is New York City dead?

Here's how I think about New York, after my last visit there last summer:

New York is good and the only actual large city in America on the metric of everything existing there. Big cities are the ones where there is everything; you can tell Seattle is a small city because there are things that are not here.

New York is bad in that it smells of garbage. In the summer, hot garbage.

If more American cities grow to populations in the millions, New York will be more dead by comparison due declining uniqueness. Is this going to happen? Who knows.

i kinda want to leave, but i have a job i like okay and an unusually fortuitous living situation. there's no real reason for me to be here; i don't partake of the cultural opportunities available

it'll probably be the subway that finally drives me away

NYC: where if you can make it there as a successful artist, you can also have a successful time crowdfunding your medical bills.

Telecommuting will finish it off.

Less of a joke, not as dead as San Francisco?

Feels like people have been waiting for a rust belt/flyover city to take over since our traditional metropolises are more 'playground for the rich' than ever but I still don't hear kids looking to move to Columbus or Pittsburgh.

Have the media decided where the New Portland is?

There was a Tooze tweet recently, where he showed stats on how professional actors in the USA, vastly outnumber coal miners. I forgot by much, but it was significantly much.

I do hear murmurings about ppl aspiring to move to Pittsburgh, Detroit, Denver, a few others

According to @BLS_gov and @TheEconomist there are 51,200 people employed as coal miners in the US v. 785k in 1920. In 2017 there are more florists, actors and personal fitness instructors than miners. pic.twitter.com/m913tHokI2

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) January 2, 2018

Less of a joke, not as dead as San Francisco?

Feels like people have been waiting for a rust belt/flyover city to take over since our traditional metropolises are more 'playground for the rich' than ever but I still don't hear kids looking to move to Columbus or Pittsburgh.

― louise ck (milo z), Tuesday, February 6, 2018 6:27 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hear rumblings about Pittsburgh now and then. Also tons of my friends moved to Philly over the years and it did seem to be producing bands at a good clip for a while.

And no one talks about how many administrative assistant, secretarial and receptionist jobs were lost in NYC due to automation, because... women, a lot of woc. Breadwinners for their families. Fuck coal miners and their sooty tears.

I’m moving back to new york soon bc of my job but it’s not a nice place to live.

I still have my apartment in Astoria. But I really don't want to go back. I dread having to deal with the subway.

The subway is inexcusably unpleasant

i get more anxious/aggro in nyc in my old age. i don't know what it is. impatient. people bug me more. i think its just a case of the olds. i will always love the city though. in general. i've loved hanging out there my whole life.

it really is me being set in my ways. we stayed in brooklyn one summer with the kids and i seriously didn't want to leave the hotel room. get on a subway to go to a museum in manhattan? kill me now.

Everything here is comically more stressful than any other place.

I car commute to the suburbs now and it's glorious to not be taking the subway anymore

Why is the ceiling always dripping down there?

Second and third tier cities could attract people by just showing how messed up the MTA is in their promo material.

I haven't lived in nyc full time for almost two years now. I miss it, but I really don't miss it. Just the thought of having to take the subway to work gives me anxiety.

Part of me really regrets accepting another job here. As a teen my dream was living here but it’s not that fun.

NYC misses Yerac and Znarf

Fix the subway and get rid of GOP madness and I am there!

fuck the subway, i drive most places now. and when i do take the subway it's in the middle of the day.
sorry can't do anything about the GOP.

Do you have to go in and out of manhattan a lot or no?

I remember taking the subway maybe 1-2 times a month when I worked in Williamsburg. It was the best. My tweety truck got sold like 3 years ago.

i've honestly not experienced the subway horrors that many have, but i will say that the subway is nearly unusable on nights and weekends

just not enough trains

I want to get myself to love it again.

Not the subway—the city

The last job I had there, I almost had a breakdown every time I took the subway. I would sometimes using the plodding R so I wouldn't have to deal with the insaneness of the 4,5,6 during rush hour. That train really has the worst people to be stuck with in the tunnel.

I do drive into the city regularly. Many mornings I drive in and drop my wife off at work and then drive home. It helps that we live near the Manhattan Bridge and her office is in chinatown. We also might drive in and park for any number of special events.

I had the same commute. Bushwick to East Harlem. L to union square than the green line. Sometimes I found myself wishing I would just spontaneously die.

Interesting, ian. I don’t have too much experience driving in manhattan but when I’ve done it I didn’t have a good time.

Last time I tried to take the L train during rush hour I almost had a panic attack trying to change from the G at Metropolitan; just a slow moving mass of people slowly slithering thru the tunnel. Really grim.

I used to drive in the city all the time. It's fine. It was parking that was the issue.

I miss DUMPLINGS! and pizza. And things not being closed on Sunday, Monday, half of Wed. or for whatever random holiday/break pops up.

driving from Queens to Manhattan is not terrible, although sometimes you wind up having to park in a garage that costs more than whatever you're actually going to the city for.

