is New York City dead?

NYC seems genuinely out of fashion for the first time in my life, and maybe its history? Williamsburg is a punchline, Manhattan both above and below 14th St is just rich fuxors, seems like everything that used to happen in only NYC or LA now happens in LA or some other ascendant metropolis. I am not particularly worldly or sophisticated or mobile these days so I can't offer much more evidence, this is just my lay observation. What u think?

New York isn't dead.
There are still lots of great things about this city.
The things I value might not be the same things others value, of course.

https://saysomethingvague.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/lcd-soundsystem-t-shirt-losing-my-edge.jpg

no you're dead

okay

I mean, IDK, I was out in bushwick recently on a saturday night and it still seemed happening and teeming with young artsy cutting edge types brimming with energy. However it's been rough for a good amount of time now as far as being a city that young people without a bankroll or a professional job can live in, and that definitely cuts into the creative energy of the city some. I mean I don't even think the bronx offers the kinds of rents today that could be had 20 years ago in brooklyn.

like if you mean "dead" as in "no longer can birth a 'scene' the way it could in the 60s/70s/80s/90s, that might be true just because rents are so high.

I think that is what I mean. Although "scene" sounds a little tinny/reductive, scenes kind of matter. A city births a scene which creates stuff that matters.

Is Paris dead? How about London? Those cities are pretty expensive too, and have been for some time. New York is still a place that attracts ambitious young people, including artists, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

well yeah, I mean a scene as in the beats or the greenwich village folk scene or disco or no wave or whatever. Like the combination of cheap living and high density and educational and arts institutions and economic activity that allows for a scene that actually produces something of worth. Like I just don't think there are many corners of the city left where a bunch of musicians could live close to one another and work more or less full time on their music and pay rent waiting tables part time or whatever. And to the extent such pockets exist, they're scattered at the edges of the city instead of centralized.

All cities are dead because culture travels faster through the Internet than it ever could geographically.

Rising rents making it hard for young people to live there unless they're being bankrolled is basically true for all major international cities now. Even Berlin's getting expensive these days.

But hey, there are always aspiring artists with trust funds, so the city will never die

i don't know the deal w/rents in NYC but i find it funny when people come out to L.A. from there and rhapsodize about how comparatively inexpensive the rent is here.

I don't go out much anymore, so maybe there's some lively cheap shit I'm missing out on.

It's also really hard for some people in late middle age (w/out a LUCRATIVE CAREER) to live here.

I'm also old and have a family and work a lot, and I just don't really know what's happening anymore. When we went out in Bushwick, we saw some local DJs/electronic artists in a little club and it was absurdly packed and seemed pretty alive.

I guess another thing I've noticed is that galleries tend to show artists from all over the US and world, and I'm guessing that's more true than it used to be. But that's also an internet-erasing-borders thing.

All cities are dead because culture travels faster through the Internet than it ever could geographically.

― treeship 2, Tuesday, February 6, 2018 3:28 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is pretty otm

it's all about the rust belt, my friend

we eat the cheeses here too

they are artisanal

our cities are the envy of all, their livability is primo

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.

as somebody with a vested interest in micromobility i'm here to tell you, don't be afraid of e-bikes! they're good and all good cities have them

was just in lisbon & london and there you don’t even get a choice, all the bikes are e bikes

xp agreed, but...

the Citi e-bikes were capable of 20 mph last year, down to 18 this year, which is fast in the city, especially for inexperienced riders (with phone in hand because they're not use to navigating this way). and they're out in the context of delivery guys, some on full gas (unlicensed) scooters, wrong way riders, riders that don't use lights at night (to conserve power), etc. and some of the e-"bikes" out there are capable of 50 mph plus, basically electric motorcycles.

check out the Queensboro Bridge bike lanes (and spillover into the pedestrian) lane at a peak hour.

don't support going all e-bikes. being cheap and wanting exercise, I stick with the classics.

i'm not terrified of getting hit by a car in nyc, i'm terrified of getting doored

maybe one day i’ll be brave! the subway stresses me out so bad… and it could very easily be improved upon, yet

xp i dunno, you sound like a gatekeeping bike guy. you should be getting mad at cars and buses, not citibike e-bikes!

