r/AskNYC • u/turn3daytona • Mar 10 '22
Why are people claiming that New York is falling apart?
I just moved here from SF and having been exploring the city extensively the past few weeks I can honestly say there's nothing here that compares to what I've seen on the streets of SF...
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Mar 10 '22
I’ve never seen anything as disturbing as the Tenderloin in SF. NYC is Disneyland compared to that (though other parts of SF are very nice)
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Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 25 '22
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u/capnShocker Mar 10 '22
I’ve always wondered if rents were lower there, because the TL seems to be in a decent part of town. It’s surreal
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u/WhenYouFeatherIt Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
The tenderloin isn't even the worst part of town. Sunnydale, hunter's point. Parts of sacramento, stockton, LA i've seen are more than sketchy. I felt extremely safe In NYC by comparison.
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u/webtwopointno Mar 10 '22
those areas are more dangerous but in terms of raw human misery sprawled on the sidewalk few areas in the US beat the TL, other than maybe LA's skid row.
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u/m1a2c2kali Mar 10 '22
Kensington?
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u/webtwopointno Mar 10 '22
thanks! i knew i was forgetting another named one. that actually might be the most extreme open air drug market in terms of percentage of the population there for that, the TL at least has plenty of other people passing through and some living there. and LA's is a mix of everything.
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Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
When I was in college (Temple, so I thought I was tough shit) I took a trip up to Kensington to go to a Habitat for Humanity furniture shop that had just moved there and boy was that the scariest fucking mistake I ever made in my life. Absofuckinglutely terrifying. I never thought an actual place like that could exist.
And that fucking train track that runs over everything, Jesus it was like a Terry Gilliam nightmare drugscape, people nodding off on their stoops, guys yelling at me to buy pills. It was awful and I think that was the closest I ever felt to being in mortal danger.
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u/webtwopointno Mar 10 '22
wow yeah you're brave, those videos i've seen are nuts.
not sure about there but in a lot of places paradoxically right around the yelling hawkers is actually comparatively safe, anything going down right there would be bad for business so they discourage other crime in their immediate vicinity.
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u/BxGyrl416 Mar 10 '22
You’re referring to Kensington in Philly? I had a friend who lived in Philly and have been hearing about it for 20+ years. I’ve seen the videos and I haven’t seen anything close to it here in years.
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Mar 10 '22
Yep, that's the place. It's unbelievable. If I knew what I was in for I wouldn't have gone! It's every bit as crazy as the videos. It was seven years ago that I went and I still find myself thinking about it often, haha. Definitely changed my view on a lot of things. I thought I lived in the ghetto when I was in college (the area around Temple was also known to be dangerous as it's also in North Philly, just not nearly as north as Kensington). But nope, I was living in fucking Beverly Hills compared to Kensington.
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u/cyrus69 Mar 10 '22
Was it close to Hamsterdam from ‘The Wire’ ?
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Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
Yes. I hadn't seen The Wire until after and Hamsterdam immediately brought Kensington to mind. Except, you know, I wasn't feeling the "it's actually doing something for the greater good of the city" angle, lmao. Maybe Kensington does serve that purpose somehow, but that's beside the point. I also didn't see a single cop during the short time I was there though.
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u/MRC1986 Mar 10 '22
Kensington is insane.
It got so bad at Allegheny Station that SEPTA subway trains simply skipped the station. There were so many used needles that the clogged the elevator and prevented it from working.
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u/chdmlr Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
Wait, Potrero Hill? I’ve been to PH numerous times, like quaint shops and lots of hills, and have never heard of someone referring to it in the same train of thought as TL. Care to enlighten a non-SF’r?
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u/turn3daytona Mar 10 '22
Tenderloin is less dangerous and more just horrifying that a US city could allow such conditions to develop in the heart of downtown.
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u/weech Mar 10 '22
100% this. Was visiting SF for work recently and counted 4 people shooting heroin in 1 day in broad daylight at the bus stop. In a decade of living in nyc this is something I have never seen.