Agreed that the real issue with driving into the city is the parking. Ive gotten used to cruising the grid to find street parking; even if it's metered it's way better than paying a garage imo.

I commuted into the city every weekday for work from roughly March 2000-May 2016. Since May 2016, I've been into NYC maybe 20 times - roughly once a month, on average - and I don't miss it at all.

Uptown is really nice and feels weirdly timeless, both the east and west sides.

new york is obv dead bc we are now just talking about the subway

subway complaints otm though it really is awful

I’m planning to move to east williamsburg soon — with friends — but maybe that isn’t my scene.

tbh i've never lived in ny, just visited a ton over the 15 years i lived on the east coast. i love visiting. there is a manic creative energy there, i enjoy being around all different kinds of people, and last time i visited (a month ago) it really struck me how globally, ethnically, socioeconomically diverse it STILL is

claims of a rust belt migration are overblown, though i do meet a fair share of folks who moved back to cleveland like i did after spending time in more expensive cities. there is a cool art scene in cleveland, there is stuff happening. but come on as cool and livable as rust belt cities are (and i do genuinely love them) they are provincial compared to a place like new york

i've been in NYC for eighteen years now and got through 9/11 and sandy evicting me and the 2003 blackout and am now old and fat and running into people I haven't seen in a decade on the way to the dentist
i would likely be a great deal less patient with city life if i had to still be doing daily subway commuting but I've been freelance for about five years and while that comes with its own hassles, i recommend it.
i would say one of the three major reasons i wanted to come here was because i hate cars and car culture and this was one of the few places you could get by without wheels... in the uber economy, this may be less true now?
NYC has ridic good live music and theater and film and art and general performance and lectures every single night of the week and the food is great
you can do all the above for a lot of money or for free/nearly free with a fair amount of due diligence
the rent remains too damn high but i remain amazed that the melting pot is still melting: every ethnicity/gender/class/creed is slammed together and we mostly all get along cheek by jowl without fucking killing each other somehow and that's a small miracle
there are days when i hate everybody and everything here but they're rarer than the days when I'm utterly floored by what the city has to offer.
i <3 ny

also treeship comment about the internet is partially right to some extent those more clearly defined scenes are happening more online than geographically. everywhere has scenes though

Everything here is comically more stressful than any other place.

Try living in London, there's a real shithole for you.

they are provincial compared to a place like new york

you can get people to piss on you anywhere in america

xp That’s what i’m talking about ulysses. I need to rediscover some of that love — that Whitmanian view of new york. That’s what makes stuff like the stress of commuting bearable. It’s hard to feel that sometimes with all the grotesque and out of control wealth. And also I am just bitter now

"Try living in London, there's a real shithole for you."

Don't talk to me about sophistication, Ive lived in Woolwich.

The East River Ferry is sort of a life-changing alternative to subway commuting. You can spend an entire week without going underground ever. But yeah, to get back to the thread topic, RIP New York.

I had no idea my district was called "commie corner" LOL. The only depiction of an American flag in my home is an ironic re-creation on a concert poster with "GANG OF FOUR" emblazoned on top, so I guess that tracks.

canadian-born david frum, who lives in DC, opines:

https://i.postimg.cc/7PKBjQR4/frum.jpg

i'm not sure 'settler-colonialists' is quite apropos just now

Imposing their rule on ... the people who voted for them?

one progressive loss for us was Grace Meng beating Chuck Park.

Bronx voters don't seem to mind (and or maybe support) Ritchie Flores 110 % support of Israel. He got like 70% of the vote. Maybe they think he delivers on other issues for them.

I voted for Michael Blake, but somehow his campaign was pretty invisible. I despise Torres and don’t know why he retains support.

Blake has run for every position under the sun and has never managed to convince people that he should do the job. Any job. Man needs to get paying work and take a break.

I seem to have won my county committee race though it was down to single votes! lol off schedule primaries are brutal but counterpoint more turnout would have brought more moderate/establishment voters and then my opponents’ name might have mattered more?

I canvassed for Blake like 15 years ago on behalf of Citizen Action. He didn’t win then either.

wow congratulations in orbit!

in office, more like!

congrats in orbit!

Haha thanks all!! It’s my fourth time in this 100% volunteer office, not the start of an exciting political career. I just have had uncontested primaries before and this time partly due to poor coordination on someone’s part we actually had to be on the ballot for this exceedingly niche role.

But the REALLY good news is that the reform faction of the county party infrastructure *should* have the votes this time to vote out the corrupt party chair and actually begin to make the party responsive to the ppl of Brooklyn! This is like 20 years in the making and feels HUGE.

Blake has run for every position under the sun and has never managed to convince people that he should do the job. Any job. Man needs to get paying work and take a break.

