country with such a wide selection of stores.
5. The transportation
90% of all my transportation now is walking. You don’t realize how weird cars are until you go without for a few years. Cars are insane. They cause all these problems, but everyone’s just gotten used to them. “Oh yeah, he was killed in a car accident. Oh well, I guess there’s nothing we can do.”
6. The safety
In Manhattan at least, I feel much safer than almost anywhere else I’ve ever been. Now whenever I visit the suburbs or rural areas, it feels super creepy and empty, especially at night. Suburbs at night terrify me. I’ve wandered into some pretty sketchy areas in SF at night, too. Not in New York.
7. The cultural references
One nice touch is that my home is constantly being referenced by books, tv, comics, movies, and news. I was walking and listening to the (amazing) audiobook of The Magician’s Land today, and he mentioned Houston Street AS I WAS WALKING ON HOUSTON STREET. This was not a book about New York, it was a random book. This is just very cool.
The primary downside of all this, for me at least, is that you can feel pressure to match the incredible achievements of everyone around you – to be as interesting and successful as they are. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed, but if you remember that this reaction is just in your head, it can be manageable. But it takes some work.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and those above are from my list of 100 favorite snapshots I’ve taken of the city. http://jkrweb.com/shelf/?book=newyorkcity-bestphotos
Note: This is an expansion of my previous answer on this page, which was done with my old account which I can’t seem to delete.
Victor Allen’s
When you move to NYC as an adult it has a special magic that inspires. Couple this with the feeling that one has “made it” from the little town in Ohio or wherever and now is in the big time. When you grow up there you see it for what it is. A way overpriced, horribly exploitative, and self-congratulatory major city. In the past it at least had a grit and a charm thanks to ethnic neighborhoods and tough areas that made you earn your NYC badge. Today it’s a big mall.
I have lived in New York City for four years and have recently written an article about it my experiences with renting, landlords, bed bugs (oh yes!), and frequent fire alarms. I was living in crappy apartments most of the time and although I don’t believe that messy apartments built character they sure make for some interesting stories. 🙂 Would love to hear more about your experiences! Bed Bugs, Fire Alarms, and Living the Dream – You Might Also Like
I love it. It’s fast and upbeat but at the same time, it can be slow and peaceful. Depends on where you look. Yes, you can see people rushing to get places but you can also see people just relaxing at the park and enjoying every second.
It’s truly diverse and I would not pick anywhere else to live. The world comes to New York City, you experience different cultures without having to leave.
Living in NYC is whatever you make it out to be. It is a city that many people dream to even visit, let alone live in. There is a reason that it is the backdrop of so many great movies. The food is incredible because there are thousands of restaurants and food establishments to choose from. The people are generally busy or in their own world, so don’t get offended when not everyone you pass on the streets stops to waive. Transportation is abundant so you don’t necessarily need a car (it’ll cost you to park it). NYC is expensive, but what big city isn’t? It is all relative when you live and work here. The culture is amazing in NYC, it is quite literally a melting pot of different races, cultures, religions, beliefs, and it is wonderful. There are a million things to do in the city, from parks to museums to music entertainment to cinematic brilliance and everything in between. If you are bored in NYC, it is your fault entirely.
If you have a good job and make a lot of money all of the glowing answers you have received or read are correct. If you are poor, this is a tough, harsh, soul crushing environment where you will experience all of the hardships of bigotry, tokenism, and exploitation that you experience in any other place.
I’ve lived in NYC (by choice) for 35 years, I came here shortly after college and never left. It can be a fantastic place to live, it’s better with money and a good job, and be prepared to work hard, it’s very competitive and demanding. You don’t need to live in Manhattan, you don’t need to earn hundreds of thousands a year, three are 8 million stories in the naked city. The people make the city, after the dizzy mix of peopel from all over the world, almost every other city is just a bit less, though I travel a lot and enjoy many cities all over the US and the world.
That said, you need a support system, friends and preferably family, as you can fall long and hard on your own and the city just keeps rolling on.
I have lived in NYC all my life. I could tell you about the diversity, our near-constant roller coaster of movement around town, the huge variety of sights and sounds and smells.
But I am also realizing that the NYC experience really does differ from group to group. It is very different for those of us who grow up here, compared those who come as adults. There are also big differences in experience for those who attended public school and those who went to private and/or parochial schools. There are differences experienced by those who belong to rather cloistered groups (Satmar Hasidic Jews, for example) compared to most others.
But just about everyone does ride the subway trains and buses at some point each year. Just about everyone goes to a…
Living in the New York City means living my biggest and deepest dream. For me as a photographer, I will never ever become bored of living here as NYC is always buzzing place which surprises me with its beauty on every day basis. I can honestly say, it is the best place for living in the world. And no, you don’t have to be a millionaire to make the most out of the experience living here. This awesome city is for all of us – poor or rich, white or black, young or old… This city doesn’t make differences, it doesn’t judge but it gives all of us the same opportunities.
Fun, a lot of diversity and exposure. I was culture shocked. You can easily find and get a job. Always something to do all hours. My friends used to wake me up to go to breakfast at 3:00 am. I had a ball.
New York City will either suck you dry or shower you with more opportunities than you know what to do with. With a population just north of 7 million people it’s an urban jungle where you can find a community built around any interest you could possible have.
For better or for worse, I’ve explored a couple of crazy things here. There’s a gigantic chess scene in NYC, with chess hustlers playing playing for $5 a game in Union Square.
The dating scene is fast-paced since you’re constantly meeting new people. Trying all the restaurants on a random street alone could take weeks, let alone thoroughly exploring the dive bars at Lower East Side, or the hidden gems buried within Korea Town.
But the real magic of New York isn’t just in the city, it’s in the boroughs where the vast majority of NYC lives.
My Brooklyn roommate would go to these parties he called 10 to 10’s. A 10 to 10 was a a warehouse rave that went from 10pm to 10am. They always featured an international DJ, or some sort of European artist making a guest appearance.
I went to some. It’s a mad house. Lots of drunk people, lots of high people, and definitely druggies who are running on high-quality cocaine from some Wall Street banker. Even after years of living in the city I was learning something new.
The day to day life of NYC still has its fair share of struggles. The inflated cost of living is an obvious one. Everything from a half gallon of milk to freshly baked bread can be marked up 15¢’s …
I found this once early into my NY journey. After 10 years here, it’s still spot on..
For a place that has so many people, at times you can feel very alone. People here are loud, driven, tough, rude, selfish, crazy – it’s not for the timid or faint of heart. New York doesn’t care about your feelings – I’ve seen it spit so many people out. Nearly everyone that moved here young had to grind out a path, bust their ass to make it work. I always felt the call to move here from Australia and made it over at 22. It did beat me once – I moved away 3 years in, broke and broken hearted, tail between my legs. Spent a year in London, 6 months in China, a year back in Sydney (my home), but New York was never far from my mind.
I came back older, wiser and stronger. I earned my place here, learnt to dance in the madness & made it my home. Everything is here if you look hard enough – It has always felt like the center of it all.