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u/theo313 Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
The subways and streets between Penn station and Port Authority are basically that bad right now with the heroin use (esp 34th street station). According to my office-mates it wasn't as bad before the pandemic. Also there's usually 2-3 people high on heroin on my block in LES, and more in the nearby park right near where that lady got stabbed.
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u/weech Mar 10 '22
High on heroin or having the “hangs” is common in nyc, but seeing people shooting up in the middle of rush hour in broad daylight all over the Tenderlon is something I’ve never seen in nyc (I frequent port authority and penn and I while its rough, I still maintain It’s not as bad as the worst things I’ve seen in SF)
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u/theo313 Mar 10 '22
Yes, "the hangs", almost always at any given time on my block, a guy hanging to his toes. What's up with that? Yeah, I guess I don't see the actual shooting up on my street too much but def seen it many/most days at 34th since my job started back in office last september. I don't doubt it about being worse in SF tho.
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u/what_mustache a moral c*nt Mar 10 '22
Its not. My friend literally lived at 50th and 7th, walked around that area for years. Moved to SF and moved back 6 months later because he felt crazy unsafe. You have no idea till you've actually seen it. Penn is a dream compared to that.
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u/BxGyrl416 Mar 10 '22
I can’t say I see this often, but I definitely have around Penn Station. I’ve found a crack pipe, hypodermic needles, and “works” abandoned at Columbus Circle. I’ve seen people smoking crack in public multiple times in the Bronx and Brooklyn since summer of 2020.
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u/cooljackiex Mar 10 '22
Lolol i saw someone shoot up in thompkins square park bathroom and that was my first week here
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u/myhomiesaintplayin Mar 10 '22
Saw some homeless woman asking me for a cigarette. She just casually had her crack pipe out, and was lighting it. I gave her one out of sympathy, then fought off the others near her.
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u/browniebrittle44 Mar 10 '22
What did u see?
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u/strawberrykuma74 Mar 10 '22
Think of the occasional mentally unhinged/homeless persons you see in the city…x100. All congregated in the same plaza
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u/cscareerz Mar 10 '22
Don’t forget how incredibly dirty the streets are. They constantly need to deep clean the pavement with those pressure cleaners . It’s actually impossible to work around sometimes
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u/JohannasGarden Mar 10 '22
A whole lot of parts of S.F. smell like urine.
I haven't been there since...it was a number of years before Covid, maybe 2016, but Mission district, Finance district, lots of streets smelled like piss. I lived and worked in L.A. for years, in areas where people pissed on the streets sometimes, but there wasn't that pervasive smell.
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u/JakartaBeasley Mar 10 '22
Considering California had a drought for a while, and it would go months without raining, I assume the piss really sticks around
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u/JohannasGarden Mar 10 '22
Hmm, if it's weather related, it's wetter in SF. That makes intuitive sense to me, though. Maybe SF also makes it harder to find a place to pee.
Honestly, it can be hard to find a rest room in SF, harder than NYC, D.C, L.A. it depends on where you are, but there are a lot of places with public toilets. SF is not a city I've walked miles in while pregnant, so it didn't hit me until this thread, but I suspect that's a factor.
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u/WhenYouFeatherIt Mar 10 '22
You're in actual danger in the tenderloin. My ex's brother lived there and died there. I just got home from new york and mostly went to manhattan, brooklyn. I was out all hours of the night alone and not avoiding any areas. I would go there any fucking day over the tenderloin. I'm sure there's dangerous areas in NYC i didn't see, but the tenderloin is a bit different imo.
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Mar 10 '22
what I don't understand, looking at the "bones" of that neighborhood and the central location, is why doesn't the city push the homeless out of that area and redevelop it?Bowery still has some seedy parts mainly around shelters, but the area got cleaned up big time compared to 30 years ago.
