is New York City dead?

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

Yes. It's always been this way. You can get bored and jaded, or you just think "eh I'll skip this lifechanging event because I can always go next time. When I used to go elsewhere it always blew me away how excited people were. I DJ'd a Making Time party in Philly and it was so huge and it was like THE event. Another time I came down to DC to DJ a Rapture show at the Black Cat and there were like 4 events going on there with all these different scenes but like, all the kids were out at that one venue that night. In New York it's easier to keep to your own little scenes because there's so much going on.

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.

Nah, this used to be worse pre-cellphone. Back when everything was still in manhattan you'd just go from bar to bar to club everyone hopped around. Now things are more spread out, you're less likely to hop from like PS1 to Nowadays or something. Though Uber/Lyft certainly works, esp for the trust funders.

The internet does have the weird effect of letting you just parachute into any scene you want with no prior knowledge. Pre-internet I never would have found BNSC and been able to show up on a random saturday night as probably the oldest person there by 5-10 years. I still suspect people largely do stuff in the immediate neighborhoods around them though, bc cabs are expensive and the subway takes forever

is NYC that bike-friendly? seems like it'd be the best way to get around

I don't know, I used to use Flyer magazine like that. Or even Time Out. Just look at the listings and go over to any event that seemed interesting. But I was fearless (and lonely) in my early 20s. I've never even been to Bossa Nova.

I do assume unless you can handle lyft, people aren't hitting as many spots as they used to, but usually two. When I've dj'd places in bushwick it used to be common that everybody would show up at like 2 am. So like the kids would go out in manhattan or some trendier fancier place but then go home and end up at Tandem.

I'm trying to remember the pre-cell phone/internet era. I seem to recall always going out for specific reasons to specific places, often as a group, and if we went anywhere else it was as a group as well, perhaps meeting up with others. But the post-internet years, I get a real ships passing in the night feeling, of people popping in for a few then vanishing again, off to the next thing. But that could be because people are indeed staying closer to home, which makes popping in and out easier, or more convenient. Vs., say, borough-hopping.

Chicago is obviously a huge city with tons to do, but I don't get the same perpetual motion machine vibe.

I was basically raised in and around Chicago and it remains my favorite city but I was just amazed the first time I went to NYC and felt the massiveness, and it was like this living thing. It's not larger geographically than Chicago but when you're driving up on it, just the entire scope of Manhattan and the boroughs is another level vs Chicago's more central energy that extends out, slowly lessening as you move outwards.

I don't think Chicago has less to do and I appreciate how it's easier to navigate, the beauty of the downtown, the food, the relative affordability....but otm about the perpetual motion machine thing.

My year in NYC also saw me mostly confined to Manhattan and damn it's amazing how I felt that I was set, I could just stay there and hang out on that island forever and never even go to the other boroughs. I think I went to Brooklyn once tbh.

Things were just so much closer when it was all about Manhattan, and that's something that's definitely lost. When everything shifted to Brooklyn, it was still much tighter around the Bedford L, but now like I said above, it's spread out.

maybe kids are rocking it like that in bushwick now, I'm just not a kid and I have a car.

But when I was in my 20s and the east village was still cool, and the meatpacking district was kicking in, I don't know, manhattan in the 70s/80s/90s/early 00s is probably hard to beat regarding the density. There were nights where I'd to to so many different places.

sounds exhausting

is NYC that bike-friendly? seems like it'd be the best way to get around

but we got bike lanes! i have friends who bike interborough and swear by it. one's an ilxor!

i'd new york to get dockless bikeshare hehe

there was definitely sort of pre-gig, gig, party and afterparty and the farthest you'd need to go was like chelsea to LES

i remember when southpaw opened i was like whoa new paradigm

I hadn’t realized how bad the nyc subway decay was, reading about it here and elsewhere today. dang, that’d be a main reason to live there imo, not needing a car. I love not having to drive so much (haven’t had a car in four years bc it’d be nuts here). will never live in nyc but it’s really the only USA place you can live a full adult life without a car, or at least used to be

Believe it or not, there are other places you can lead a full adult life without a car.

