NYC is #1?

According to Timeout, New York City is the #1 metropolis in the world. 

At first I laughed. Then I thought 'my God, nyc is the best humanity can do... that's depressing." Now I am sobering up to the strange idea. Look, it's not easy living in nyc. And after a while I equate 'living difficulty' for wretchedness. Yeah, it's dirty, expensive, dangerous (although not as dangerous as the 1970s).  It seems like our gov is dysfunctional, major institutions are broke, and more old landmarks are becoming weed shops and CVS's. But when I traveled to all those diff countries in 2022 and told people where I lived...their eyes would light up. Some of the ppl even professed their hatred for America and then would say "Death to America...ehhhh, but I would like to visit NYC. See the Statue of Liberty. Maybe take in a musical." When ppl talked about their wish to visit nyc, I felt it was my duty -as a resident- to lead with everything that was awful about the city. Maybe I was trying to keep rent prices down through shit-talking. Or maybe as a resident it's a part-time hobby to complain about NYC. It's a badge of honor even. This sucks, that's a piece of crap, and on and on and on. 

Yet when I lived in LA for a year, I was on a plane back to nyc whenever I had a free moment. And in LA I had all the amenities: great job, bungalow apt with a patio, walkable neighborhood with wide variety of restaurants, so many great health options that I lost 60 lbs by just eating cleaner and going to the gym. But I craved something more. 

The thing I missed most about nyc were the ppl. The shit-talking, complaining, artistically tortured, neurotic, dick-ish, sardonic attitude. The accents...the nasally old school Upper East Side whine, the Harlem swag, the Brooklyn Jewish Flatbush flavor, the old Poles in South Slope living next to the new Mexicans, the Innwood Blatino creole. All these people and accents and humor and music just flowing together on the subways and streets. That flavors everything about this city. That's the energy that never sleeps. Not the buildings. You can find better and newer skyscrappers in Dubai. You can find better subways in Tokyo, even Chicago is a much better designed city than this shithole. But it's the ppl in this shithole. This accident of history and geography. 

Over the summer I let a few friends stay in the apt when I was away. A Norwegian I met in Oslo wistfully talked about visiting NYC as well as an Austrian tech person. I told them 'you talk so much about New York, here! Get it out of your system. Stay in my apartment. You'll hate it, the ppl suck, and go try this good Chinese dive across the street."  There were Canadian forest fires that covered the city in smoke. I would text them from some country and ask 'so whaddya think? It's dirty, right? It's not as clean as Oslo...or affordable as Serbia." And they all said a) yes, this place is too expensive and we could not afford to live here b) it's really dirty c) we love it. 

When I asked them why they loved it their circled around the answer...the buildings, oh the museums. But really it was the ppl they were meeting. The energy that was coursing through the city and their veins. 

So in conclusion...please don't come here or move here. You'll hate it, poo-poo, yucky. You'll get stabbed and break your hip and end up in a midtown pothole. Blah! We hate our mayor. We always hate our mayors and the Mets are never good.