10 ms·

Everyone and no one belongs to New York

71 points by samclemens 5y ago

throwanem 5y ago
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.
- throw_this_one 5y ago
  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.
Maven911 5y ago
There aren't they many world cities that can bring together so many different cultures and walks of life into a single agglomeration
- eafkuor 5y ago
  I can think of NY, London, and maybe Sydney. Not sure if I'm missing any
  - kmlx 5y ago
    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…
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - GordonS 5y ago
    I'd add Amsterdam and Singapore.
    - AmericanChopper 5y ago
      There are many, many cities around the world that succeed in bringing lots of people together. All of the major hubs in Canada, Europe and the US have huge immigrant populations. South America and Africa aren’t quite as good at attracting immigrants, and most Asian countries have incredibly isolationist and xenophobic immigration policies (by western standards at least). But melting pot cities certainly aren’t rare at all. Cities that do this and manage to have everybody getting along somewhat harmoniously are quite uncommon, but I don’t think NYC is one of them.
    - IkmoIkmo 5y ago
      I personally find Amsterdam to be a bit lacking on that front. It often touts itself as being extremely multicultural, being >50% non-native (white) Dutch and having the most nationalities in one city. And it's to an extent true, but most nationalities will have only 1-10 people. There's a few major ethnic groups like Moroccans and Turks comprising of much of the 'diversity', and I feel most groups live very segregated from each other. New-west is very Moroccan/Turkish, Bijlmer is very black, Zuid/Centrum is very white. Social groups don't really mix that much, honestly it's pretty embarrassing for a country with such a progressive an open-minded reputation, and for a city with an international reputation. There's a few mixed areas but by and large I don't feel a very multicultural vibe, it's much more segregated in my experience, particularly among the local population. In high-income expat circles you'll definitely find people from all over the world though. Besides that I feel Dutch think in labels quite often and Amsterdam is a bit of a village, it's hard to be truly anonymous here. I run into people I know all the time. I miss the anonymity of being in a truly big city like New York or Shanghai, and generally I miss living abroad and being able to make-up a new identity for yourself.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    Vancouver and Toronto. Famously, 1/2 of Toronto are immigrants, people not born in that country.
    - lazyant 5y ago
      I don't think 50% of Torontonians are foreign-born, at least 5 years ago it was 36% https://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/demographics/census/cenhi16-8.pdf https://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/demographics/census/cen... Looks like NYC is 40% foreign-born, so your point stands as in they are both similarly multi-cultural. (iirc Brampton – a Toronto suburb – has passed the 50% mark.)
      - smnrchrds 5y ago
        They perhaps mixed up immigrant with visible minority: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/census-visible-minorities-1.4371018 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/census-visible-minori...
- legutierr 5y ago
  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. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/nyregion/29lost.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/nyregion/29lost.html
reader_x 5y ago
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?
- pavlov 5y ago
  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.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    In your opinion, what's an individually beautiful building whether in New York or anywhere? Personally, I'm a fan of the Seagram Building.
acjohnson55 5y ago
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.
- hourislate 5y ago
  >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....
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xwdv 5y ago
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.
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  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.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
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.
- selectodude 5y ago
  The Yankees play closer to 90 games per year there but your point stands.
  - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    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.
    - selectodude 5y ago
      Those attendance numbers are very out of whack due to covid. The Yankees routinely have 4 million fans come to games every year. Everybody in New York could go to a game every other year if you wanted to break it down like that.
hypertexthero 5y ago
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)
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Poor ears
- asah 5y ago
  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.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/VYhhU https://archive.is/VYhhU
systemvoltage 5y ago
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.
- throw_this_one 5y ago
  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.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    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/humanresources/site-images/laborbanner.png?h=615&la=en&w=1920 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-185055.php https://www.sfgate.com/travel/slideshow/Hidden-Lake-Tahoe-18...

71 points by samclemens 5y ago

throwanem 5y ago

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.

throw_this_one 5y ago
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.

Maven911 5y ago

There aren't they many world cities that can bring together so many different cultures and walks of life into a single agglomeration

eafkuor 5y ago
I can think of NY, London, and maybe Sydney. Not sure if I'm missing any
- kmlx 5y ago
  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…
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- GordonS 5y ago
  I'd add Amsterdam and Singapore.
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    There are many, many cities around the world that succeed in bringing lots of people together. All of the major hubs in Canada, Europe and the US have huge immigrant populations. South America and Africa aren’t quite as good at attracting immigrants, and most Asian countries have incredibly isolationist and xenophobic immigration policies (by western standards at least). But melting pot cities certainly aren’t rare at all. Cities that do this and manage to have everybody getting along somewhat harmoniously are quite uncommon, but I don’t think NYC is one of them.
  - IkmoIkmo 5y ago
    I personally find Amsterdam to be a bit lacking on that front. It often touts itself as being extremely multicultural, being >50% non-native (white) Dutch and having the most nationalities in one city. And it's to an extent true, but most nationalities will have only 1-10 people. There's a few major ethnic groups like Moroccans and Turks comprising of much of the 'diversity', and I feel most groups live very segregated from each other. New-west is very Moroccan/Turkish, Bijlmer is very black, Zuid/Centrum is very white. Social groups don't really mix that much, honestly it's pretty embarrassing for a country with such a progressive an open-minded reputation, and for a city with an international reputation. There's a few mixed areas but by and large I don't feel a very multicultural vibe, it's much more segregated in my experience, particularly among the local population. In high-income expat circles you'll definitely find people from all over the world though. Besides that I feel Dutch think in labels quite often and Amsterdam is a bit of a village, it's hard to be truly anonymous here. I run into people I know all the time. I miss the anonymity of being in a truly big city like New York or Shanghai, and generally I miss living abroad and being able to make-up a new identity for yourself.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Vancouver and Toronto. Famously, 1/2 of Toronto are immigrants, people not born in that country.
  - lazyant 5y ago
    I don't think 50% of Torontonians are foreign-born, at least 5 years ago it was 36% https://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/demographics/census/cenhi16-8.pdf https://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/demographics/census/cen... Looks like NYC is 40% foreign-born, so your point stands as in they are both similarly multi-cultural. (iirc Brampton – a Toronto suburb – has passed the 50% mark.)
    - smnrchrds 5y ago
      They perhaps mixed up immigrant with visible minority: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/census-visible-minorities-1.4371018 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/census-visible-minori...
legutierr 5y ago
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. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/nyregion/29lost.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/nyregion/29lost.html

reader_x 5y ago

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?

pavlov 5y ago
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.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  In your opinion, what's an individually beautiful building whether in New York or anywhere? Personally, I'm a fan of the Seagram Building.

acjohnson55 5y ago

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.

hourislate 5y ago
>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....
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

xwdv 5y ago

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.

Cederfjard 5y ago
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.
Ericson2314 5y ago
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.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

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.

selectodude 5y ago
The Yankees play closer to 90 games per year there but your point stands.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  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.
  - selectodude 5y ago
    Those attendance numbers are very out of whack due to covid. The Yankees routinely have 4 million fans come to games every year. Everybody in New York could go to a game every other year if you wanted to break it down like that.

hypertexthero 5y ago

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)

Ericson2314 5y ago
Poor ears
asah 5y ago
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.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/VYhhU https://archive.is/VYhhU

systemvoltage 5y ago

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.

throw_this_one 5y ago
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.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  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/humanresources/site-images/laborbanner.png?h=615&la=en&w=1920 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-185055.php https://www.sfgate.com/travel/slideshow/Hidden-Lake-Tahoe-18...