is New York City dead?

One of my favorite places to live was a small one bedroom above a bar and coffee shop in a college town in upstate NY. If one of us got a job offer there I'd move back to that town in a heartbeat tbh.

― omar little, Wednesday, February 7, 2018 12:57 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what town?

― Evan, Wednesday, February 7, 2018 10:02 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ithaca!

Went back for an overnight visit a couple summers ago and it seemed like things had actually picked up a bit since I left way back in 1999.

Gotta say it's been somewhat gratifying to see all of these down-on-NYC posts. I'm one of those who left (six years ago) for the suburbs once kids arrived, and while I have no regrets or doubts about the decision I can't help but wonder sometimes what things would be like if we'd tried to make a go of it in the city. I do still come in every day for work and like HVIII said (I might as well just quote him here) "I feel more at home and more in sync and somehow more relaxed (?) in New York." Maybe not the relaxed bit -- I'm pretty relaxed at home too. I really really miss the easy access to live music and amazing food and non-blockbuster films. But I don't know if I'd be able to enjoy and take advantage of the city like I did in my 20s. And we have fantastic neighbors where we are now, we love the schools, and we can spread out a bit -- we're not on top of each other all the time. One of the nicest things has been how my relationship to the outdoors has changed. Particularly with a small child it felt like there was always some planning involved just to get a little fresh air; now I walk out to the backyard in my pajamas with my coffee without a second thought, and I can spend hours outside with the kids without worrying about what to do if someone gets hungry or has to go to the bathroom.

Walking around the city now it feels like it's less interesting than it used to be, but I hope I'm wrong about that and that's it's down to me being older and not in touch with where the cool things are happening. My wife and I try to bring the kids in at least once a month because we want them to know something beyond suburban living, and I hope it'll be a place where they'd like to live when they're out on their own. But I don't know if the kind of neighborhoods I lived in and hung out in and loved will exist in 15-20 years.

It really was an outrageously great city to live in during my pre-family days though.

gotta get morbs a bike. or rollerblades.

thanks buddy, but most of my lifestyle problems would be solved with a rich husband

let me know when you find one, i'll be your butler.

fwiw I feel like this thread represents a massive turn either for the board or NYC sentiment generally -- it used to seem like any time you knocked NYC in these parts people would jump on you for being some kind of butthurt man-who-doesn't-like-bob-dylan type

Hate Bob dylan

we're just old now

Hipster replacements the next big thing

older and poorer

new york is pretty good though. still got gray's papaya and papaya king.

the thing is that nyc is never not getting knocked by New Yorkers. everyone has nostalgia for one or more halcyon nyc's, even the wasteland versions. This is an especially rough period because real estate, gross income inequality, etc. but after the impending cataclysm it will enter a new phase again. The ghosts of the city linger and it will never be truly dead-dead

https://brokelyn.com/union-pool-hookup-homages-now-trending-twitter/

When I first moved to NY in my 20s I so naively thought it was the coolest thing that a lot of bars didn't have signs. Now I think that's super annoying.

does underwater count as dead-dead?

ha yes probably

Driving is easy but it's a constant mental drag. Driving in an urban area is just unpleasant and closed off.

One of the worst experiences in my life was when I had to drive less than a mile in Boston from a hotel garage to the MassPike but maybe this is too off topic at this point

will take driving in nyc over boston any day of the week

I don't really want to live in NYC because my midwest town is ridiculously livable, and there are lots of great restaurants everywhere now (or here at least). It would theoretically be nice to see world-class jazz musicians on any night of the week, but some of those have moved here from NYC, and I don't go see them very often.

