is New York City dead?

xp tbh all of those reasons are exactly why I loved visiting NYC and want to return soon, but the state of the subway did make me sad

i like that when it's 70 on a summer evening i can go out an walk about an hour without any particular aim

dan thank you for living my nyc flaneur fantasy <3

I would say that most people in NYC love that they walk a lot and can walk anywhere.

read that as dad xp

i love walking in every city but nyc walking that's a whole other level

I really don't know how anyone is going to be able to open any kind of new business in a commercial space without some wack monolithic investors.

dan thank you for living my nyc flaneur fantasy <3

― flopson, Wednesday, February 7, 2018 5:38 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark

<3

also +1 on the city being a lot less compelling now that caek's gone!

learn another language and leave the USA, it’s a challenge but the satisfaction is worth it. if you have kids they’ll be bilingual in like 3 months

Dublin guys Dublin

I can attest that Dan likes to walk and look at ppl

i've lived in los angeles six years now

when i first moved here everything did look suburban and 3/4 of it look like a third world country, which i've gotten used to now

and it took me a while to know where the part of the county was that feels like a proper city and then i moved there, lived there for a few years and good lord it was slightly horrifying

nyc never appealed to me though and but i never "got it"

i do miss vancouver a lot, mostly because all my pals are there and it's my base, i'm glad i'll be moving back at the end of the year if everything goes well *knock on wood*

but los angeles is a weird place. like you can find anything and everything and that's what makes it cool and horrific all at the same time. it's got these "underground" worlds (plural) that reminds me of tokyo

and if you're caught staring a little too long you'll get shot which is kinda cool because staring is not nice (something vancouver can learn from)

i'm visiting again in a week. I still love it there.

i've actually really learned to love los angeles and it has a very special place in my heart now

everyone i know basically hates it though

but i love all the different cultures and parts of the city, like it's no big deal if you need to visit compton, it's not like "oh shit COMPTON" which is what a lot of people outside of la feel

one sad thing is los angeles is so segregated by race, so for all its diversity, there might as well not be any but i guess this exists pretty much in most very diverse cities

i was in vancouver last month and everyone there was so friggin nice. ime they display the warm, welcoming attitude usually misattributed to american southerners (usually by southerners themselves)

stay a little longer and you'll change your mind

you make your own new york
for me, landing between Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery was such a blessing. Both are complex outdoor spaces, heavily landscaped and considered; one is absolutely jammed full of people above ground and the other is virtually empty of living people. Both are wonderful options to reset from the city's chaos. I try to get to both at least once a week and that helps keep me balanced. that and the medicine.

Seems like NYC is not dead. thanks for confirming, everyone

everyone is just moving to queens now

I have noticed this a little bit, but I'll prob notice it a lot more soon since the L tunnel shuts down next year

no chili, it's like when the electrical energy is still pulsing thru a corpse

I'm a queens booster but you still need like middle class income to live here, other than maybe Jamaica.

i don't think new york is dying as much as i am.

it is however meeting a lot of less interesting cities half way.

What’s it like in Mexico City these days

Friend's little brother has lived there for a few years, loves it. Last I heard he made enough to live playing online poker for a few hours a day but he might be doing something else with that degree in applied mathematics now.

I loved from Brooklyn to Queens in 2015. I was really hoping for Jackson Heights or Sunnyside but landed in Astoria.

i used to live out in jersey city, walking distance from man alive.... i have nostalgia for that neighborhood, though i think MA's neck of the woods was a bit rougher. didn't some guy get shot in that bar out front of your place?
anyways, i miss hangin' with you and your wife in those halcyon pre-kid days.

What’s it like in Mexico City these days

― direct to consumer online mattress brand (silby)

friend moved there a couple years ago and loves it. i'm making plans to go visit soon

I didn't read this whole thread because I missed it.

Williamsburg is a joke but greenpoint and bushwick and ridgewood and still "cool" by most people's standards.

It's still expensive but there are cheap ways and places to live and people willing to spend 75% of their salary on rent and creative trust fund kids oh so many trust fund kids.

There's cool pockets in manhattan, particularly lower east side to chinatown. Just go to Commend or 2 Bridges.

I've lived in Woodside Queens for 12 years and still pay less than 2K for a large 2 bedroom apt in a nice building, plus 175$ for parking in the garage underneath, take that.

But people still move here to make it. There's no competition in the states other than LA. We still have the best food, the most record stores and just the most everything, except for decent vietnamese food.

It's the same as it's always been, scene-wise, sure it's not a packed Max's Kansas City or empty lot show in Williamsburg but the amount of kids doing techno/electronic music type stuff through bushwick and DJing and whatnot, still is overwhelming. Still more things going on in a single night than any other american city has in a month.

But half of those things are empty and lame.

i moved out 11 years ago. two kids now. i can't fathom the school situation?? isn't it sort of apocalyptic? primary schools in london are largely excellent, even in deprived boroughs.