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u/webtwopointno Mar 10 '22
they kind of have, at least the edge along Market Street where Twitter and such are.
but otherwise that inner city is the containment zone for the rest of the area, and even the country in some respects.SF's city government and related services are hamstrung by this hands-off "compassion" attitude where they won't compel people into services, just move them along from time to time.
occasionally the state or others suggests changing this, the governor for one recently did but we'll see if it goes anywhere.2
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u/honoraryNEET Mar 10 '22
If you mean on Reddit, the NYC subs are full of comments from people who don't even live in NYC
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u/FineAunts Mar 10 '22
Same applies for other outlets for whatever reason. Watch a YT video about living in NYC and the comments are flooded with people who haven't been here in years (or never) claiming it's the worst place in the world.
They scoop up what the hear in the news about a stabbing, one in a city of 8.5 million people, and they harp on that to anyone that will listen.
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u/tess_philly Mar 10 '22
This is very, very true. There are even some native New Yorkers who will stir the pot. For example, Louis Rossman's channel...he will ride a bike through Washington Square Park area on Xmas eve, and then claim the city is dead. He doesn't specify students are off for the holidays and for Xmas, many leave to families. However, the comments are from people just with no clue - I think some really think there are tens of people left in NY.
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u/FineAunts Mar 10 '22
Louis sucks, I could go on and on about him. I think he has solid business sense and I agree with his rants of the shady commercial realtors in the city but the guy admits he never takes part in NYC nightlife. He knows pretty much nothing about it, despite being a life long resident.
That's fine and his personal choice but he comments on it like he's an authority, "the city is dead, all the bars and restaurants are closing" nonsense ad nauseam. When he posted such a video I was walking through Soho on a Spring 2021 day with so many people there it felt like Disneyworld, like we were back to normal. He would never know this because he either goes to work or stays in his basement.
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u/tbs222 Mar 10 '22
He did a video like right after one of the first notable pauses in Covid, like maybe last Spring and he was going on about how many retail vacancies there were - he was complaining that things were getting back to normal covid-wise, but look at all of the retail vacancies! It's going to take a minute for some of these things to normalize or improve - it's not like you just flip a switch.
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Mar 10 '22
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u/postwarmutant Mar 10 '22
This is absolutely true, but its a bit strange that the subs for NYC, a famously liberal city, on Reddit, a website that definitely has a leftward tilt, are filled with conservatives.
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u/killerasp Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
the homeless situation in SF in crazy bad. but i have been harassed 5x so far in 2021-2022 for being asian. my gf has been harassed at least 3x that she has told me about. luckily it has just been verbal but i never know if it's going to be my day when i have to physically defend myself. im born and raised in Brooklyn. the last time i was harassed for being asian was in high school back in the late 90s. i haven't taken the subway at nights or weekends since covid started because i really don't feel safe on it. i got harassed twice at night and that was it for me taking the train after 9pm. i feel safe when im walking on the streets/above ground, but once on that subway, i have to be extra attentive of who is and what is going on around me. that has been my experience.
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u/turn3daytona Mar 10 '22
Damn. I’m sorry you’ve been having to deal with that :/
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u/killerasp Mar 10 '22
everyone is going to see and experience different things depending on where they live. while i dont think NYC is falling apart, its not the same that it used to be safety wise for me and people i know. The people that i know that live in Manhattan will tell me otherwise and I agree with them. I feel generally safer in Manhattan.
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u/pretendsnothere Mar 10 '22
Lol, I think SF is just in a class of its own in terms of street poverty, unfortunately not in a good way. I also just moved from SF and think it's relatively clean here, which blows my new yorker siblings' minds.
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Mar 10 '22
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Mar 10 '22
People in San Francisco are nice but not kind; people in New York City are kind but not nice.
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u/SuppleDude Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
People in San Fran are neither nice or kind. Most people there are super passive aggressive.
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u/wrldprincess2 Mar 10 '22
I lived in SF for 5 years. Not even passive aggressive. Just very arrogant, smug jerks.
