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.
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.
Yes, NYC looks and feels like an aging, antiquated city to me. I'd put D.C. above NYC -- it feels cleaner, newer, more efficient. Even London somehow feels less aged than NYC. Sydney, Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam are a tier up again, and then cities like Tokyo and Singapore look like they're from the future.
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.)
I still go to NYC to do inspections and other work-related tasks, and sure, if you're single and coming from the burbs or out of state, it's your adventure to the big city. I suspect those are the Google employees you are referring to, not native NY'ers. I don't think the 80% will be most of those who left, and I don't see the crowds you say you see compared to pre-COVID. MTA ridership is down 40% or more, and there are less cars, so I am not sure about your perception of more people. Although, I said bucolic, I don't mean a satellite dish on top of a cabin far from civilization, although, I did live in East Java, Indonesia for a year where 40% of the homes had dirt floors. I loved it much more than my apartments in NYC. I live in Nyack, NY now, and it has enough to do and see. I also prefer to do physical activities and see some trees, and be able to see starts in the sky than glaring LED screens full of adverts all around me. I had worked at the Brooklyn Museum in 80s and after living in Brooklyn/Manhattan apartments then, the best thing NYC offered me was the skate circle in Central Park during the Summer, but I also found that in my travels to Montreal, Spain, and all other parts of the world including SE China. All the other supposed benefits of museums, theaters, and film were mainly for tourists. Most of the people I grew up with became cops, garbage men, iron workers, criminals, or died. Times Square was not the Disneyland it is today. I actually preferred the more characterful Times Square of the 70s and 80s, and the NYC when crime dropped in the 80s. Me and my pals were hanging in the subway tunnels decades before the hipsters brought all their fluff down there to have impromptu raves in the 2000s, but I don't think that is still happening, although with law enforcement standing down a lot more, it has more potential again. NYC like most places in the world are becoming homogeneous centers of group think and like, mostly due to the pervasiveness of tech, big tech, and corp. cronyism. All my working-class friends are relatively fit, and aside from the crossfit acolytes, office workers and the population in general when you walk the streets of NYC look a lot less fit than I recall from the 1970s to the 1990s. Modern, urban, cube life is not for me.
NYC too, to the point that the mayor tweeted encouraging "New Yorkers to go on with your lives + get out on the town despite Coronavirus", which did not age well even by 2020 standards.
I was pretty depressed about leaving Manhattan and at the thought that if I ever came back, I wouldn't be as young as I was or have as many friends (many have also left to start families elsewhere). Reading this essay reminded me of all the days I could walk around for hours by myself, not knowing a single person or expecting to meet anyone I made eye contact with ever again, but still enjoying myself just the same. If I'm at that age where most of my close friends and family have passed and I have the money, I would definitely love to live my last days in Manhattan.
edit: Another characteristic of New York is the rate of change. Construction is never finished. I still keep in touch with my roommate on FB and she's constantly posting photos of decades-old restaurants and businesses closing shop, and she's been in the apartment for almost 30 years. I'd have that same disappointment/outrage when my favorite places shut down but -- as long as they aren't replaced by sterile condos -- I've loved the variety of new stuff that came in their stead. Living in NY definitely makes you realize that nothing is forever and just about everything can be forgotten or replaced, and you learn to be at peace with it.
Maybe not NYC but I randomly bumped into a young woman in her 20's who was a professional bookbinder and restorer in Boston on the T about 7-8 years ago...so there is at least one representative the younger generations doing it somewhere..
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?
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.
Lately I've felt like New York is turning into a bit of a theme park. Everything is turning into a popup experience/temporary museum, a speakeasy, an overpriced fast-casual restaurant, a Wework or a luxury apartment building. The people around me used to sound like characters from "Seinfeld" now all I see are instagram influencers and couples who "oh my god, we love the city!".
Miss those days when you could get a $8 Bulleit Rye with a splash of club soda at bar that didn't have a 100 tv screens. I think I've become a tired old hipster.
There's more to New York than old money on the Upper West Side. I just moved to Brooklyn from the Mission (in SF) and I must say they are very similar. The art isn't as burning man oriented but the hipsters still carry iPhones and I get dragged into just as many conversations about making 'apps'.
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