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New York is a wild place. Yesterday, I visited the city I used to live and work in for only the second time since my office closed in 2020 to visit some of my old friends. The city, itself, feels like an old friend. It's constantly changing, but always the same.
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, steeped in the lore of that city. Like most Chicagoans, I was aware that we were Second City, in reference to NYC, but felt no sense of deference to it.
Incollege, I fell in love with a girl who was obsessed with NYC. She loved it more than me, and it made me resent the city even more than I did already. What could possibly be so special about it?
Well, she dumped me, but somehow, I was the one who ended up building my life in NYC. I moved there for grad school, and once the city grabs you, it holds on tight.
When you move to NYC, you are forced to adapt to a completely different environment and way of life from every other place in America. You learn to endure countless indignations from a city that bends to no person's will. But your reward is the survivor's pride and the right to imbibe from one of the richest anthropological pools on the planet. It's literally intoxicating. For a time, my two siblings and I all lived in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. It was a golden age.
If you live in NYC long enough, you will have the experience of "vanishing New York", in which the places that hold your memories of the city inexorably close, and the friends you made shuffle off to other places. It's not your New York anymore. It's some new generation's place to come of age. They'll discover institutions that feel timeless, but are destined to be quite temporary.
New York is somehow never and always the same.
> If you live in NYC long enough, you will have the experience of "vanishing New York", in which the places that hold your memories of the city inexorably close, and the friends you made shuffle off to other places. It's not your New York anymore. It's some new generation's place to come of age. They'll discover institutions that feel timeless, but are destined to be quite temporary.
It's less the "vanishing New York" than the "vanishing self". Lifelong New Yorker weighing in here but the story most people don't get is from the people who've been here _too long_. People that are defeated.
My experience and my experience with most of the folks who've stuck around too long is that the city drives you just a little bit crazy. Even if you're successful in your career here, there is some way that the city has beaten you down (likely w/ family). Most people don't have generations of their family here and those that do often don't share the big ambitions of all of their transplant peers who flock to the city in droves and dominate its population.
Every New Yorker eventually has a time to leave. Most of us talk about how we hope we don't die here.
Wow that's very deep. As an Astorian who lived there for a few years, and I never got to see that side of the equation. I do know some that have deep found regrets that their family never purchased property, since it's appreciated quite a bit with time
Me and my wife just left NYC after living there for 7/9 years, respectively.
I was born in Oak Park and grew up in the Chi burbs, we just moved back to Lake View East.
We are both going through a very real, raw and emotional withdrawal from NYC, especially after living through COVID there. Like you said, after you live in NYC for a good number of years you realized you survived living in one of the most dynamic and chaotic environments on Earth; finally becoming a New Yorker in the process.
Leaving NYC to literally anywhere else on the planet after that adaptation leaves a large emptiness and sorrow that can only be equated to a death. However, the worst (and also best) part is that NYC still exists and people continue to make the City thrive. With a normal death, the person dies and there is closure. When you leave NYC, a piece of you dies but the City lives on in a taunting fashion, always trying to lure you back.
I believe we'll move back to NYC some time in the future and fill that emptiness but until that time comes, we'll revel in the things Chi provides that NYC does not: the Lake/Lake Shore trail/Lincoln Park, Wrigley(ville) and Midwestern hospitality.
> It's not your New York anymore. It's some new generation's place to come of age.
I think what the local complainers take issue with is that New York being a mating ritual for young well-to-do transplants in the first place.
they are came from somewhere too, nobody owns the city. It is ridiculous when you see some locals tell white people to "go back to Ohio".
Their parents came from somewhere else and had to face the same thing. Typical story of the bullied becoming a bully.
Manhattan is definitely awesome, a missed goal for me. In the 90s I lived across the river in NJ and spent all my free time in Manhattan. Wanted to move there so bad it hurt, but was never able to find anything I could make work, too expensive.
Eventually gave up on that and moved to Silicon Valley. So much cheaper here and mostly forgot about Manhattan. Visited again for the first time just before the pandemic for a conference and suddenly realized how much I missed it. But the compromises are too brutal. Endless threads here about the cost of living in SV but at least renting a house with FANG salary is possible. Comparable living in Manhattan is impossible unless you're Bezos. If I ever win 100M++ in a powerball I'll move to Manhattan, but that will never happen.