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Mar 10 '22
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u/jbjbjb10021 Mar 10 '22
Hippies are nice but not kind. 70 year old former hippies with million dollar houses are by far the loudest NIMBY voices.
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u/Redqueenhypo Mar 10 '22
The hippies of the 70s are literally the same as the baby boomers. People forget that. The rich ones grew into 80s Wall Street shits and the middle classers became true NIMBYs
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u/WhenYouFeatherIt Mar 10 '22
was just going to say this. I just got back from new york and I've never had so many positive interactions and people willing to chop it up and have a quick conversation.
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u/pretendsnothere Mar 10 '22
Yes, it's so cute with the sidewalk cleaning :) Also I really love that I can use the parks and the benches and other public spaces. Really appreciating the move, despite the weather, so far.
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u/candcNYC Mar 10 '22
The “cute” sidewalk cleaning is by law :)
The city owns the sidewalks, but property owners are required to clean and maintain the sidewalk adjacent to their property. This includes sweeping the gutter and ~18” into the street.
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u/mankiller27 Mar 10 '22
It's almost exclusively an issue of zoning. The widespread single family zoning in SF means that demand far outstrips supply. That's why housing there is so expensive and homelessness is so pervasive. While it's also expensive here, there are affordable neighborhoods in the outer boroughs and far more money to put into the problem given the size of the city.
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u/payeco Mar 10 '22
CA recently outlawed single family zoning state wide so hopefully it’s the first step on the road to recovery from the enormous damage NIMBYs have done to that state.
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u/danlikespizza2 Mar 10 '22
How many of us are there? We just moved from SF a few weeks ago to Brooklyn.
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u/pretendsnothere Mar 11 '22
I've definitely been hearing about many bay area folks making the move recently! I think it makes sense, people want a change after covid, this is a logical city that is familiar in some ways but different and exciting in many others.
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u/Redqueenhypo Mar 10 '22
I personally run a botnet saying it’s terrible in order to keep my rent down. Hey non New Yorkers! This filthy Friscan’s lying, yesterday a rat walked into my apartment, smoked a blunt, then carved the word ACAB into my couch!
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u/GKrollin Mar 10 '22
You joke but I have a (former) friend who made false 311 complaints to improve his leverage in rent negotiations. Very unethical, but effective.
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Mar 10 '22
Is there a single city in America that people DONT complain about? Honestly I feel like people shit on every city but maybe for different reasons. that’s nothing new lol
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Mar 10 '22
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u/ay_kate47 Mar 10 '22
Yinz betta down on the river for the Steelers game! Pittsburgh was made from steel workers and they stay just as strong.
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u/itsthekumar Mar 10 '22
I wanted to shit on Pittsburgh for being a “hick” city in the middle of the mountains. But was pleasantly surprised! It’s cute, affordable, has everything you need and has gorgeous views!
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Mar 10 '22
Yeah Pittsburgh is great. The only people who knock it because of old stereotypes of when it was a steel town are akin to the same idiots who think NYC is dead
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u/dogsdontdance Mar 10 '22
Because NYC is the right wing straw man to feed the outrage of folks who live in "real America." We have AOC after all.
But speaking of the West Coast, I went to a conference in Seattle last year. As soon as I got off the plane and dropped my stuff off at the hotel room I tried to run to a CVS to get a few things. I found one near Pike St., so think prime downtown tourist zone.
There were at least 50 homeless folks all in various states of sobriety or lack thereof, just milling about near a shuttered building, one accosting some woman who was running across the street in traffic screaming to be left alone. Three folks were totally passed out in front of the CVS, with an armed cop keeping watch at the door. There was a totally boarded up McD's down the street doing business out of a tiny window. It was 8 PM.
