I don't get what would be so interesting about nyc after age 35 or so. Just people trying to make it, money to be made, tourists and visitors, etc. The young people you can kind of classify and thus they're not that interesting.
Seriously? I put up with this shit from 30-somethings all the time, the "Oh, Manhattan is boring, oh the City isn't what it used to be, blah, blah, blah. . . "
You're 23. In 2001 you were 14, you have no fucking idea what the scene was like in Manhattan back then and in no way can compare it to what it's like now. Waxing nostalgic about the 80s or early 90s? Sure, I can see that because the city was a very different place (though not nearly as different as people like to tell themselves it was). But take the faux "oh shit was good then it got bad" routine and stuff it.
Ever been to a city? There is a reason NYC has everything one could ever want to experience because it takes very few interested people to have a lot of people in NYC interested in a thing.
The issue is that New York decided as a strategy to rely on tourism revenue - it has nothing to do with “millenials”. I remember working as an intern building models for the disney land of 42nd street. Yes the models were cheesy (go take a look) but I mean anyone here remember Times Square before? That was one serious cesspool and I say this as a confirmed fan of late 80s New York, you know the city that your mom and dad were afraid to visit? (Anyone here remember having beers on the stoop outside of Finneli’s on Prince? AfterHours Soho was awesome..)
No one is afraid anymore so the ‘filter’ that selected ‘confirmed urbanites’ was lifted. The city reflects its new demographics. The OP and myself and the rest of urbanite that got a ‘buzz’ just walking in the city now mostly decamp to Brooklyn.
Speaking of Brooklyn, I must register my public approval of gentrification of Williamsburg. I actually lived in Williamsburg when the only (only) sign of civilization was a bagel shop next to the L. But let’s take Domino Park. That’s not ugly, is it?
So, two items: Money, and Taste. Now we people of ‘taste’ were priced out of Manhattan. And now you have what you have.
Let’s blame Giulliani for this. I never liked the man /g
Was NYC ever actually not cool? It has financial ups and downs, but it has always been the place where real ambitious people go to do cool shit, right?
All very true. The one thing that worn on me about NYC: most people leave after 5-7 years. If you stay longer than that, everyone you built relationships with early on will be gone and the ones from the middle will be planning their departure. You can keep meeting new people to fill up the leaky boat, but gradually as you get older, you lose access to the spaces where all these new, exciting (mostly young) people meet each other.
I love it for so many reasons, but that one aspect does wear on me.
I lived there for a little over a year...agree that Manhattan is not necessarily that inspiring.
I could never figure out what to do on the weekends. It felt like I was always stepping outside into a financial district and all anyone did was go to mediocre & expensive brunches.
I think you're probably right on this. I'm probably about a generation younger than the guy above you and I still see parties across the board. I've been with millionaires in Bushwick squats at avant-garde art shows and poor-as-s* immigrant artists in massively famous actor lofts. I'm a lower middle-class grandson of farmers and preachers, who's done OK for himself. I LOVE that New York lets me hang out with everyone without having to fake my way through any side.
(There are exceptions, but the ultra-wealthy are annoying as hell, even if they do have the drugs, music, booze etc.)
Not surprising. As someone who grew up in rural and suburban environments, big cities feel intensely depressing. I go there and nothing I look at makes me feel happy. I'm sure people who grew up there feel differently and see things I don't see, but for me Manhattan feels as dead as the surface of Mars.
I am simply pointing out that Manhattan is kind of boring, I don't really care if it was boring or not in the early 80s either. New York has changed drastically since I was a child and I can see that clearly. I was born at NYU Medical Center and I've been in New York for my whole life, so I'd like to think I can formulate an opinion about how the city has changed. I remember squeegee men, how Giuliani seemingly eradicated homelessness in one fell swoop, and New York before it's intense Disneyfication. My first home at Stuyvensant Town was bought by MetLife and is now being marketed as luxury condos. I have plenty to be nostalgic about. Lastly, I'm not certain what "scene" you are referring to. This article is not about tech in NYC and I never claimed to be commenting about tech. You should take your really aggressive vibe "and stuff it".
This is actually a good way to figure out where to stay when visiting a city. Click tourist and avoid, click hipster and go there. Maybe go to the slightly less red areas for a more low key night. At least that's how you'd have fun if you were a 20-30 something in NYC.
your post made me smile. i lived in the city for 14 years. there were the uptown kids, boring upper east-side parties, divorcee moms of the upper west, faux-hipster of avenue a, drug kings of Avenue d, pretentious bowery gays, i-bankers who poked at plebeian lawyers, hedge funders who poked at i-bankers and took home their madison ave. girfriends of west village, little chitaly, 2nd tier murray hill post grads who couldn't afford turtle bay, turtle bay types who only used their apartments for sleep, pretentious chelsea boys vs. the "matured" hell's kitchen gays, soho of old, new soho (new jersey), the area of south midtown of low 30's and upper 20's that to this day still has no identity, battery park city's isolation to the rest of the island, forgetting there's a world past 11th avenue.
there really is no one new york when you live in manhattan. if i didn't have a family who loves living out west right by the beach, i would be back in a heartbeat.
This, in particular, is so cool - how can one find provincialism in NYC (something one would intuitively never think of the city):
"But my midlife is my son’s youth, and the move has already shown him that the world is wider than it would have appeared to him had we never strayed from our old neighborhood, in brownstone Brooklyn, with its scrappy basketball courts around the corner; its friendly, progressive middle school and its constantly inflating property prices; its coffee shop where, on the sidewalks outside, dogs slurp at aluminum bowls of water while their owners stand in line waiting for their own carefully crafted refreshments. I have seen teen-agers grow up in New York, and I know how the competitiveness of the city—the urgency and drive and self-importance of it, the characteristics that so thrilled me as an ambitious new arrival in my early twenties—can leave a young person feeling defeated before she has begun. I have seen, alternatively, how New York can make a young person believe that there is no other place in the world significant enough to matter. I want to inoculate my son against such provincialism. I want to nurture his native cosmopolitanism."
New York is the worst! There's nothing to do if you don't like drinking, concerts, going to the park, visiting museums, touring galleries, eating every type of cuisine known to man, hanging out at the beach, skateboarding, bicycle riding, dance classes, heavy metal, reggaeton, nightclubs, techno raves, rock climbing gyms, Tinder dates, playing speedchess for money, listening to buskers, riding the subway, vintage clothing stores, reading books at the cafe, getting brunch with your friends, playing frisbee, cocktail bars, pizza, bagels, tech meetups, high technology jobs, working on Wall Street, exploring historical landmarks dating back to pre-Revolutionary times, urban exploration, fishing, hot pot, listening to old Chinese men play the zither, rollerblading, high fashion, recreational drug use, recreational sex, visiting immigrant flophouses, Japanese ex-pat izakayas, wandering around in the wee small hours of the morning ...
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