I was walking around the LES Wednesday night with some friends down by 169 bar and was realizing that the city has started to feel younger and more wild again. People drinking beers on the street, smoking weed everywhere, just out and joyous. It was reminding me of being 23 in the city again (I’m 37 now), before Brooklyn hyper gentrified.
Maybe it’s just everyone brushing off the past year of isolation, but some of that young magic felt more palpable than I had felt right before the pandemic hit. I’m happy the younger kids are out doing their thing again.
I'm not even old, 29. But I feel jaded to go out into that bustle and do that stuff lol. Although hopping around the EV and such bar scene is kinda exciting, the people you will meet and the hot girls.
Every generation deserves it!
> vanishing New York
RIP Eisenberg's, Autumn Bowl skate sessions, circa 07 hidden Williamsburg warehouse waterfront skyline viewing spot, the old Chinatown Fair, and countless others.
Reads like a pg essay :)
>New York is a wild place.
I had family in the East Village, spent many a summer in the city throughout the late 70's - 80's. It was very different from what most folks experience today, I don't think the under 40 crowd understands what Giuliani did for that city and how he basically made it safe and livable. It was like an insane asylum before him and anyone who spent some time there can attest to that. The experience was sort of like a war you fought, the place tried to kill you but fuck no, you were going to do everything you could to get out alive. Haven't been back for around 30 years, still have a little PTSD when it comes to that place...hahaha....
The whole country was much more dangerous in the 70s-80s than it was in the 2000s. https://www.statista.com/statistics/187592/death-rate-from-h... NYC's peak-to-trough was bigger than the rest of the country, but it's not obvious that Giuliani was the cause, as opposed to a general trend having a more pronounced effect in the city (possibly because whatever malaise was causing the murders was more concentrated in the city). This is consistent with e.g. the lead-crime hypothesis, but there are a number of other ways that might explain the amplification of crime in the city.
Edit: Although, upon looking at this more, in NYC the decline was really pronounced at the beginning of Giuliani's tenure. I am politically predisposed to discredit Giuliani because of his more recent antics, but it's also true that bad people can sometimes accomplish good things. I looked for evidence on this topic and it does seem that the increased enforcement of crimes during Giuliani's mayorship probably had some significant effects on crime. I regret the implication that it did not, since it seems I was likely incorrect.
Yes and the trend then continued through 90s,00s and 10s.
There is a stark difference in the people I know in NYC who moved in later than early/mid 2000s which aligns roughly with your 40s cutoff.
The before people all have stories of being robbed/mugged/assaulted and/or having friends who experienced the same. The cutoff varies by where the people moved in as some areas stayed rougher longer.
Most people I know after have not experienced nor know anyone who has experienced this.
This is especially true of zoomers / young millennials who moved into more cloistered neighborhoods in doormen buildings..
It gives people a very different perspective on the recent catch&release bail reform (which despite what people assumed, does apply to violent crimes), not prosecuting turnstile jumpers, end of stop&frisk, etc).
The pushback seems to be coming now that the surge in violence has spilled out of the poorer neighborhoods into areas where the more comfortable live/work/shop/leisure.
Check the crime reduction timeline. It started during the first year of Dinkins term (1990), not Giuliani.
https://images.app.goo.gl/uSbaDcnVffYQ8VhJ8
Another neat thing, crime tracked nationwide almost exactly with childhood lead exposure https://images.app.goo.gl/ddYD1c3YdxB5wE866
I wonder if any two folks in the same city have anything like the same experience. The idea that being a "New Yorker" means anything then becomes rootless.
Consider: Yankee Stadium holds around 50,000 people. The Yankees play maybe 30 games a year there. With 8M people in New York even if every person in the stadium were different every game, some 5 or 6 years would elapse for a person to be in the stadium twice.
Of course that doesn't happen. Of course many people fill the same seat game after game. Which mean the average New Yorker doesn't ever go into Yankee Stadium at all.
Madison Square Garden is worse - less than 20,000 seats. And every other theatre, restaurant, gas station is far far worse. Essentially for every 'landmark' you can name, the vast majority of New Yorkers never visit in a lifetime.