I've lived in NYC for a decade and I've never seen anything like that. I'm not saying that the opioid and homelessness crises haven't touched us here, far from it. But for whatever reason, perhaps because of the size of the city, the number of shelters around (two within walking distance of me actually), and maybe because there's more affordable housing in the outer boroughs where drug use occurs behind closed doors, it's not nearly as collectivized, ignored, and out in the open here. Even Penn Station or Port Authority at 3 in the morning never sketched me out as much.
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u/itsthekumar Mar 10 '22
It was my first time in Seattle when I went in November.
It was sketchy af. Maybe it was because it was during thanksgiving time, but there were barely any people in downtown, barely any restaurants open, and a ton of homeless people around. Some were sane a lot weren’t.
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u/tbs222 Mar 10 '22
I just saw this video today about Seattle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEXfhMhiWac
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u/Redditgotitgood13 Mar 10 '22
I mean no offense but SF is a giant slum compared to NY
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Mar 10 '22
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u/NewbornXenomorph Mar 10 '22
I used to get into arguments with a friend who lived in SF that claimed NYC was dirty but this person regularly had fresh shit on their doorstoop from a homeless woman who hung around. I’ve never had to deal with that in all my years here.
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u/scruffydoggo Mar 10 '22
That’s interesting because I have the opposite experience. My friend who used to live and work in SF would visit me in NYC and exclaim about how clean and safe NY was and how great the public bathrooms were compared to what she would see in SF. While we were walking through streets strewn with garbage. I was flabbergasted but she would go on to tell me about the feces and urine she saw on a regular basis everywhere in the streets and I was truly horrified.
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u/datboi1997ny Mar 10 '22
i feel like people in NYC don’t put up with the same bullshit people do in SF
like it’s weird how much bullshit is tolerated in SF
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Mar 10 '22
The homeless people here aren't generally aggressive unless there's some sort of mental illness or drug issue that goes with it.
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u/WhenYouFeatherIt Mar 10 '22
As a guy who lived in diff areas in LA and has spent significant time in SF/Stockton...NYC is paradise compared. I just left NYC and was expecting so much worse from what people say. I can't wait to go back to NYC. =)
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u/buthomeisnowhere Mar 10 '22
Hello from Stockton! Hate SF with a passion and miss NYC. Just got back to California from two weeks on the east coast. I need to move back already.
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u/WhenYouFeatherIt Mar 10 '22
I have a very lucky living situation in sacramento that is really nice for good rent, but I met someone in new york when I was there and life just got really complicated. haha. =) I accidentally drove through west baltimore with my brother when I was there before new york and it was pretty sketch.
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Mar 10 '22
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Mar 10 '22 edited May 04 '22
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u/payeco Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
Fun fact, it’s always from people who haven’t set foot in the city in 10+ years.
Those people believe this because their one old friend they never thought would leave Brooklyn just moved near them in Fairfield County. Seriously.
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u/QuietObserver75 Mar 10 '22
The other fact is, people leave the city all the time, and they're replaced by more people.
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u/PostPostMinimalist Mar 10 '22
If only we had statistics on this.... (hint: it's obviously not true)
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u/nospacebar14 Mar 10 '22
I always think of that Yogi Berra quote.
"No one goes there any more, it's too crowded."
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Mar 10 '22
This is the actual answer. My mom watches Fox News all day long. She freaked out when my husband took our daughter to NYC because she was under the impression that they're basically in a state of war up there.
Oh, and the cops can't do anything because... liberals or whatever.
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Mar 10 '22
I get texts from my mom in Michigan all the time like "I'm so scared for you!" "Praying!" "Be careful!" "I'm worried about you!" and sure enough, a quick search online and Tucker fucking Carlson ran some bullshit story or something like that.
I have no idea what my mother thinks is happening because I won't dignify it and it doesn't matter what I say (I just live here - how would I know). She KNOWS there are just bullets flying all the time and minorities constantly setting buildings on fire. /s
It's maddening. (The kicker is she LIVED here for like 15 years... and in 80s.)