Ryan Busse tried this in Montana this year; ran for governor last time (I voted for him), got blown out, ran for the House this year (I did not vote for him), got blown out. He needs to get a job.

Our longest serving District Leader (every district has 2, formerly 1 man/1 woman though the gender divide has been reformed and now it can be any 2 ppl) is also one of those people who desperately wants into the local political machine and has run for EVERY office possible and is deeply uninspiring. To my great satisfaction he not only lost his seat but he ALSO recruited two of the four people who were running against me, and they both got the LEAST votes out of a field of 8 people. GET IT DONE.

They were family members of his. Probably just put their names on a paper as placeholders and they weren’t really invested and didn’t campaign.

my state assembly district was swept up in the DSA wave :)

my state assembly district was swept up in the DSA wave :)

Congratulations y’all

Wish we’d get a better potential candidate in NY15 then. I don’t get the sense that there’s a deep well of support for Ritchie Torres, just that he gets reelected out of habit. I see plenty of anti-Torres graffiti.

And congrats in orbit! Now I’ll go back to lurking until I post again in a few years or so.

Haha. Yes Torres is deeply unsatisfactory but seems to have support. It's unfortunate.

Holy shit, Julie Milner managed an upset primary win for Queens Civil Court bench, and I can only imagine not enough voters paid attention to that race because it's a colossal fuck-up. Just a quick rundown from a local paper:

The New York City Bar Association rated candidates Edmond Wong and Edward Irizarry as “approved,” and John Ciafone and Julie Milner as “not approved.” The Queens Bar Association gave “qualified” ratings to both Wong and Irizarry, a rating of “not approved” for Ciafone and a “not rated” designation for Milner, indicating she did not participate in the rating process.

Milner and Ciafone are perennial judicial candidates running as insurgents in the race for Civil Court. Milner has run for the court each of the past two years while Ciafone has mounted three unsuccessful bids for the court, as well as a failed run for a spot on the City Council. Both are attorneys.

In 2024, the Eagle reported that an X account under Milner’s name had featured a number of posts supporting issues championed by the far-right, including bans on LGBTQ+ books – which she called “filthy, pornographic smut” – in school libraries.

On at least two occasions, Milner appeared to call for the execution of President Joe Biden on her X account.

“Impeach, remove, indict, execute,” Milner tweeted twice in January 2023 in response to posts about Biden’s alleged improper handling of classified documents.

And this:

Milner came in second without receiving the support of the city bar association. She represents a countervailing force in Queens Democratic politics, having been endorsed by the East Elmhurst Democratic Club — led by disgraced former state senator Hiram Monserrate, who was expelled from the legislative body after he was convicted of misdemeanor assault against his then-girlfriend.

sucks. in my cursory research all I could see what that she was endorsed by "teachers for choice" which was enough to know she was no good, but I know a lot of neighbors didn't know enough about the judges.

Before the polls closed, Wong actually thought something like this might happen, though he was also worried that he would lose too. (He was pleasantly surprised that he got the most votes.) It's always a troubling sign when turnout is low, but with the judges, you also have to factor in a lot of voters skipping that section altogether. Ultimately a bad candidate just needs to link up with enough groups who will form a rock solid voting bloc, and that alone will be enough to overcome any opposition which is unlikely to build with a low number of votes coming in.

When I was still living in Chicago, I remember an op-ed in the Tribune asking people NOT to vote for a judge who had a horrendous record of abusing people appearing before the court. That guy still won re-election by a solid margin. That experience was enough to get me to pay attention to judges, and I always make the effort to vote on everything. But it's tough enough getting people just to vote, period, let alone in every race.

judges shouldn’t be elecyed

tbf judicial appointments have been pretty horrendous lately for obvious reasons.

Typically in NY the judges are funneled through party channels onto the ballot, and there are only ever the same number of candidates as there are openings, so your vote (or withholding it) is worthless.

Via https://www.newkingsdemocrats.com/judicialelections

The current system for electing judges is broken and heavily influenced by political party County Committees, including the Kings County (Brooklyn) Democratic County Committee, through law and custom. The County Committee leadership benefits from their grip on judicial elections in multiple ways: it can give them sway over the employment of court staff and appointment of court-ordered financial guardians and incentivizes judicial candidates to make monetary contributions to their campaign accounts.

How did Millner win when she was one of the two people NOT endorsed by the party channels?

Right but how did she even get on the ballot when there were only two seats open? I've never seen a Brooklyn ballot with more judge candidates than there were seats, is my point.

Yeah, that article's overlooking a huge loophole, because as mentioned above Milner was on the previous two ballots and Ciafone (also dubious) on the previous three, and neither was ever approved or endorsed by their registered party.

I'm not sure what's going to happen in the general election, I just hope there'll be a less-heinous alternative to Milner (and that Wong fills the other seat).