Although I’m leaving soon (I can’t imagine personally raising a family here), New York will always hold a huge piece of my heart. I’ve been fortunate to travel extensively and I can’t recommend enough to anyone, living a couple of years of your life here in NYC.
NYC and SF are both are great cities. The problem with NYC is its too crowded and the people don’t care if you get hit by a bus. They have no time to stop to tell you the time. It’s very impersonal. Also, the weather is disgusting in the winter and the summer, but great in the fall and the spring. In NYC, it costs you $50 to step outside your apartment to pick up the morning newspaper – you catch my drift? The buildings and architecture in NYC is better than anywhere. The beautiful historic yet some modern looking buildings make you smile. You can’t be bored in NYC. There is too many places to go too much going on, and too much to see. You can get great food practically any time of the day or night. There are a lot of smart, upper-class people but they don’t want to get to know you. It seems easy to feel alone with millions of people around you. That being said, if you already have a bunch of friends who live there and who have the time to spend with you, it will be a lot of fun going out and experiencing the city with them. If you don’t already have friends who live there, you may have a tough time making friends.
SF lacks the stunning architecture that NYC has. I’m not a huge fan of the Victorian look in SF, except some of them that have a modern twist to it. The weather in SF is nicer that in NYC. Although it is usually cold or cool, you can wear warmer clothes and be fine, unlike in NYC. The weather in the northeast part of SF is the best – around South Beach. It’s usually sunny and anywhere from 65-85 degrees. The people in SF are diverse, and you stumble upon more friendly people than in NYC, or most US cities for that matter. In SF, everybody fits in. Everyone is typically accepted for who they are. So if you’re white, black, pink, Asian, Hindu, a pot head, a body builder, short, tall, etc etc, there’s a place for you in SF. That being said, there are some questionable and weird people who live in SF. NYC is dirty. SF is filthy. I’m talking about trash on the street, the smell of urine in a lot of areas, more homeless drug addicts than any US city, visible garbage bins etc. The scenery in SF is beautiful. There are views from just about any part of the city and the ocean can be seen from most parts of the area. Although most NYC neighborhoods look and feel somewhat alike, most SF neighborhoods are quite different from one another. I would say that SF is a city within city-feel suburbs, while NYC is all city. SF is also very expensive, but it’s mostly the rent and the price of gas that are so high. Also, quite a bit more taxes are taken from your paycheck than other places. NYC too. The cost of just about everything else isn’t too much more than other major US cities. NYC is the city that never sleeps. SF likes its sleep. Places close relatively early in SF, although a lot of privately owned restaurants stay open into the early hours of the morning. However, when you go to nightclubs and bars, expect to be done by 1am – 2am. The restaurants are equally amazing in SF to NYC, if not better, and they are also affordable unlike NYC for the most part.
In a nutshell, I’d say live in both cities at some point of your life if you can. If you’re coming from a suburban, non-city area, I’d start with SF and then move on to NYC. If you’re coming from a NYC, there may be a few disappointments in SF, alough there will be things you are very pleased with as well.
Am new to SF (via London) and lived in Fort Greene, Brooklyn for 8 years. Agreed with most all of what Eunji said, and some quick thoughts here:
Invited to more dinner parties (as opposed to dinners at restaurants) in 8 months in SF than 8 years in NYC (seems that more people know how to cook or people have bigger — or actual – kitchens?)
Typical NYC day: pick up coffee from your coffee cart guy (who you think you have a special relationship with, but it turns out that everyone thinks that), there is usually one hassle or another on the subway, then work, work, work. At night, you can do just about anything — haircut at 2 am (!) — you can imagine. This is a significant NYC advantage.
NYC – Sometimes (often) things can be hard. As in, a cab nearly runs you over, some smelly guy is all up in your face on the train, and you get into a shouting match with someone who just stole a taxi from you. Oh yeah, and the tourists walk too slow. All of these things could happen in SF, but people don’t seem to get worked up about it, which is nice.
SF in my experience is an easier place to live, but NYC has absolutely incomparable energy (Mumbai, Tokyo are close but no cigar). I’m of the “everyone should live in New York at some point in their lives” school of thought.
Agreed with Mona that NYC can be aggressive (then again, shouting every now and again is good for you), but never passive aggressive.
Weather: on the upside, NYC weather is consistent (i.e., freezing in winter, hot&humid in summer, lovely in spring and fall). I have yet to dress correctly for one day in SF.
Ditto to what Andrew said about fruit, burrito, bagels & lox. But most importantly, you will have your pick of the best pizza by the slice of anywhere. Pizza is perfect because all food groups are involved.
These are some random NYC things that are just lovely: The Earth Room, Fort Greene, Fort Greene, Fort Greene, Little Branch, The Strand, Film Forum, Century21, Brooklyn Bridge, High Line, walk for 30 minutes in any direction, and you’ll pass through 3 wildly different neighborhoods, more ethnicities than you knew existed, culture, chaos, and some random kindness of strangers that NY’ers never get enough credit for.
depends where you live i live in brooklyn someTimes you hear people geTTing shoT buT iT be Cool mosT of The Time, if you from There if you noT from There They noT finna know who you is and some people mighT TesT you if you Think you hard or if you sTare aT Them for Too long They finna be like “fuCC is you lookin nigga wanna geT iT on” and you noT wanna geT iT on wiT when There’s like 40 or 50 niggas
I love living in Manhattan.
I think people who aren’t as financially stable might not enjoy it, so it’s key to make sure you’d be able to afford EVERYTHING while living here before moving here.
I personally can afford what I’d like to buy, and the shopping here is AMAZING so i love that.
And about work, the demand for doctors is a bit higher here compared to other cities IMO. So I get paid a looot for being a surgeon, and I think it’s higher than what a cardiothoraric surgeon would get paid in other cities with many of them.
The hospital I work at is also amazing. I love working there.
My kids also go to one of the best prep schools in the world, so that’s kind of convenient. Manhattan has a lot of really good private schools, like the Spence School, and many many celebrities and successful people have graduated from it.
Also, it is easy to send my kids to other boarding schools around the world like Le Rosey (the supposed best school in the world) which I went to when I was younger, and the school they go to here has a similar education.
Also you could go on a mini vacation during weekends, which I love doing. My family has a house in Montauk, and we go there pretty often like 2 times a month. It’s a 2 hour drive, and i love going there.
You could also go to Jersey city, or conneticut, which are all really close. Many different cities are close to here, and that’s neat because these cities have the best Ivy League colleges.
Like when my kids go to college, Yale is just a few hour drive. Princeton is also really near here, like 3 hours or 2. Harvard, in Boston, is also really close. So that’s also convenient..
I just love living in this city, but you need to be financially stable or else you’d loathe it here 🙂
I have friends that moved because they couldn’t handle the noise, and they preferred quiet areas, so they moved to Long Island or the suburbs but still had easy access to the city 🙂
Living in New York is basically about having to deal with another layer of hard living. My brother used to live for 10 years rent free in a dumpy lower Eastside apartment with furniture that he found on the street (this is how people in NYC dispose of things they don’t want) and he used to say that people living in California (where the bulk of our family resides) have no idea what that extra layer of hard living is – – the weather, the crowds, the dirt, the crazy homeless and the lonely singles sitting in the food court in Grand Central Station.