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/nyregion/nyc-cyclist-deaths-ebike.html

The rise in electric bike deaths does not appear to be the result of an increase in e-bike ridership, at least not entirely, according to the Department of Transportation. And although the most visible e-bike users in New York may be delivery workers and Citi Bike riders, the majority of people who died on e-bikes last year were neither. Only one delivery worker died from an e-bike crash, according to the department, and four people died using electric Citi Bikes, according to Lyft, which owns the bike share program.

xp asking for a lower top speed is gatekeeping? ok.

"at least not entirely":

New York City saw the highest number of cyclist deaths in over two decades in 2023, reports Justine Re for Spectrum News 1. “According to data, 30 deaths in total, with 23 of those deaths people riding e-bikes and seven people were on traditional bikes.”

right - 30 deaths, 23 on e-bikes, and of the 23 e-bike deaths, 4 on citibike e-bikes, which isn't really great evidence for your assertion that more citibike e-bikes are leading to more accidents involving citibike e-bikes. sounds like the non-citibike e-bikes are more at fault!

what continues to be the main cause of accidents is cars and buses, which is something i think you as a traditional bicyclist can agree is the bigger enemy here!

https://i.postimg.cc/jjpKwzvm/Capture.png

which isn't really great evidence for your assertion that more citibike e-bikes are leading to more accidents involving citibike e-bikes

that wasn't my assertion.

but absolutely agree that e-bikes, Citi or otherwise, are not the biggest probably (and not an enemy)

yeah, and sorry if i came off as a bit aggro there. i think building more protected bike lanes is the #1 priority, everything else can be dealt with after we get more bike lanes built.

there is a pretty big difference between citi bike e-bikes and the kind personally owned by people, obviously on a functional level but also how they are operated by their users

the third rail issue that hasn't been mentioned yet but which is really the core of this problem is that a large percentage of e bikes are operated by migrant delivery workers who are speeding around the city at the mercy of algorithms trying to scrape together money to send back to their families, and i'm not sure how one turns their ire on them. after the pandemic, grubhub/seamless culture has overtaken the city like an invasive plant & the combo of demand for food delivery and the way food delivery happens in 2024 has gotten us to the point where yeah you're pretty often gonna come across a guy on an e bike he took on debt to acquire speeding the opposite direction in a bike lane. you really just have to tip your hat and go about your day

hmm, i dunno if that's really a problem - the data from the times article says only 1 of the 23 e-bike deaths in 2023 was a delivery worker. it certainly makes the average rider feel unsafe, though!

yeah sorry the "problem" i'm referring to is not deaths. i'm talking about the widespread characterization of e bike riders as dangerous, amateur, uncaring etc

otoh, this study shows a lot more delivery worker fatalities from 2020-2022 (not including 2023, which is what the times piece covers).

what is the truth, it is hard to say.

https://i.postimg.cc/5yYFb570/Capture.png

(link to study: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/workers/Delivery-Worker-Study-November-2022.pdf)

I was pretty shocked by the way folks were riding e-bikes the other week when I recently retrieved my bicycle post-tune-up and rode over the Williamsburg Bride and up through Manhattan. I don’t usually ride that stretch of city. Lots of riding straight into traffic at high speed without looking, sudden braking, talking on phones, etc. Just unimaginably risky behavior. From what I saw most delivery riders were much more reasonable than the Citibike contingent. More time on the bike I guess. E-bikes are great I’m a supporter, but there’s gotta be a way to promote greater awareness and safer riding.

As for me, I’m not afraid to ride in the city. Also I broke one hand and one arm in separate crashes the space of about a year and a half.

I was going to defend the train. It goes far all for the same price. It runs all night etc etc. it’s great except when something goes wrong. Like right now when there are delays and one thing is clear. The MTAs means if notifying people about anything is absolutely embarrassing. Garbled PA announcements you can’t hear over the sound it the train or noise in the platform. No electronic signs with any useful information. It’s ridiculous.

the real problem is that the stations are 1 million degrees fahrenheit

has there been any research into which stations are the hottest, and why? i nominate the entire F line in Manhattan, but especially Broadway-Lafayette, 2nd Avenue, and Herald Square. Infernal!!!

