Some guy will post a picture of a pretty standard looking pepperoni pizza and say: “Imagine not living in new york.” And then there’s the whole bodega discourse, which is also funny. “For you non-new yorkers, let me explain: a bodega is not a corner store. It’s a place where you can buy gatorade, toilet paper, AND eggs.” Thank you sir for explaining that to a slack-jawed yokel such as myself.
Anybody who cloaks themselves in the garb of “New Yorker” as their entire personality is a boring ass person. NYC is the best place to live in the United States since it’s the only city where you can actually walk everywhere and that’s why I love it but compared to any other city of similar or larger size it’s embarrassing. We don’t even have fucking glass on our metro platforms. Half of the island of Manhattan is a Disneyworld. A decent chunk of the iconic parts of NYC life have closed and are never coming back because landlords refuse to rent to businesses that aren’t Starbucks or Planet Fitness. The roads are decaying, the parks are grassless wastelands, but fuck I don’t know where else I could get a Tibetan momo, bomb ass al pastor tacos, xiao long bao, and fluffy bagels all on the same block.
If it makes you feel better, Tokyo is the same.
Yeah but Tokyo has some of the best transit in the world and incredibly well planned districts. If we had that and no glass I’d feel better.
Really hit the nail on the head, I love this place but it feels like swimming in lake thats slowly drying up. Straight up half the island is the most corporate, ugly garbage, just whole entire areas ceded to Citi Bank and Sweetgreen. Its a shame because it really is one of the only functionally livable places without a car, everyone I know in LA, San Francisco, and Philadelphia has a car.
Obviously Im biased but I do so resent the amount of people that come out of the woodwork and have to be kind of shitty in New York discourse? Cool, you have a gas station that sells gatorade and eggs, is it owned and run by the same guy for the last decade or is it a Sunoco? Like, I get it, you gotta get your dunks in, but someone on Twitter posts a picture of a cup full of butter they got at a bodega and everyone has to come in with I CAN ALSO BUY BUTTER who cares dude? Just let the NYC chumps pay their exorbitant rent and try to enjoy themselves.
Yeah it’s a shame that NYC is pretty much the only place I can live in the United States without owning a car, and I can feel it dying. The outer boroughs still have life, but it’s only a matter of time before my local places are replaced with Dig Inns and Trader Joe’s.
Breaks my heart tbh. Everyone with institutional power in this city actively cheers on its death, its terrible. Its got what, ten years left before it just empties out? Its so mismanaged, and its been the only place I can enjoy living since I grew up in a rural/suburban hellhole.
Gonna be honest NYC is not going away, it’s just changing. It’s changed several times over the decades. Your NYC is probably going away though, sadly. NYC of the 1940s is totally different from the NYC of the 1970s is totally different from the NYC of the 90s is totally different from the NYC of today.