I don't know, I've never experienced a big city in the US that was a compatible with non-car living.

I really like Samudra in Jax Hts for Indian, and I’m trying Boishaki in Astoria this weekend.

I'm not sure if we went to Samudra when it first opened or if it was a different place, it was a bit of a revolving door for a while. Delhi Heights, though popular with the white people, actually has some really good dishes. Never heard of Boishaki, looks good. There's a place near me called Ruma's that's was surprisingly good bengali...surprisingly because it's always empty and when we went the woman seemed really confused that we wanted food. But it seems popular.

Whoah Boishakhi's photos on yelp look amazing.

We kinda stick with seamless too much these days, not easy to get out esp for dinner, with an 11 mo old. But Opal loves Momos. Have you been to Dawas in woodside? Kinda new american hipster stuff on one side from chef, other side sort of refined but still super tasty himalyan stuff from her chef father. No fusion, but both sides are great.

the brooklynization of the world + the internet is what i meant when i say new york isn't so much dying as meeting a lot of less interesting places half way.

it wasn't my experience that travel times for either day to day living and getting things out of the city are that much larger in LA than in new york.

like anywhere you get most things in a 15 minute radius. beyond that is a colossal pain in new york as much as LA, at least for me. yeah, it can take 90 minutes to get from where i live to ... venice or something. but i go to venice about as often as i went to fort tryon when i lived in brooklyn (also 90 minutes).

buried lede for me though: we decided to move the LA like the week we found out a baby was on the way. obviously people manage it, but the sheer logistics of a baby in new york were terrifying to us.

mustang is my spot for nepali

baby isn't much of a problem for us, but it takes me 40 minutes to an hour to get from queens to flatiron for work and that's some MTA subway bullshit.

mustang is great. Have you been to Woodside Cafe on bway and 65th? They have this thing called Chatamari which I've never seen anywhere else that I'm obsessed with. Some kind of rice crepe with ground chicken and black-eyed peas cooked into it and an egg broken on top usually cooked hard and then a goat curry covering it all.

Ive been a non-car-owning adult in Seattle for over 5 years now! And we barely have any trains at all.

I also didn't own a car when I last lived in Northampton MA tbh but I was unemployed

You don't need a car if there's nowhere you want to go, is the thing.

(nearly) all my Indian meals come from Kinara in Pk Slope

Re: Los Angeles, the big difference is there are things you really *want* to do, reasons people move to LA for in the first place, like the ocean (or yeah, Venice, Santa Monica, Malibu, etc.), the mountains and the desert, that take a long time to get to, and only by car, and typically in traffic. Vs. something like Fort Tryon, which I just had to google (looks neat!).

Amazingly, I know an increasing number of people in NY (mostly Brooklyn and Queens) with kids. I have no idea how they do it. Kids without a car seems really hard to me.

I have a car shhhhhh

when i see 2 to 3 family members teaming up to hump a military grade stroller sideways down the subway stairs, as a queue of blocked impatient randos accumulates upstream of them, I just think no X 1000

lived in NYC for 28 years: '89 to 2012 in the EV, and since then in Ditmas park/ Kensington (Morbius said at some point that he lives nearby). While living there in the 2000s, I began to hate Manhattan so much that going to visit girlfriends and most of my friends in Slope area was incredibly refreshing, And now living past the Slope and on the bleeding edge after which beards and warby Parkers are unheard of is so different from my life in the EV that it seems like I have moved very far away.

I never thought I wanted to have a baby here and would move before then. But my wife's job is good, so we stayed when my daughter was born last december. We had a car because I thought we would need it and from this part of brooklyn to coney island, everyone has a car and can easily deal with it.

Then this past October, said car caught fire with me and the baby inside on the BQE right before the Kiucsyncki (however the fuck you spell it) Bridge and soon totally immolated. a subaru, safest car on the market. It's really something to walk around on the breakdown lane of the BQE, cradling your infant daughter while other motorists scream curses at you. Well before that, I had long thought that an area where NYC still has a so-called edge of dickishness is with drivers and driving.