Today it was in the 90s with humidity of about 80%. I got on the crowded subway at peak hour, and the air conditioning in my car was broken. It took all my energy to walk out of the subway, up the stairs, and get back on the metro north. So is it worth it?
Yes – because I also bought fresh sushi while I was on the run in the station, I reserved a meeting room for my digital publication team at Civic Hall (a very cool community for technologists in NYC on 5th Ave) and I stopped at a boutique on the same street and purchased four amazing shirts for practically nothing. Then at the square near my home I saw that a movie was playing on a large outdoor screen to a small group of people eating ice cream cones.
One of the happiest days of my life was when I was recruited from my job in Northern California to work in NYC. I wouldn’t ever dream of missing NYC for even one minute. Yeah today was hot and crowded and humid, but totally worth It.
Right now its not looking very good. Bars and restaurants close early (at least the ones that are open), Wonderful shops have gone out of business, crime is getting worse everyday and many of my friends and neighbors are moving. Some temporarily and some permanently. Trash is accumulating on streets and corners. Its terrible.
It’s awesome.
That said, this is impossible to answer, really. It depends on your temperament and what kind of crowds you run with and what you like to do and, to some lesser but still relevant degree, how much money you make.
Something that may help (although it is clearly very biased) is Eunji Choi’s answer to What are the advantages of living in New York City, rather than San Francisco? .
I don’t know what you expect out of a description of “daily life”, though. Most weekdays I get up, hit snooze about a dozen times, and finally haul myself into the shower, get dressed, (feed the bunnies,) walk to work.
Incidentally: our public transportation is incredible. I never use it. Cabs are plentiful, which is awesome and something every SFer mentions when they get here.
I don’t know what it’s like in SF, but there isn’t as much of a focus on “happy hour” unless it’s going out to drinks with work people after work, since the bars usually don’t close until 4am on the weekends and variably on the weekdays. That means during the week I’m likely to go home after work (to feed the bunnies again) before I go out to dinner, and then out afterwards unless I have specific events that start at 6 or 7. On the weekends a lot of people don’t even go out until 10 or 11 or even midnight. 9pm is a perfectly reasonable time for dinner reservations with plans to go partying afterwards.
There is so much diversity here. I don’t know what Mona is talking about in terms of being called names because one of my favorite restaurants is Japanese staffed by Japanese and non-Japanese, the people who run the bodega on the corner are Korean, the guys at my cigarette shop are Pakistani, my bagel guy last year was from somewhere in the Middle East (can’t recall) and I could go on. I can’t think of the last time I’ve heard a racial slur (unless you count guys calling konnichiwa in attempts to catcall, but I figure that more as being stupid than anything else). Everywhere you walk on the streets you see people from all over the world.
New Yorkers do not do the passive-aggressive thing that I encountered a lot in California. If you’re pissing me off on the street by doing something stupid, there’s a decent chance I will tell you; there’s an even better chance that before I say anything, half a dozen other people already have. This may come off as being a lot ruder to people in person, but I think the honesty is far preferable.
We walk a lot. NYC is mostly flat so it’s not actually a trial to walk a mile. We may have excellent public transportation and hordes of cabs but that doesn’t stop a lot of people from going for a stroll, especially if it’s nice outside. My commute to my office is about a mile, which I walk nearly every day unless the weather is truly horrid. I’ve walked from my apartment to the West Village, which is about 2 miles. Incidentally, this means that a lot of New Yorkers walk faster than most people; the corollary to this is if you’re not walking fast enough, do not dawdle in the middle of the sidewalk, there is likely someone behind you trying to get past you.
New York City is the only city in the world (that I can think of) where 5 miles is prohibitively far. I live in the East Village and I make it above 59th street less than a dozen times a year, and most of those are picnics in Central Park and seeing something at Lincoln Center. Within a walking distance from my apartment I can find authentic Japanese ramen, poetry slams, open space to throw a frisbee around, a pool hall, zillions of movie theaters, Ethiopian food, a “holistic” pet store, and pretty much everything I could ever think of or need.
… I’ll add more when I think about it.
Peet’s
Last week, riding the C train near Wall Street, I stood next to an elderly Japanese man who was dressed entirely in white, with white suspenders and pants, white shirt, and a white wristwatch, and he wore a furious silver-grey mohawk. The two Pakistani banker guys with sharp neckties didn’t notice him. They were talking basketball.
In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I walk down Fulton Street, past the twin boys who live near me, Aziz and Lamar, and they shout at me for the fourteenth time this summer to watch their skateboard tricks. Lamar is pretty good. Aziz, keep practicing, buddy. I amble on down to Ali’s Trinidad Roti, the best West Indian joint in Bed-Stuy. I keep going, past the Slave Theater, past the formerly kosher David’s Brisket House which is now owned by young Arab guys with iPhones. I stop in my favorite hardware store to shoot the breeze with the guy whose background I can’t figure out — Chinese-looking guy, massive muscles, with a German-sounding accent, but he speaks fluent Spanish with his employees. Maybe he’s… Ecuadorean? It’s Brooklyn, man. I buy a lightbulb.
Rounding the part on Marcus Garvey Boulevard by my apartment, I try to peek into the windows regarding the old Nation of Islam center. House windows tend to be boarded up, broken, a Gatorade container inside. I move. Time for you cook dinner: deep-fried green tomatoes, eggplant cannelloni, barbecue ribs.
Summer’s winding down. Leaves tend to be switching on my block. I got yet another visit to Rockaway Beach left in myself this weekend.
which is exactly how New York City is feeling for me personally right-about now.
If you are coming to visit, it can be the most exciting city in the world. There is always something to do any time of day or night. If you are moving here it can be a bit overwhelming at first, because there is so much going on. Either way you will need to be tough, bring money, a subway map and a sense of humor. Remember this is the home of pizza rat. If you don’t know pizza rat, google him
I love living in NYC. Everything is at your fingertips. It has culture, fashion, faciscinating people, excellent transportation and great food. Even if you live alone , you never feel lonely. The only thing I hate about NY is the cold weather and the snow.
A lot of fun, very expensive, rarely quiet but incredibly rewarding!
I’ve had too many experiences both real (from living in the city for approximately 25 years) and imagined (from books and movies) to try to do justice to the question in any sort of pithy, Quora-friendly manner.
That said, what jumps to mind first, is After Hours ( After Hours (1985) ).
Though arguably a bit dated, for me, Scorsese’s movie captures the first person experience of navigating New York’s unique maze of the exciting, the artistic, the sexual, the gritty, the gross and/or absurd, the scary, the frustrating, the sardonic, and the quotidien better than Annie Hall, Manhattan, or any number of other films.
