This is a great point against living in NYC metro area. I doubt you'd suffer this in Boston (Academia seems to be the dominant life form), SFBA (tech; a trader would be a lot less sexy than the founder of a tech startup even pre-fu money), or Seattle or Portland (environmentalism? art? food?).
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No. As someone who both have experienced both NYC and Boston urban living, I can tell you that Boston is no better than NYC. Sure there are a lot more schools in Boston, it's only the arbitrary scale of judgement has changed but the intensity/consistency of judgement is still the same.
Whereas in NY, yuppie culture surrounds either the high-finance/media-fashion/hipster type, Boston's culture is more on academic/engineering/townie-pride. In some sense, I prefer NYC because at least everyone's honest and at least it's a meritocracy of superficiality. You either gotta make six figures or have the American Apparel attitude and look to be in the group. In Boston, it's more like "of course, we are a open & accepting people," but "oh? you don't go to grad school at Harvard/MIT/BU? You are involved in software/allied health professions and don't have the holier-than-thou attitude? You are not WASP or a white-washed minority and don't drink the vegan-hippie-liberal ethos?" Haven't lived in Seattle/Portland extensively but my own superficial judgment of these two cities while traveling there, is that the latent vegan-hippie-liberal superficiality is even more rampant there.
This reminds me a lot of the "Messages that cities send" essay that PG wrote a while ago. NYC's message was that you should be richer, Boston's is that you should be smarter, Silicon Valley's is that you should be more powerful (in the technocrat sense of the word) - and extending it out, Houston's is that you should have a bigger house, Portland is that you should be more eco-friendly, and D.C's is that you should be more powerful (in the political sense of the word).
Maybe girls are evolutionarily wired to seek more "successful" men, and then "success" is defined by the culture surrounding them.
SFBA (tech; a trader would be a lot less sexy than the founder of a tech startup even pre-fu money)
Tech startup founders are a dime a dozen around here. In fact, I've found the best way to get a girl interested is to say "Hi, I'm not a software engineer!"
That's mainly NJ guido-style greed.
There are definitely areas of NYC where the predominant culture is, "are you doing something interesting/neat/cool" instead of, "are you working for Goldman Sachs;" be it art, programming, music, technology, food, whatever. The key, of course, is to make what you do sound sexy ;).
In some areas, dropping an employer name like Goldman might even get you scorned.
I think we should probably all abstain from pretending that "dating" in entire cities or states can be summed up so easily, or that it's even a topic that can be distilled into such a short description of general traits. One bad experience certainly doesn't label them all.
Boston is much worse. You've got academic assholes, finance assholes who are too racist to live in NYC, and townie assholes. There's a few interesting weirdos but they are all drunks.
For those who never lived in the Greater Boston region, you have no idea how accurate this one simple statement about Boston is.
Uh, it's more of a great point against living in Hoboken.
For dating purposes, NYC is the best place in the USA for a single man to live right now, regardless of social status.