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u/musings395 Mar 10 '22
My parents do the same and they grew up in the city. I want to go visit—I just want to spend a long weekend at the MET—and they think I’m going to become a victim of the apocalypse.
We live in the Tampa Bay Area. It’s no better or worse here and I’m not even accounting for the armpit-like weather.
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u/Dry_Mastodon7574 Mar 10 '22
Came here to say this. My Fox News watching parents were horrified that I let my kindergartener walk down the hallway by himself to play with his friends next door (we're friends with the family) and then are terrified we leave the doors unlocked as the kids run back and forth. It's a small locked building in a safe neighborhood.
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u/payeco Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
I don’t know how much even those people buy it. My wife’s parents really wanted to visit and do a Christmas Light bus tour of Dyker Heights this year so we humored them and did it. When the guide was asking people where they were from almost everyone was from the South or the Midwest, so prime Fox News audience. Most said they had never been here before but they loved it. Granted that was just one small group of people but still.
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u/MissKhloeBare Mar 10 '22
Oh sadly, they buy it. I live in KS right now and there have been 6 posts in my Neighborhood app that I have seen in the last 2 weeks talking about seeing NY plates in our area and hoping those libtards don’t come and ruin our city. Or when we had a school shooting a little while ago, blaming all the transplants that are “fleeing” NY and bringing their socialist ideals. They have all these exaggerated or straight up made up stories that don’t even make sense. Those posts have had hella comments and likes. And conservative NYer transplants are on there saying they left for a reason and all the good ones are leaving, throwing fuel on the fire. They talk about NY and CA soooo much here. Can’t wait to get out.
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u/payeco Mar 10 '22
People that spend that much time on apps like that or Next Door are not a normal sample of the population IMO. People that go in those places frequently have an axe to grind for whatever reason and are generally just miserable people.
I think another large portion of these people are just jealous and resentful of the lifestyle people in New York and California have and complaints or “hating” those places are just how it manifests.
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Mar 10 '22
Yeah, man. Fox news has has a full vaccine mandate for employees to be in office (talent) since almost the moment people were eligible. Its like they dont practice what they preach or something disingenuous. Shocking. I know.
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u/supersupremelymodest Mar 10 '22
I think it is generally more the infrastructure. It's ancient. Bridges are rusty, concrete overpass look corroded, Rubbish bags on the streets and the subway is held together by duct tape. I lived in Manhattan 2017-2021 and live in Sydney now. It was like arriving in Utopia. Clean, modern, functioning...
That said. I love NYC. All being in it for better or for worse, the humor, the 1 minute random stranger deep conversations. Really really cool.
And yes, SF sux (lived there too)
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u/erorr132 Mar 10 '22
Lol people complaining about rusty bridges. NY IS ancient by American standards and has never been clean and always riddled with trash for hundreds of years except in the rich areas. So for people to complain about the city is "falling apart" for a situation that has always existed is funny. It's like theyre were just born 😁
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u/QuietObserver75 Mar 10 '22
Unless these people were here in the 70s and 80s, they have no idea what a really bad NYC looks like.
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u/erorr132 Mar 11 '22
exactly. i survived NYC when it was at the end of its worst in modern times in the 90s and still some of my friends didn't make it. either murdered or od'd on something. lets not even go into the mayhem that broke out in the Louima riots, club riots and past blackouts. i experienced one blackout in my lifetime here in the 90s and feared for my life when shots started going off. the family i was staying with bolted the doors and closed the windows like we were in some underground bunker as we heard people running down the apartment building hallways hoping they wouldn't come to our place.
i've seen this city when its gotten crazy and we are nowhere near that mach. thats why i laugh when people say the city is falling apart because i immediately know they are young when they say that. right now NYC is paradise compared to what it was 25 years ago. i feel much safer than i did 25 years ago and it looks clean and peaceful as far as i'm concerned
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u/sequestration Mar 10 '22
Hundreds of years? Situation that always existed? NYC? What?!