The film took on special resonance for me as the protagonist’s (Griffin Dunne’s) home was an identical apartment unit in the same line in the same building as I lived in (the old McAlpin House on 34th and 6th) at the same time as the movie was filmed.
Whenever I think back about this film, I remember the dread and fear I felt for the protagonist as he became ostensibly “trapped” downtown when (in one of the most darkly hilarious and yet easy-to-believe-because-something-like-this-has-happened-to-me moments) his only $20 flew out of taxi window, and he had no way of paying to get back to his midtown apartment (which I knew to be on 34th St.).
And yet, the beauty of the Scorsese film is in how moments like that captures the essence of the native New Yorker being “captured” and “trapped” by and within New York City. After all, Dunne could easily have chosen to do what I had had to do on several occasions, and merely walk back uptown (up Broadway or 6th Avenue to be precise).
The fact that he doesn’t see this as a viable option, and the fact that even I as a knowledgeable Manhattanite didn’t see this as a viable option when experiencing the film, speak to the extent to which NYC pulls people into its web and somehow cuts off one’s neurological access to the “Exit” sign.
Scorsese’s film captures this dream-cum-nightmare-cum-dream-like aspect of what it’s like to live in and experience New York in a singular fashion.
How’s life in New York?
Do you mean New York State, or New York City? I will assume that you are referring to the city.
Life in New York City can be expensive, complex, exhilarating, unique, confusing, overwhelming, and exhausting.
Life in New York City can also be affordable, simple, boring, ordinary, sensible, mundane, and restful.
And life in New York City can be a lot of other things. A question like this is difficult to respond to as there is probably no wrong answer or experience.
There is an iconic line from a classic 1948 film (later inspiring a television series), “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” The Naked City – Wikipedia
Personally, life in New York City is normal to me. It is all I know since I was born and raised here and have rarely traveled outside of our city and I have been alive for more than half a century. To me, New York City is home.
Personally, life in New York City has been by turns glorious and horrendous, inspiring and demoralizing, tragic and heroic. Things here can be incredibly accessible and impenetrable simultaneously. It is both completely as predicted and yet absolutely shockingly unpredictable in almost any way possible. Life here can also be absolutely frustrating, boring, and tedious as well.
When describing it to someone who has never been here, one may become so frustrated in not being able to either explain it, or have anyone believe them.
For example, often New York City can be one of the loneliest places in the world despite all of the crowds, people everywhere, and social interactions. I have heard this same comment over the years from people who moved here and mentioned this unexpected sense of isolation even as they have enjoyed the excesses of people every single day. Life here in New York City can be cruel, cold, and harsh yet also compassionate, sympathetic, and loving. Things are not usually so extreme and two-dimensional as it has countless variations in between, a very three-dimensional city.
New York City has very much that je ne sais quoi quality (yep, Paris isn’t the only one to use the phrase).
New York City is uniformly individual in experience and perception. And such experiences and perceptions can change constantly.
Sorry, I can’t really answer “how” is life here as I haven’t answered it for myself yet, either. I change my own feelings and perceptions of it even with living here this half century.
But thanks for the A2A.
Depends. On the one hand, it can be unconscionably stressful and overwhelming if you haven’t experienced fast-paced life in a metropolis and attempt to start from scratch. Any Californian city is chill, laid-back and manageable. I’ve heard stories of folks that have succumbed to the stress of NYC and left within weeks, even if it meant leaving that job. The toll the city can take on an individual is heavy and unforgiving. On the flip side, you have the go-getters that did whatever it took to adapt and thrive in an environment so far from what they knew. It is unlike any other city in the world as it moves at an aggressive and fast pace but people that spend enough time in NYC develop a thick skin and can prosper anywhere in the world. It teaches you an astounding amount about yourself and your potential.
Easy, once you have a place to live. It’s a piece of cake and easier than living in small town, USA, because you don’t have the bigotry and boredom. Opportunities on every corner. Warm, friendly people who want to help you. So go for it. It is easier to live in NY than any other city in the world.
This is New York City so I thought this is best to spend half of the day in the Museum of Modern art and you have gotten your money’s worth. The absolute coolest exhibition one the top floor called the fashion exhibit, which takes you on a journey throughout time in a major fashion breakthrough in history. It’s super cool because there are a lot of the iconic pieces that you are so familiar with but have probably not noticed were major fashions breakthrough such as polo shirt or flip flop. This was amazing to see luxury pieces as well, such as the first Burberry trench coat and channel me.
Expensive. Seriously, New Yorkers think there is New York and the rest of the world is Bridgeport. For a business career there are all sorts of advantages to being in New York. Unfortunatley you have to have (or earn) a great deal of money to live the way middle income people live elsewhere.
I recommend this good YouTube video with a kind of City tour through New York City, accompanied by a beautiful jazz playlist. I’ve seen, heard and liked it.
Many visitors arrive with a whirlwind agenda, jamming several sites in different neighborhoods into each day. It’s fun, but it’s no wonder many say it’s “fun to visit but I couldn’t live here” after that experience. Locals’ average days are generally far more mundane.
Once you live here, New York feels less like a giant city and more like a large cluster of small communities. Every neighborhood has its own unique character, complete with long-term residents lamenting or celebrating its changes. Once you start walking the city, you can literally feel when you’ve crossed the border from one neighborhood to the next, and in some cases (I’m thinking of the first time I crossed from Chinatown to what’s left of Little Italy) the change in character is so striking it seems like you’re in a different town altogether.
You’ll notice many industries are clustered in regions. The Financial District is the most obvious example, and it’s generally true that when you find one business in an industry, you’ll find others nearby. This is very convenient if you can find a way to live near an industry cluster that interests you either professionally or personally. Cabs are efficient but can be trapped in traffic during busy times, so for short distances, walking can be the quicker alternative.
It’s wonderful. It’s pretty much apartments are closed to each other. Most of the Days are colder in the winter, you need to bundle up ur self. Spring is awesome. They got different culture foods in the city. There are many Night Clubs, Bars And restaurant. You can enjoy night Life. Their bridges are builded creatively. It’s nice to have a view of Brooklyn bridge from Hudson river. You could ride a bike on bike lane next to Hudson river. There is free farry to go to another borrow. If you have enough money in your bank account, you can live there wisely. Thanks guys..
New York is what the French call “ville mondiale”, world city. It is unimaginably big. It is dirty, noisy, and crowded. New Yorkers are not rude, they will engage you in conversation. You might not like what you hear. New York is rigidly socially stratified compared to other US places. Money rules. (Boston:where did you go to school?: Philadelphia: who are your family?; New York: how much money do you have?). You have only a small space to live in for a great deal of money. You have the greatest cultural opportunities, museums, theatre, literary. And an opportunity to rub shoulders with all the races, ethnicities, creeds of the entire world. It is not like the rest of the united States for the above reasons. Coming here from the Wast Coast forty years ago I felt like refugee.
What’s it like? How can any one person answer this. It’s a different city to different people. To a homeless person living in the streets it’s a living hell. To the Mayor it’s his own private community.