Altho at this moment I'm at 14th & 8th waiting on the L and it is competitive

there have been studies. this one from 2018 found union square was the hottest https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/its-way-too-hot-on-nyc-subway-platforms-study-reveals/527573/

honestly struggle to think of any place on the entire eastern seaboard that is as hot as the union square 4/5/6 platform in the dead of summer

even the ones with vents only help so much on a day like today. tho it's cool to see the rain come through

right - 30 deaths, 23 on e-bikes, and of the 23 e-bike deaths, 4 on citibike e-bikes, which isn't really great evidence for your assertion that more citibike e-bikes are leading to more accidents involving citibike e-bikes. sounds like the non-citibike e-bikes are more at fault!

what continues to be the main cause of accidents is cars and buses, which is something i think you as a traditional bicyclist can agree is the bigger enemy here!

🖼

tbh a lot of times neither the driver nor the bicyclist is at fault, and what is at fault is the urban planning. i think in a lot instances when a big delivery or garbage truck hits and kills a bicyclist you subsequently read that the driver claims to not have even seen the biker, which is probably true

Peeps complain about the Mta not caring but then you get the over friendly conductor come over the PA when you’re stuck in a tunnel under the east river and says “you were not planning on this delay to your work, or your interview for work / this delay was not anticipated by you / or by me / and again, I apologize on behalf of the mta” - then repeats the same speech every minute, ends up saying the “again…” to the point of absurdity

grubhub/seamless culture has overtaken the city like an invasive plant

If you want to talk about "Is New York City dead," it really blows my mind that people who live in New York, a place where at any hour of the day or night you can walk out of your apartment and in 2 minutes be sitting down at any 15 different restaurants, people are getting food delivered! In massive numbers! I get it if you live in the Boston suburbs and don't want to drive 15 minutes in the snow or whatever but in Manhattan? Why?

When I was 23 yo and living in an insanely cheap studio apartment on 46th street I got food delivered all the time because I was lazy as fuck

Also in those days there were fewer good affordable restaurants in midtown than you’d think. I went to Margon for lunch a lot. But the theatre district? East? fuhgeddaboutit

not everyone lives in a neighborhood where in 2 minutes you can be sitting down at any 15 different restaurants?

I do, but i get delivery all the time because I have a 4 year old and a 6 year old.

wow no cozzie livs in the caek household

simplest answer is that delivery became the norm during covid and there’s still a lot of inertia from that

that’s exactly what it is. the change is 100% post covid. going into a restaurant and seeing nobody in there and thinking “oh cool” and then realizing your food is actually gonna take forever bcuz the place is busy preparing 9 seamless orders. delivery drivers lining up for orders in a restaurant and outnumbering sitting diners 2:1. this kinda stuff happens routinely now & it just wasn’t like this pre-2020

Citibike conversation here apparently cursed me: got hit by a Citi e-bike last night on the Brooklyn Bridge going into Manhattan. guy was in the wrong lane and didn’t even look up. locked up my brakes and he swerved at the last second, hitting me with his handlebars. nice bruise today. (minor, and first time, but scary as it happened)

I couldn't possibly Seamless more than I do. Sorry. Been trying to use places direct ordering where possible. And now that I'm working 3 days a week at the manhattan office instead of 2, and it's not freezing or raining, try to get out for lunch.

much fewer close options at my queens office and queens home.

fuck that guy

xpost

sorry that happened to you - how'd the other guy turn out? xp

thank you both. presumably fine, he stopped a few feet past me, briefly and started back up with a look over his shoulder. no apology

oof, scary - glad you're okay.

It's also way cheaper to buy beer/wine at home and get take out than it is to go out to eat and have beer/wine at the restaurant.

^^^ This, plus the online entertainment options are better now - Netflix and chill order food.

In my day we wolfed down pizza in front of WPIX and WE LIKED IT

That’s right. Yankees rain delay? Play some fuckin Benny Hill shit

I think Adams got elected because of his law and order credentials but enforcement seems non existent these days, purely reactive, dependent on 311, which is only good for things that happened a half hour ago and by then who cares right

Yeah

"Honey, do you want a date?"

I think Adams got elected because of his law and order credentials

'sure, he's a cop, but it's okay because he's black and a democrat'

lol he's the purest nyc cop who ever copped -- doesn't actually live here, makes up random shit and assumes (with good reason) that the press will simply quote it, endlessly hooking up his buddies