These waxing-eloquent love poems about 'everybody is a New Yorker' are pretty thin and clueless. Sure the wealthy may have a similar situation and experience, along with all their wealthy friends. But the rank and file of New York likely do their shift in the corner bodega, buy fast food on the way home and fall asleep in a ninth-story room looking on an alley. Rinse and repeat for 20 years.
So I guess from those back-of--the-envelope statistics there may be a common New York experience. But it isn't what these poems go on about.
> Which mean the average New Yorker
I was once offered the chance to move to NYC (I live in Europe), I finally said no but one of the reasons for me to have said "yes" was the fact that the Mets were based in New York and I would have loved to go to their matches (one of those late Tuesday matches in July - early August where you can find $20 tickets up in the sky because by that time of the season the play-off chances are already gone). I only wanted to say that the Yankees are not the only baseball team in town, quite the contrary :)
Absolutely spot on. And this is not a New York thing, it's true of every dense, rich environment. I remember swapping notes with another denizen of uk.local.london back in the day, and finding that we both had a dozen things in the West End that we treasured, there was no commonality between them. It's almost as if there were two completely separate cities overlapping in space.
Did a similar SWAG with the theatre. It seemed everyone in NYC could attend a performance on Broadway, but only one every two years. If there weren’t any tourists to compete with. Lots of people, not a lot of seats. I stand to be corrected on that number if anyone has a better analysis.
An upstate professor I knew 20 years ago called it the New York City hype machine.
“Love poems” is a great way of characterizing them. And love poems to a place have a great value…they create a sort of emotional architecture that operates at a different, but no less real, level than the physical and improves the emotional life for those thriving/living/stuck in those places. You don’t want to be “that guy” making the slog worse for those living there by denting their ideal that already has obvious condition issues.
The problem is the “Jerusalem syndrome” that arises when newcomers, newcomers on which NYC depends like vampires depend on blood, compare their reality to the poems. Sadly, although we dream in poetry, we live in prose.
The Yankees play closer to 90 games per year there but your point stands.
I did a back-of-the-envelope from attendance - 11K per game, 330,000 per year. But I guess I should have just used those averages instead! And at 330,000 per year it comes to 24 years before you get to go to a game again. So theres a range of possibilities.
A baseball season is 81 games at your home stadium and 81 games at other stadiums.
The Yankees could play 90 games at Yankee stadium, but that would require them to be good.
Actually, I'm not sure about that math...
50,000 * 30 games = 1.5M people per year. Let's say regulars/repeats/tourists are 3/4 of the people - 300K new local visitors.
A lifetime is (say) ~80 years.
In a lifetime, (7.7/8)^80 = 4.6% chance you don't go to YS at least once in your lifetime.
If I had to guess, MSG is better than YS because it hosts a wider variety of events and it's in the center of town with easy transit access, i.e. more new local visitors per year. The better analogy might be a venue like Forest Hills, which is far from the city.
Take Grand Central Station - certainly, most NYers visit once in their lives...
Remember that was predicated on a new butt in every seat every game. Which is quite improbable.
This is why basically every attempt ever to say, "People from X country/state/city are like Y" is complete bollocks. There is absolutely nothing useful you can say about how this million people compares to that million people, yet people do it constantly.
I was waiting at a street crossing at 231st Street in the Bronx the other day with my hands over my ears while a couple fire engines with screaming sirens drove by.
After they passed a girl waiting to cross the street looked at me and said: “I was born and raised in Brooklyn, and the sirens, they’re music to my ears!”
Another time the metro wasn’t running and we needed to take the free shuttle bus instead. We sat near a large woman next to a small boy and listened.
> Whatchyou talkin’ ‘bout the end o’ the world’? It be just a storm, not the end o’ the world! Who been givin’ you ideas ‘bout the a-po-ca-lypse anyway?! You wake up in the morning (snap) — happy. You go outside for a walk (snap) — happy. That’s how it’s done, son! There be no time for bein’ pessi-mistic! Look at me! I still have some years in me and I don’t have time fo’ dis shit! (loud joyous laughter)
Can confirm. I live in a very noisy area, constant honking, car engines, sirens, people blasting music, laughing and shouting.