It’s awesome. You have a multitude of cultural and gastronomical destinations to enrich your life. I’ve lived here since I was born and every day I find something new that I didn’t know existed here before.
A new restaurant, or perhaps some new show at Broadway, etc. Also, the security continues to improve every day, long gone are the days where you would feel unsafe to walk around Manhattan.
Come to visit us; you’ll love it!
Well I’m a 100% single mom of 3 amazing children here in the lovely rotten apple, the notorious NYC. It’s a beautiful city and interesting, diverse, costly, crazy and in my humble opinion probably a bit over rated place. I reside in the lower east side section of Manhattan. And most days I feel like running off to Bellevue hospital to get some basket weaving in and some quiet time and meditation in a straight jacket. Other then that it’s ok here . Before I moved here someone said, a very flamboyant gay guy in an after hours party said in his all out fabulous nasal nyc accent, “ if u ever move here make sure you travel at least 2x a year outside of the city 2x a year or you’ll be f$*kn crazy . Well considering my single mom circumstances I have not left in quite a few years . So u can imagine my state of mind .
However once you settle in here it’s home . I found my “hustles” here so to speak. In nyc you generally need a few incomes just to basically eat and travel and walk out your door. It’s so unGodly expensive. I got settled into operating my own cleaning and organizing service and I’m a certified personal trainer and reiki and holistic healer .
anyway to live and survive in this city u can survive anywhere. It took me n my kids over 20 x of being homeless and through hell before getting stable housing. All due to many different cir. It strengthened me . I would never be the person I am today had I stayed in the small Pennsylvania town I grew up in its over 20 something years I’m here now and I don’t think I would want to live anywhere else. It opened my eyes and I was able to raise my kids in a whole other reality that they can face anything now I think in life . So I guess it’s exciting to say the least !
Compared to New York, the rest of the world seems asleep to me.
NYC feels like an engine powering the world, and by living there, you are a cog in the engine. Living anywhere else makes you a passenger.
Some less metaphorical differences:
1. The diversity
I think this is by far New York’s biggest difference and biggest strength, but I don’t see it mentioned nearly often enough. New York City might be the most diverse place in the world. The racial and ethnic diversity is obvious, and anywhere else in the U.S. now seems overwhelmingly white to me when I visit. But there’s also a lot of diversity of age, economic level, and industry. When I visited SF, it seemed like everyone worked in Tech. Here, it’s the center of finance, marketing, publishing, fashion, you name it. Each person you meet is likely to be different from you in every single facet possible.
2. The activity
The “city that never sleeps” certainly does sleep – try walking around the east village at 7 am – but it’s still much busier than anywhere else. Residents tend to avoid the crazy places tourists frequent, particularly Times Square, but we still pass by thousands of people every day.
3. The creativity
Living in New York is being surrounded by creative types – tech entrepreneurs, actors, dancers, designers, directors, painters, authors. The city itself is a constant reminder of others’ creative accomplishments, from the beautiful (and wildly diverse) architecture to the ads for new shows, bands, parties, meetups, museums, and more. Just being here is inspiring and can generate more creative ideas than you could hope to complete in a lifetime.
4. The accessibility
This applies mostly to food, but also to any other product or activity: you can find anything at any time of day. There are 24-hour coffee shops, drug stores, grocery stores, hardware stores. Even the Apple store is open 24 hours, for some reason. I use Seamless to order meals, and it tells me there are over 400 restaurants that are within delivery range of my apartment. Down the street is a Sri Lankan restaurant, a Vietnamese restaurant, Thai, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Belgian, Mexican, Afghani, Lebanese … and countless superb bagel and pizza places. There are bookstores open till midnight here. And as a comic book reader, there aren’t any other places in the country with such a wide selection of stores.
5. The transportation
90% of all my transportation now is walking. You don’t realize how weird cars are until you go without for a few years. Cars are insane. They cause all these problems, but everyone’s just gotten used to them. “Oh yeah, he was killed in a car accident. Oh well, I guess there’s nothing we can do.”
6. The safety
In Manhattan at least, I feel much safer than almost anywhere else I’ve ever been. Now whenever I visit the suburbs or rural areas, it feels super creepy and empty, especially at night. Suburbs at night terrify me. I’ve wandered into some pretty sketchy areas in SF at night, too. Not in New York.
7. The cultural references
One nice touch is that my home is constantly being referenced by books, tv, comics, movies, and news. I was walking and listening to the (amazing) audiobook of The Magician’s Land today, and he mentioned Houston Street AS I WAS WALKING ON HOUSTON STREET. This was not a book about New York, it was a random book. This is just very cool.
The primary downside of all this, for me at least, is that you can feel pressure to match the incredible achievements of everyone around you – to be as interesting and successful as they are. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed, but if you remember that this reaction is just in your head, it can be manageable. But it takes some work.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and those above are from my list of 100 favorite snapshots I’ve taken of the city. http://jkrweb.com/shelf/?book=newyorkcity-bestphotos
Note: This is an expansion of my previous answer on this page, which was done with my old account which I can’t seem to delete.
I grew up in south Mount Vernon, essentially an extension of the neighboring Bronx, except it wasn’t within the boundaries of NYC. The subway line, actually by this point the “el”, or elevated rail, was an easy walk from our neighborhood. Most of us lived in apartments, on busy streets, though right around the corner(s) were houses with trees, yards, some with driveways and yards, like some parts of the Bronx, Queens, and certainly Staten Island.
We weren’t in the city, but were were of it, in that it was the overarching influence on our lives. The same can said of Yonkers, the larger city bordering the Bronx to our west.
We were part of it, and it of us, but actually living in Manhattan, or other areas of the City itself was still different, Just because we were across the line in Westchester County.
New York City may be number one in our hearts, but it ranks nowhere near the top 50 in terms of quality of life. list of the best places to live in America, the so-called “greatest city in the world” is ranked 90th out of 125 cities. Without a doubt, New York City is one of the coolest places on the planet. Still, if you live there, it’s not always so fun, especially when you have to deal with real-world issues like job competition. In New York City, the competition is fierce, and you must outperform everyone else to get the job.
I hope you find my recommendations to be helpful. For further information, see the website New York Trolley Company.
It is really amazing living in New York. Everything is here (or close). It’s the best place in the World to live
Lovely, particularly if you live in Greenwich Village in a high floor with a view of the Hudson River. It is great to be able to hear Mephisto at the Metropolitan Opera House one evening and go to see Swan Lake at the Koch theatre the next…….. and only a ten minute subway ride away!
Oh a host of things that one would experience – here is a list from my personal experience given that I have been living on the W 48th St Broadway for the past 10 years –
You pay a rent in astronomical number for a molehill sized house. All the houses and the big ones that you see in Hollywood movies? New York houses are probably slightly bigger than the bathrooms of those Hollywood movie houses and you pay a rent which is upwards of USD 3,500. It would be almost impossible for you to pay the rent alone.