All I really pine after is the diversity and club culture (although how healthy even is that now, in terms of DIY-ish spaces?).

will take driving in nyc over boston any day of the week

― Entrepreneurial Jism Unshackler (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, February 7, 2018 2:52 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh HELL yes

Driving in Boston made me feel insane, I encountered intersections without precedent in my 21 yrs of driving.

it is the earthly worst!

i was saying to Doctor Casino after the FAP for Wins that maybe, just maybe, the slow march to ruin of the subway system might do what street crime once did for nyc rent prices

I don't really believe it though

I still don't hear kids looking to move to Columbus or Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh: they do
Columbus: they should

there is a guy who has always hung out in front of the bodega on my block, a massive friendly guy named Frankie who apparently writes poetry, and once about ten years ago (when my part of williamsburg was still only somewhat gentrified) I heard him tell his friends "There's only one thing that can save this neighborhood. Street violence."

i never drove in Boston or NYC, for which i feel pretty fortunate. however i live in Los Angeles, which is a very different form of insanity. it's less a sense of constant panic or anger for me, it's more a subconscious murmur of apocalypses to come. no one will be able to get out of here alive.

i got to be a goddamned pro driving in boston and it is a point of pride now, these midwestern simpletons here don't know how to drive

https://www.theonion.com/mta-reminds-new-yorkers-they-can-fucking-walk-1822734848

columbus seems to be booming right now but cleveland is the cooler city imo

Pittsburgh is regional, though, right? There's not a lot of small-town teenagers from Georgia gunning for their shot in Pittsburgh.

i would choose columbus because of the comix library and attached scene

I also have been hearing about Pittsburgh from artist-types who have lived in NYC at some point and are looking for cheap rent + a decent scene of some sort, some friends recently moved there.

I have been to ballgames in Akron, Dayton, Cincy and Cleveland, but not Columbus

everything is regional, apart from nyc/chi/la and whatever the seattle of the moment is

yea migration to pittsburgh is regional, so are all the midwestern cities

i'm trying to find it right now but i'm not having luck - some migration patterns thing that showed which cities people were moving from to other cities, e.g. people moving to new york are coming from london, new delhi, etc, and people moving to denver are coming from san francisco, seattle, etc, and then people moving to cleveland are coming from like akron, canton, columbus. highlighting how global, national, or regional migration to different cities is happening

My last Union Pool hookup was Dec 14 2009, age 24, night before my GREs. He was a dashing and successful painter 13+ years my senior. The affair was on-off for 8 years. I missed a whole section of the GRE but still got into Yale. Blessings, Union Pool. https://t.co/47hWA5e8lx

— Alana Massey (@AlanaMassey) January 31, 2018

this person sounds deeply obnoxious

xxp yeah, that was my initial thought w/ bringing up Columbus and Pittsburgh - nowhere else is even close to challenging NY's status whether it's dead or not. Other cities can aim for being the Austin of their tri-state area.

Union Pool evokes a lot of memories for me but they're not particularly good or bad memories, it was just a place I happened to go a bunch of times and play a couple times. It seemed very central to a certain group of people that I was just sort of peripheral too by way of being in a band with a couple of them.

i still wind up at union pool once or twice a month it seems. friends work there, friends have played there, it's fairly centrally located. never got laid cuz of union pool tho.

is union pool closing or something?

not while there are hookups to come

i will go to the free shows in the yard in the summer (2x a year)

i depend on my buddy who works there to let me know if something special is happening (sadly he did not text me about the free richard bishop show til a couple hours before start by which time I was buried in laundry or some other adult chore)

i saw some good old fashioned slutishness @ union pool when i was in ny a cpl months ago, it was pretty late and mostly empty, & right in the middle of the main room some girl was giving this total knob of a dude on a chair this, like, ultra drunken, showgirls-style lap dance. it was p hilarious and all the bartenders were taking selfies w/them in the bg.

nowhere else is even close to challenging NY's status whether it's dead or not

la has completely eclipsed/ultramurdered ny in all creative fields. ny still reigns supreme for salarymen

if i had a lot of cash i would definitely choose LA

pic.twitter.com/iTvkRhUZ3H

— Joel Irwin (@irwindigital) January 31, 2018

i moved from nyc to la last year. both are great cities, but both could use an infrastructure week or two.

You'd have to pay me a fuckload of money to live in LA.

would you consider an extra bathroom and two spare bedrooms and a garage in lieu of the money?

Well... probably not! We have a really nice apartment to be honest. Two bathrooms, one spare bedroom, big open space, don't mind street parking in our neighborhood.

I have only spent a little time in LA, but I think it would be tough for me to live there. The constant driving, all your friends being spread out, too hot.

It feels too suburban, and the parts that feel walkable seem bad. Of course I'm sure there are plenty of nice neighborhoods, I've just never spent time in them.