Is there decent indian food? I've never been able to find it.

in london??

i'm no expert but off the top of my head you've got rasa in stoke newington, tayabbs in whitechapel, chor bizarre in mayfair

I found NYC quite depressing when I was there last spring for the first time in many many years. So many empty storefronts, etc. Obv there are great things about it that will always be there, and some of those great things are things I appreciate more now that I'm older than I did when I was younger (ie: I'm there with my kid so I'm not looking for vibrant nightlife, music clubs, etc so much now) but it seemed like a categorically different city than it used to be.

London on the other hand I still adore, find vibrant and intensely enjoyable, look forward to being there every year. I'd sooner move there than anywhere else.

decent indian food exists just not at the most obvious places in jackson heights. Like some of the smaller more random places or curry hill or out in richmond hill. Indian food in jackson heights has been largely replaced by nepali food.

i stayed in greenpoint over new year's, and what surprised me was how little had actually changed? i think of new york as growing and changing too fast, favorite restaurants closing within months, but greenpoint just kinda looked like it always had, maybe a couple of new bars, a new restaurant or two, but in general it was the same old weatherbeaten vibe, everything half run-down, the same inscrutable interlocking latticework of jealously guarded private property honeycombed within networks of utterly begrimed common land

huh

greenpoint is massively overhauled to my eye

the storefronts are physically the same (weatherbeaten for sure) but the businesses are all 'owl & butterchurn' twee shit now

and driving down manhattan ave is now comically hair-raising, like walking a hippo through the eye of a needle

the winos remain as scary as before though.

i didn't walk down manhattan ave - i never took a step in the direction of bedford actually, maybe this is why

i moved out 11 years ago. two kids now. i can't fathom the school situation?? isn't it sort of apocalyptic? primary schools in london are largely excellent, even in deprived boroughs.

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, February 8, 2018 10:20 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In some ways the schools are probably much better than they were 10-20 years ago, but any decent one is going to be really crowded. My daughter's school has had a growing waitlist for K every year, and they've managed to get everyone in each year so far but eventually they'll hit a breaking point.

And probably the only thing keeping it from being worse is the limited amount of buildable land in my neighborhood, so there aren't tons of new rentals and condos springing up everywhere like in LIC. It's mostly just turnover from old to young that's caused the increase in school population.

Sorry, that was an xpost asking about decent Indian food in NYC. My number one thing to do while in London is to eat a curry.

Best indian in the area is Hicksville Long Island, Edison and Iselin and Jersey City NJ, I think it follows a standard development as certain immigrant groups move out to the suburbs you have to follow to get the good stuff. That's why the best stuff in Queens now is Tibetan/Nepali, and there are literally hundreds of places.

I was telling Virginia Plain that I feel bad that I have never had a momo.

they are delicious

I have a friend forced to move his family to either New York or London for work. He's lived in both places before, but London is leading on pretty much every front, from schools to cost of living (!) to commute to parks, benefits, etc.

The last time I was in New York, about a year ago, I never left Brooklyn and I guess never felt the need to. I used to be (years ago) half jealous of New York exclusivity, of the stuff they have and get that no one else has or gets, but I really think that's increasingly overblown. It's just so dense and such a media hub that its identity gets aggressively projected, but it's pretty rare these days that I kick myself for not being there, besides not seeing all my friends and stuff. Fortunately, it costs a bit over $100 to fly there, so: problem solved!

Yeah, I would say London too.

my secret conservative idea is that if you have all these cultural events and cool things there all the time you don't appreciate them. poor yokels who get one really good concert a month in their whole area, they appreciate that show

i think for people who aren't like the heroic ulysses, that is correct

also i am always so broke bc rent that i can't go to most of things that do look awesome to me (it's a shame that classical music is my staff of life and i live here and i can only go to free events)

Which is the irony. As my pal pointed out, no one lives in NY to save money, they live in NY to take advantage of all NY has to offer. Which costs money, which leaves you with no money and therefore unable to take advantage of all NY has to offer.

My theory was that cell phones broke New York. In a city where there are so many things happening in so many places at once, it just perpetuates this sense of ... aloofness? Maybe not that word. People constantly looking for something else to do as soon as they get to the first thing because they know there is something else going on and it's easy enough to get there. Vs. Los Angeles, which requires a certain commitment, due to travel times. Chicago is obviously a huge city with tons to do, but I don't get the same perpetual motion machine vibe.

Anyway, NY, I know lots of people who just don't go out, and of those that do, many seem to be always en route to or from something else.

xp a large part of my job is to convince people to come see very good free and cheap entertainment and it's hard as hell to do! people are tired all the time.

But there's also a ton of competition! It's a vicious cycle. All I know is that I have friends who have the same job in NY that my wife does here, and they're done by 8 or 9 while my wife is heading home between 5 and 6 (at the latest)

People constantly looking for something else to do as soon as they get to the first thing because they know there is something else going on and it's easy enough to get there. Vs. Los Angeles, which requires a certain commitment, due to travel times.

For people who can't afford cabs, the disintegrating subways are making travel time a factor here too.