It is extremely crowded – especially during the evenings. The Times Square is probably one of the world’s most crowded place. If you want to walk from one place to the other, you are literally sticking to each other’s bodies while walking.
The sound of sirens of police vehicles, ambulances and fire engines is EVERYWHERE and ALL THE TIME. You would be surprised where all these are required all the time in New York. Given the size of the buildings here in New York, the sound echoes and it sounds even more louder.
There is smoke everywhere – be it from the roadside eateries to the the work that is going on on most road in NYC
Which brings me to this – there is always some road or the other dug up and closed and there is some work or the other going on.
The people are always in a hurry, they are constantly moving at rapid pace (other than the times that they have to walk sticking to each other as in point 2 above).
The cultural diversity is amazing. It is not unusual to hear a non-American accent around you – in fact, sometimes, it unusual to hear an American accent around you!
The Central Park is the place where it all goes quiet suddenly. It’s one of those magical places in the city. I often hang out there over the weekends to be away from the noise and the crowd
The Grand Central Terminal might be one of the most shot-at movie locations but for me, it is not as pretty as it is made out to be. Some of the European railway stations are far more prettier than GCT.
Guys hit on women all the time! It is everywhere and so common that people actually don’t mind it anymore.
Having said all this, it is my home. It is my favorite city in the world and I feel I would never be able to live anywhere outside of New York City!
I’ve lived in NYC for 10 years. The apartment I live in now is just 1 block away from the first apartment I had here. In the time I’ve lived here, my experience with the city has changed dramatically because the city has changed, and I’ve changed how I live in it.
My neighborhood (Williamsburg/Greenpoint) in particular has gone through multiple waves of gentrification for better and worse: the city has revitalized the waterfront in the Brooklyn neighborhood where I live, new parks have sprung up, awesome restaurants, bars and stores open everyday but I’ve also watched great music venues turn in destination brunch spots where its 2 hours for a table on a sunday, seen artists lofts turn into J.Crews and my rent go (way) up. When I talk to people who have lived here 15 years, they say the same thing about the East Village, and people who have lived here 20 years say that about SoHo, etc. etc.
It can also be hard to live here. Its very expensive. And while you can find ways to live on the cheap, you often find yourself paying a premium for convenience. When I go to the suburbs with friends, we get weirdly excited to go to malls, giant box stores and supermarkets in cars. The amount of people in such a small space in NYC, and fact that you have to walk everywhere can make doing everyday things like errands really hard. For instance, our grocery stores are excruciatingly small, with narrow aisles and shelves up to the ceiling. If you need to pick up dry cleaning, laundry, ingredients for dinner and a bottle of wine on the way home from work, good luck: you’re going to feel like a grumpy pack mule by the time you get home to your 4th floor walk up. Its hard not to justify a cab ride over the subway when you’re wearing heels, exhausted from the day and trying to get through a todo list the length of your arm. And while apps like Fresh Direct, Fly Cleaners and Seamless have slowly made it a lot more convenient to live here lately, its for a premium.
You can also go months without seeing some of your best friends. The people who live here and choose to stay are busy, they take their careers and success seriously, often at the expense of personal lives. When you ask people how they are, you here a lot of “busy” “tired” “crazy.” You know how in the TV show Friends they were all hanging out in that coffee shop all the time? LIES. All lies.
But every time I swear I’m going to move away, I get drawn back in. A friend once told me that you have to live here like you are about to move away: take advantage of all the things you would miss. What ends up happening is you change your routine, find new ways to take advantage of the city and it feels completely new again. I feel like I’ve lived in 5 different cities in the time I lived here. At different times talking advantage of/participating in the art scene, other times reveling in living near some of the most established cultural institutions in the world, joining sports teams to meet new people, taking sailing lessons, going out dancing until 9am the next day, riding bikes to the beach, connecting with the vital community of small businesses and start-ups. I think the only constant in New York is that is will always be evolving, and you can choose to live in whatever NYC you want. So many versions of the city exist in layers on top of each other, its up to you to decide what experience you want with the city.
You will also find yourself around the most successful, ambitious people in the world. Most people in NYC had to chose to move here, sacrifice to get here and they make the concerted choice to stay every day. The sacrifices you make to live here (like tiny apartments for insane rent, noise, “hot garbage smell” in the summer, walking through giant pools of dirty slush water to get to work in the winter, being crammed into the subway with legitimately insane people on your morning commute, $8 coffees, other grumpy busy people being rude) can take a toll – it tends to weed people out who don’t really want to be here. But if you’re the type of person who is driven to be extraordinary at what you do, this can often feel like the only reasonable place to live.
Oh, and you will walk through TV and movie sets constantly. And start doing this annoying thing when you watch TV and movies where you point out that the restaurant in the movie that is supposed to be in Paris/Chicago/Tokyo is actually that dive bar down the block from your work, and actually, you remember when they were filming that, and everyone is like “sshhh, just watch the movie.”
There’s two types of New Yorkers
1- the American New Yorkers .
2- the immigrant New Yorkers .
They all share the same subway carts every day ,they look at NYC and at each other in a different way,the first type is looking to find a bar that stays open until 4 am or a broadway show, while the second type is driving uber until 4 am or making them deliveries on a bike but they both enjoy the same great pizza /a Katz pastrami sandwich etc,New York city is and will always be an immigrants hub those people are the ones who keep NYC cooking and driving 24/7,and to me ,those are the real New Yorkers that don’t even have time or money to watch the mets.
It feels like everything is possible and that living elsewhere would be a waste of time.
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It is very busy and expensive.. I used to live in NYC but I had to move to a different state because it was too expensive. It’s a fun place to visit and hang out, but I would not recommend living in NY.
Life is busy in New York. This city literally doesn’t sleep. You have to work hard to live in this city. Summers are amazing but winters are really terrible. People are little rude. Good subway train system. You have all modern facilities here and you can afford them if you work hard. Most of the people are immigrants.
This answer will differ from person to person. I simply think that every person is just trying to make it in NY —-like every major city.
People either love New York City or they hate it . But I love it and have lived in NYC for 36 years . The reality is that one has to have funds to live in the cIty .
1) Schooling –People have to send their children to school, unfortunately the public schools are terrible unless the child can get into a school for The gifted and the talented. For that , the child has to either live in the school district , or take an IQ test ,and score above the 98th percentile . Then ofcourse there are a few specialised high schools , but to get into those , there are these really difficult tests . The private schools are really expensive .
2) Housing –real estate is really expensive . To buy or to rent, you need money . A small one bedroom apartment can on an average rent for $3000 a month . Many young people share but everyone needs their privacy at some point . It is frightfully expensive to buy , even if the real estate market drops , prices are rarely affected in NYC .
Other than the above 2 factors , I personally think there is no city quite like NYC . One may say it is overcrowded , I look at it as being vibrant . There is no dearth of superb restaurants, cultural life , parks , job opportunities , and people do not need cars . The public transportation is extensive , the trains and buses run 24/7 ,
Crime is at an all time low , and infact NYC is now considered to be one of the safest cities in the USA.