Xpost: men with beards in Borough park and Midwood are of a different stripe than what I refer to above

veronica, i'm kensington; where at?

oh wait, we've done this i think

Man I am sorry about that automotive ordeal that sounds fucking awful and scary

fwiw the oceans (or the beach towns) are not something i particularly want to go to. they're certainly not why i moved to LA they're just not a part of life for me in LA (or most of my acquaintances), in the same way that the beach (or tbh, manhattan) wasn't for me in new york. i go to them when i have visitors, in the same way i went to midtown when i had visitors in new york. if you've moved to LA for the ocean (or a job in santa monica or whatever), you live near the ocean.

The internet does have the weird effect of letting you just parachute into any scene you want with no prior knowledge. Pre-internet I never would have found BNSC and been able to show up on a random saturday night as probably the oldest person there by 5-10 years. I still suspect people largely do stuff in the immediate neighborhoods around them though, bc cabs are expensive and the subway takes forever

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Thursday, February 8, 2018 3:33 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fwiw the new trend in cool parties is to have 0 social media presence and spread only by word of mouth. in part a response to police busting afterhours spots & underground venues, in part response to this

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.

i think this happens everywhere. or at least, it did in montreal. which is p dense so i guess yeah. a friend in my early twenties was infamous for a zeligish ability to be at every part in the city every night, pronouncing each of them 'dead' within minutes of arrival

oh god I both understand that because the ability to hop around until you find something that is great is justifiable when you can do it

but some people just do that every time, like a night out means just rotating to a new location every X minutes until bar close

And now living past the Slope and on the bleeding edge after which beards and warby Parkers are unheard of is so different from my life in the EV that it seems like I have moved very far away.

This very much describes where I live. The only vintage clothing I see in my neighborhood is worn by central asian jews without any fashion intent.

I mean not literally, but there is maybe like 1 remotely hipstery or trendy person for every 50 of those.

kensington is newly hipster infiltrated and i'm aware i'm part of the problem but it's mostly families of the type that can't afford park slope or who have been here for a long time or (more commonly) folks who own. living across the street from a school, between a graveyard and park, just far enough away from the main drags where nobody much drives through and on a block where all the businesses close at ten is a tremendous blessing.

Since this is the most active New York thread I'll just ask here...

A bit hard to describe what I'm looking for. Recommendations for calm-ish bars or venues playing good music at non-deafening levels. The kinds of places where you could sit and drink and read or write at the end of a day of traipsing around the city. Places playing ambient, drones, minimal techno, minimal anything really.

I know about Nowadays in Queens which looks promising.

seattle was quite walkable but not as much as NYC. NYC not a patch on basically any european/UK city tho obv

I can't with Nowadays. It's outdoors, right? You pay money to get inside the fence and then sit outside and then you pay money for the food and drinks? Edited to add: I guess they have an indoors now.

Anyway. Biking is so great in New York if you're not spread out over the entire city! Like between the LES and North Brooklyn, or getting around within a few miles' span. Not as much when you're in, say, Gowanus, and talking about going to the city at 1am, like some fashionable people I overheard last weekend on the sidewalk. I have so many great memories of riding between Crown Heights and Wburg over the years, mostly to meet ilxors tbh.

Then I got a scooter and basically stopped biking. I miss it sometimes but the scooter life is so amazing. You can get places not-sweaty!

i wanna get an e-bike except dickhead de blasio is intent on outlawing them for some reason

Nowadays has an indoors and a full soundsystem and kitchen and everything.

(of course I haven't been though)

There was no cover when I was there.

e-bikes are being subsidized this year by my city, up to 600 euros! but the new docked bikeshare bikes (as opposed to all the new non-docked bikeshare bikes all over the place like gobee & ofo, which interest me too) are e-bikes so that might suffice for me. at least for side-ish streets, I'm not gonna bike on well-trafficked streets here, because they're pretty narrow yet people find ways to fit multiple lanes of traffic.