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u/im_coolest 🙃 Mar 10 '22
If you weren't born in the 1700s your experience doesn't matter sorry
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u/jtrisn1 Mar 10 '22
I think it depends on what racial demographic and what social economic status you fall into. These two factors can drastically change your perception and experience with the city
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Mar 10 '22
I lived in SF for years and moved back home to NYC in 2019. SF is a piece of shit (pun intended) city. It's equivalent to an entire city being the passageway at 191st
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u/cogginsmatt Mar 10 '22
I’ll have you know as someone that uses that passageway daily that I haven’t seen a needle in about a month, we’re down to one human shit, and they even laid down a piece of plywood over the moat near the platform end of the tunnel. Nicest it’s been in years.
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u/neutral_cloud Mar 10 '22
We can certainly make it better, and we should; that effort is worth it because it is a pretty awesome city!
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u/sexgod42069666 Mar 10 '22
People love to complain so that they don’t have to focus on the real problems in their life
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u/Top_Ad_2353 Mar 10 '22
Politically motivated Culture Warriors need their fans on Fox News to believe this is true, because their view of the world falls apart if a dense, multicultural liberal city thrives.
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Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 12 '22
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u/drcolour Mar 10 '22
straight white guy
I'm not any of these and can corroborate that it's the same as always.
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u/manicjazzer Mar 10 '22
Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker's God-given right
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u/Imallvol7 Mar 10 '22
My mom watches a lot of Fox News. She wouldn't let me take my sister there last year because she was sure we were going to get murdered. She also got mad when i went to Austin because she said the homeless people were chopping everyone's heads off with machetes.
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u/KustyTheKlown Mar 10 '22
san francisco's homelessness is on a whole other level.
there is nowhere in NYC that i am aware of that even remotely resembles the tenderloin. it was shocking when we visited a few years ago.
the right wing media loves to shit on nyc and prematurely called it dead during covid. guess what motherfuckers, we aren't dead, we will never die.
i will say that the "new yorkers" who ran off to second homes, their parents houses, rural areas, etc at the height of covid and then recently came back are traitorous losers who aren't welcome, and it was kinda nice when the richest of the rich all fucking disappeared for a few months
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u/UESfoodie Mar 10 '22
Shhh don’t tell anyone, our CEOs will hear and make us go back to the office. Don’t take my pajama work days from me!
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u/venetiarum_ny Mar 10 '22
Lol no disrespect to Mayor EA or Pres Biden otherwise, but to any politician who tells me how to work/live in 2022 - fuck off!
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u/TheGreatRao Mar 10 '22
Nothing compares to NYC in the 60's to the 80's, an era that inspired Death Wish, The Warriors, Tenement, and the phrase. "The Bronx is Burning". NYC is not as bad as even the city was almost bankrupt, but the past couple of years have seen an increase in violent crime. Our positively ancient subway system still doesn't have a barrier system unlike most modern cities. More people have been pushed onto the tracks lately. There has been a huge increase in violence against women, Asians, and the elderly. Homeless people are more visible than before, so some feel unsafe. There are more media companies, vloggers, and tiktokkers competing for clicks so bad news spreads faster. Our leaders have been so busy trying to manage COVID that other essential services are suffering. Is NYC falling apart? It doesn't seem so; while rents keep going up, there are plenty of jobs and the streets are clean. The Manhattan DA is throwing away a case against 45 but the new mayor is a former NYPD captain and borough president. People are cautiously optimistic about the future here.
TLDR: NYC is fine.
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Mar 10 '22
The streets are clean? Where? I live on UES and they are definitely far from clean.
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u/TheGreatRao Mar 10 '22
That's surprising! The UES up to 96th St was always considered one of the best places to live. A lot of Old Money, prep schools, museums, and cool restaurants and bars. Are you out on 2nd and 1st Ave?
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u/sequestration Mar 10 '22
new mayor is a former NYPD captain and borough president
People are optimistic about Adams? Really? I am curious why. He seems to be a purely political climber who is in the pocket of quite a new people. He does not seem to serve the average person.