Living in NYC for 5 years were the worst 5 years of my life. I was a poor student and lived above a drummer near NYU (who definitely couldn’t play). The weather sucks and everything I wanted to do was expensive except going to the park and even that was way too crowded. I moved to London for a job and even though I didn’t have that much more money at first it was heavenly compared to NYC. It’s the most overrated place on earth. Sorry but it is.
I have lived in NYC my entire life. First of all…Welcome! Living in NYC is the greatest life anyone can have. World class museums, live theater, Broadway, off Broadway, off off Broadway, 8 major sports teams that you can walk to see, world class restaurants, all the shopping you can ask to have, very low crime, people, people and more people, from every part of the planet. Tourists, tourists and more tourists, 50 million last year alone. Lincoln Center. Concerts and more concerts. Street fairs. Walking, you dont leave your abode in NYC and get into a car. You walk everywhere. Compared to NYC the rest of the world is boring. Get ready to have an exciting quick moving life.
The answer often depends on your income level and expectations. NYC is an amazing place to live. You can eat any ethnicity of food any at time, day or night. There is always something to do or see if you’re up for it.
That said, the city can be daunting and expensive. If you’re income is modest, you may have to live in the outer boroughs or in a studio apt the size of a shoebox. Commuting to work can be a drag if you don’t live close to where you work.
All in all, the city is an amazing place to live if you can live with some of the tradeoffs. It’s not for everyone though, but as they say, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere…” 🙂
It is not like any other city in America, but it is very tough.
It is a great place to feel that you don’t need to conform to fit in, but I often feel that I need to get out because I get overwhelmed with the people and the many small annoyances that quickly add up.
NYC is very expensive and very crowded, and many things you see in other cities happen to the extreme. Crowds are super-duper sized. Housing is super-duper expensive. Transportation is abundant but crowded. Trash is overflowing. Wealth inequality is in your face. Homelessness is almost out of control (60K). Crazy people look normal.
There are whole neighborhoods where most people don’t speak English. Every language and food can be found here. Sometimes there’s too much choice. NYC is a place where you can buy anything for the right price.
Up early get dressed properly suits ties train to work with 1000s of others smelly good bad cement city huge huge huge everything . but fun energetic lunch hours exists still meet people anywhere anytime
That’s a loaded question! I can only speak for myself. I have lived in the New York City borough of Queens for more than 30 years. I came here from Southern New Jersey, and never left. I started out with practically no money and now have enough money to make life bearable.
Why is New York City great for me? For one thing, Most of my professional life has been spent close to home. And I have commuted easily with public transportation. If I need to go to the bank I walk; if I need to go food shopping, I walk. There are two shopping malls within walking distance and they are busy. La Guardia Airport is 15 minutes away and JFK Airport is 30 minutes away. I am close to centers of entertainment in Queens and of course, Manhattan which we call “ The City.” And of course we have the subways. The System is more than 100 years old, dilapidated, and needs serious overhaul. But it pretty much takes us where we need to go rather inexpensively.
Lots of people love to criticize our city. They have left the city and “love” where they live. But guess what! They come to New York to work at jobs not available where they live! I for one, love it here!
I know this is pretty old, but I don’t see anything about what it’s like living in one of the outer outer boroughs, in my case Queens.
I lived in remote Eastern Queens (Kew Gardens Hills/Flushing) for 12 years.
Let’s run down those NYC advantages, shall we?
Great public transportation: OK, let’s say I work in the Bronx and want to go from Queens to work. Here’s how it goes. I take a 20 minute bus ride to the subway. If you’re lucky, the bus shows up on time, just filled to crush capacity. Or drives by you because there’s no way to put another body in there. Or is 20 minutes late. Once at the subway station, it’s an hour to midtown, then a transfer, then another hour to the Bronx followed by a 15 minute walk or another unreliable bus ride. Do it in reverse on the way home. And if it’s raining or snowing or hot, everything just slows down and gets worse.
So you give up on public transportation and get a car, so you can trade your 4 hours+ commute each day for an hour each way in stop and go traffic, and tolls. But your apartment complex has only 1 parking space for 5 apartments, and you go on the waiting list for three years, so you can pay $100 a month for a parking spot that’s five blocks away from your apartment. But at least it’s yours. In the mean time, you try to find street parking. And you spend 30 minutes cicrcling the neighborhood looking for a spot, amongst the people who work in Manhattan and never move their cars except for alternate side street cleaning. And then once you’ve found that spot, 10 blocks away, you trudge home in the snow/rain/heat/cold/dark and get ready to do it all again the next day.
The culture: ah, the Queens Museum and the Hall of Science. The Queens Museum, devoid of visitors, keeps odd hours, and when you do visit with your infant child (who slept through the whole thing and who you brought with you to the museum because you’re sick of sitting in the apartment with him and the college student babysitter charges $25 an hour, so you stay home to watch him because you get paid less than that), the bored security guards spend the whole time following you around.
And the Hall of Science, basically inaccessible by public transportation, even though it’s only two miles away, and so you have to drive your kids there, only to find that parking is $40, and admission is $20 a kid. So you go on free day (parking is still $40) only to find that the place is packed with everyone else who brought their kids, and it’s totally miserable for you and the kids.
And so you decide the next time to haul a bunch of kids on the subway to Manhattan to go to the world class museums there only to find that none of them take the $200 combined membership you bought at the hall of science, and so you dump $35 a person on admission because you feel bad about not paying.
And the fine dining, you take those kids to a restaurant near the museum and pay $4 a slice for greasy pizza that they only eat half of, and gives you indigestion when you eat the leftovers (dammit, I’m not chucking $20 of pizza leftovers!). And when you finally sneak out with the wife, leaving the kids with that $25 an hour babysitter, you pay $100 for a meal with $5 worth of food and “ambiance”, surrounded by snooty, pretentious morons discussing the latest Broadway shows that you’ll never see because the nosebleed seats cost $150 each, and the ones where you might actually see the stage without binoculars cost more than what’s left of your weekly salary after rent, food, babysitters, parking, tolls, taxes, gas, and everything else.
So you decide to go to the free beach, and you load everyone onto the bus then the subway for 2 hours+ (Or drive for 2 hours and pay a fortune for parking) and you step on cigarette butts and broken glass the instant you get on the sand.
And that’s when you realize that you can live somewhere else, even on Long Island for the same money, and have a house with a two car garage and a back yard and a swing set, and nice clean beaches, and parks, and the kind of amusements for the kids, and pizza places that are just as greasy and charge only $2 a slice, and you’ll never have to ride on a packed bus or crowded hot smelly subway ever again. And you sell your apartment to the next fool who is razzle dazzled by New York City and you laugh the whole way to the suburbs, where your nice new house and nice new job that’s only a 20 minute drive and no traffic await you.
And all the suckers and fools and poseurs are welcome to keep New York City and keep telling themselves that the overpriced, overcrowded, filthy, mismanaged, falling apart hellhole is the “greatest city in the world”.