When the pandemic hit, the silence was... scary.
Poor ears
There aren't they many world cities that can bring together so many different cultures and walks of life into a single agglomeration
One of my favorite stories about New York is of the professor of linguistics who traveled to South America to study one of the native languages there, who upon his arrival found the language to be extinct, only to discover upon his return to New York that it was still being spoken in Queens.
I couldn’t find the original article, but the following describes half a dozen similar instances.
I can think of NY, London, and maybe Sydney. Not sure if I'm missing any
Vancouver and Toronto. Famously, 1/2 of Toronto are immigrants, people not born in that country.
I'd add Amsterdam and Singapore.
agree with NY, London and Sydney.
i would add Hong Kong. so many cultures, absolutely amazing. unfortunately it seems like things are changing for the worst lately…
The city has a kind of magic, that's for sure. I don't like it very much, but I can't help loving it a little, too.
Same here. Especially once you've seen all (or a good portion) of all the little niches that exist. The rich socializing, the bar scene, the scrungy clubs, the raves, the food experiences, parks, dating around, building social circles... etc etc.
It's all a bit silly. But also interesting and slightly respectable because it's silly.
Personally I really don't want to move back there for work once the pandemic is officially over. I do like to go back about once a month or two and get a little taste.
This is a beautifully written piece, appreciate the post.
A friend who recently moved out of NYC after decades just told me the city is becoming “like Dubai.” This article’s comparison of new buildings to the Empire State Bldg and WTC, which suggests lack of shared iconography, are I think what he meant.
I haven’t been to NYC for >8 years now, wondering if others agree with his assessment? Is it just that the new skyline is new and over time will become part of the New York iconography? Or is there something else keeping them from being loved by New Yorkers?
I live in South Harlem, and personally I like the Billionaire’s Row because it has created a new Midtown skyline that’s visible all the way across the length of Central Park.
They are not individually beautiful buildings, but the improbably narrow slivers are a reminder that this is a city that will try anything.
In your opinion, what's an individually beautiful building whether in New York or anywhere? Personally, I'm a fan of the Seagram Building.
Living here in SF Bay Area, I genuinely long for life in Boston, Hartford, New York, Princeton, Philadelphia, DC, etc on the north-eastern coast of US. There is sort of an old charm, hardened and battered aesthetic of these cities, withered through decades of solemn autumns and tough winters, the people and their straightforwardness, their ethic and resilience. New York accent is so cool. It's different on this side of the country with different challenges, wildfires/droughts to hollywood culture of LA, Seattle's wierdness and SF Bay's crunch and haste, impeccable sunny weather of California and the gorgeous National Parks of the west. I am sure, I will miss it if I move to east coast.
Nice descriptions. How would you describe SF and the rest of CA?
It just seems like it was a beautiful place that a bunch of people wanted to move to. And now there's lots of money there.
SF city? It's gotten really bad. No one wants to work there in the bay area based on every single friend I've talked to. There are some nice places in Bay Area, particularly Marin county (of course, it is a wealthy county) and the region around it is nice: https://www.marincountyhr.org/-/media/images/sites/humanreso...
The rest of California is exceptionally beautiful - the whole state is blessed with natural beauty. Combine that with great weather year around and solid economy, it's a great place to live. Here is Lake Tahoe which is my favorite place in CA: https://www.sfgate.com/travel/slideshow/Hidden-Lake-Tahoe-18...
I love New York, definitely a much better place than San Francisco. Once in a while I book a month long stay at an Airbnb, the closest I’ll probably ever be to feeling like a local of the city. Lately though there’s been a resurgence in crime happening in the city, and it’s given me pause toward wanting to visit again.
That seems like an unusually risk averse feeling. The chance of you becoming the victim of a crime during a short visit to NYC is still very low. It’s not exactly a warzone, or even the New York of decades past.
I don't know anyone who's noticed any crime at all. Sure, perhaps I'm in a bubble, but if you got an AirBnB to visit you would be in that same bubble.
This crime stats scare is nothing more than Eric Adams and his ilk trying the old Giuliani playbook.