I am going to give a very short answer. It’s expensive and exciting and one of the safest large cities in the world. Whatever you are looking for, it’s here, somewhere, if you have the energy and courage to find it. And it is completely worth the struggle.
Expensive – accommodation, food, shopping
Exciting – Times Square, Broadway, famous landmarks
Fun – great bars, lots of activities, clubs
Interesting – multicultural, diverse, historic
Exhausting – fast paced, busy, noisy
You understand, I assume, that feelings are very subjective and individual, yes? Two people can have the same series of events and report different feelings…
I work in Manhattan. I have lived there, but I don’t anymore. I spend a lot of time in “the city” (as it is commonly known in the region).
I think the city is sort of “heaven and hell intertwined too closely to be separated”. New York is full of all sorts of world-class excellence jammed into a small space where you can get almost anywhere in 30 minutes with the subway. It’s like a world all to itself.
But right next to most of those world-class wonders is something foul: a homeless guy peeing around the corner, taxi drivers who almost run you over while crossing the street, sirens and noise, tons of people smoking cigarettes all the time, heavy crowds that make it hard to walk in a straight line for more than 30 feet, and so forth.
It’s sort of extreme: just walking along, if you’re paying attention, your senses will get slammed back and forth between “how wonderful!’ and “how horrid!” many times. New Yorkers generally learn to tune most of it out, that’s where the famous NYC “thick skin” comes from.
Some people love it, some people hate it. I love it and hate it alternately, possibly changing to the opposite polarity many times each day.
At least its not boring, I guess.
One factor makes it different from most other places in the US – most people don’t have cars. The running cost, the insurance, the parking issues are all beyond what most New Yorkers can deal with. You can get a lot of places by walking or biking. And public transportation is excellent and runs 24/7. But not driving makes life here very strange for a lot of people, at least at first. Me, I love it. One less big cost and hassle to deal with.
As someone born and raised in NYC, who spent most of his life in and around NYC, I will present the side that people who’ve come to NYC from outside don’t understand. Full disclosure: I left NYC several years ago.
Because of skyrocketing rents, Manhattan storefronts are being occupied by those businesses that can afford the rent. That often means chains and each one that opens strips NYC of it’s culture.
For example: When I would walk from Grand Central Station to my office near Penn Station, as I turned onto 7th Ave., I would see a Red Lobster on the right and a Ruby Tuesday on the left. They would both often be packed (on my way back to Grand Central, not at 7 AM). That they were filled with tourists is a shame. Why come all the way here just to eat at someplace you could have gone that is 5 minutes from wherever you live. If by some chance, they were fill with natives, that would be a damn shame.
If you look at the “New and Improved” Times Square, you could be at any mall. You’ve got the M&M Store. You’ve also got the NBA, NFL, Wrestling, and the pick your sport store. There’s Dave and Busters, McDonald’s, and the list goes on. I’ll grant you that the old Times Square was seedy but it had character. Tucked in among the “Adult” businesses were some interesting and eclectic other stores. The “Adult” businesses didn’t go away. They simply moved. The smaller, interesting shops are gone and gone for good.
There is still unique culture in NY but because of the high rents, restaurants and venues either have to be very expensive, or be located far from the tourist areas. Greenwich village is now a huge high fashion bazaar. The same is true of some other neighborhoods.
NY has not taken the necessary steps to preserve the things that give it it’s culture. Sure you can still find great pizza and the bagels are so s…
It has its good sides and its bad sides. Unlike others on the list, I am here because I haven’t really lived anywhere else. I’m early middle aged and work in accounting.
The main problem is that houses cost a lot unless you’re really broke and have connections so you can get into NYCHA. However incomes are also higher so it’s a draw. Someone in my family owns a large unit which cost 20K in the past, but now if I were to buy a unit that is not income restricted I would be shelling out like 100K for a small 3 BR.
Most people here are not driven or motivated except in certain jobs. There is a lot of weird behavior here like public drinking, pot smoking and people trying to sell soap and deodorant in Mcdonalds. For example there were a lot of fights in my high school and it was part of NYC.
My friend and I smoked K2 (synthetic marijuana) last year and it was disgusting. Yet, many people here use it daily.
Museums are not that interesting because the exhibits don’t rotate very often. Some of the museums are very small and hard to get to such as the Cloisters. When I went to the Cloisters I saw that there was a celebrity clothes exhibit, which sucked. Moreover they close very early so it’s hard to get to them during work. Schools go to museums a lot so I’ve been to the majority of them.
I’ve tried the live music scene and most of the venues are very far from residential areas. Traveling an hour to go into a hole in the wall to hear horrible mumble rap or some guy playing an out of tune guitar sucks. 90% of live hard rock music in NYC is sung in Spanish not English. I like some of the bands but I can’t understand the lyrics.
Going out is impossible for most people unless you leave the club at 10 or 11 or have a car, because the bus system gets really slow at night. I “club” during the daytime by dancing to music on my friends’ boomboxes in parks in the summer while drinking Georgi or Romanoff vodka.
A few slices of NYC life follow.
Typical NYC high street
Mysterious Wards Island
Slushy “Nutcracker” Cocktails in City Parks for $5
Giant Fish Carousel
Typical NYC homes
Raccoon Man
NYC is an amazing city! It truly is the melting pot with lots of diversity. You can meet people from all over the world, experience lots of different cultures, eat some incredible food, and never run out of things to do!
It’s a really fun place to live but also can be a bit overwhelming if you’ve never experienced a city of its size. If you have recently moved there or plan on it, I’d recommend checking out Andplan – Meet new friends & dates by making plans to do what you love . Andplan is a new app to meet new people by making plans to do any activity you’d like!
For whom? Where do they live? What do they do? For a housewife or a mailman who lives on Staten Island it might be remarkably like that of a person with the same job job living in a large town or small city in Middle America. For a Wall Street Executive living in a fancy building on Park Avenue? Completely different. Work is a lot more strenuous, work hard and play hard. Expenses are higher, but then again so are salaries. For a construction worker living in Brooklyn or Queens it would probably involve riding the subway. Again, work hard, play hard. But maybe not that different from someone with a similar job in a city somewhere else in America. City life is different from Country life. Not better. Not worse. Different. NYC tends to move harder and faster then other places, albeit, often with greater rewards. Nothing compares to the vast amount of cultural institutions, restaurants, shopping in NYC. If that’s what you’re into, you’re going to have a great time. If that’s your idea of hell, you’re going to hate it here.
“New York City, you’re a woman, cold hearted bitch ought to be your name. Oh you ain’t ever loved nobody still I’m drawn to you like a moth to flame”.
Al Kooper
Wow, I love NYC! What do I value?
1) Diversity. This city is unbelievably heterogeneous. The 5 boroughs are uniquely different. The various nationalities, languages, cultures, etc. It’s a beautiful sight to see. I hear a multitude of languages on the street or in the subway. The disparity in incomes is astronomical. The “rich” live next door or across the street from the “poor.” (Those terms are relative.) Many public schools (in Manhattan) are desegregated which is of great benefit t