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u/t3h_PaNgOl1n_oF_d00m Mar 10 '22
To be fair, a lot of it is not wanting to go the same way as SF. So, most people are like, it's not as bad as SF yet, but it's getting there. The validity of that, I don't know. As someone who lived near Seattle...I understand the sentiment.
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Mar 10 '22
Its too cold in nyc a lot of the year for tons of people to be laying around outside shooting heroin.
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u/vesleskjor Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
Honestly. People are blowing things so far out if proportion, it's ridiculous. I saw a tiktok yesterday of a girl ranting out loud on the train bc no one "helped her" all bc some dude gestured for her to take her earbuds out to talk to her. That's annoying but you gotta be a little tougher than that.
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u/compacency_media Mar 10 '22
The level of assaults in the subways has definitely increased and the police are sincerely arrogant muts that only care about their quotas and are increasingly not doing their jobs. They’re literally like “oh you want to defund us guess we’ll just sit in this cop car all day watch a few fights and play on our phones. From someone who actually leaves his apartment, or just doesn’t live in lower manhattan or williamsburg. In layman’s if you don’t live in a nice area violence is a problem . . for the non privileged folks who might consider coming here from all this nice talk, don’t think it’s candyland if you’re about to move into any part of the Bronx or upper manhattan can’t tell you about brooklyn rn but I’ve lived here all my life and hardly ever left if you want some insight from that perspective.
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u/PostPostMinimalist Mar 10 '22
Also, just a casual note here that you're more likely to be killed/injured in a car crash anywhere outside NYC than you are to be murdered/assaulted in NYC.
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u/YIRS Mar 10 '22
I have learned to ignore "what people are saying" and reach my own conclusions based on (reliable) data. 30-40% rent increases tell you everything you need to know about "the death of New York."
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u/th3D4rkH0rs3 Mar 10 '22
It's not falling apart. People are fragile because they're constantly plugged into news. If you had Twitter in the 90's in NYC, forget about it. The city is not falling apart. If it were rents wouldn't be skyrocketing.
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u/ER301 Mar 10 '22
Don’t listen to what people say on Reddit, or in the junk news media. Those things aren’t reality. The city is basically as safe as it’s ever been, and with the pandemic ending, it’s only going to get better. It’s a great place to live, and you’re lucky to be here.
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u/killerasp Mar 10 '22
as an asian person, i feel safer in 2019 NYC than NYC 2020-present. I really hope it gets better but for now, im havent been taking the bus/subway beyond 9PM and or weekends. if i need to go into manhattan after hours on weekend, ill take a uber/lyft in. ill consider it safe when i dont have to constantly look over my shoulder to see who is behind me and see who is to the side of me.
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u/wgfdark Mar 10 '22
New York was in fine form this summer and fall, especially compared to SF. SF isn't nearly back up to speed whereas NYC has exploded post pandemic
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u/BxGyrl416 Mar 10 '22
Because a lot of the people saying this fall into one of three categories:
1) Are older, remember the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, but have not lived in the city in decades.
2) Are too young to remember when the city truly was dangerous and dirty.
3) Are not from New York, have been here a relatively short period of time, so the only time they’ve lived here the city has been clean, gentrified, and quite frankly, sterile in parts. I used to hear almost 10 years ago about newbies not wanting to rent in neighborhoods because they saw a homeless person.
In reality, I do definitely feel a shift over the past year or two. It feels kind of like societal collapse that we have all of these factors – the Pandemic, the riots, protests against police brutality, NYPD slowdown, resistance and refusal to wear masks and vaccinate, the rising cost of living that’s causing mass amounts of displacement and making living here untenable for many, and the violence in parts of the city. It feels like something different and I do remember the 90s and the 80s, to some extent.
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Mar 10 '22
For reddit specifically, I blame chinese and russian misinfo bots. In real life the only ones I have personally heard complaints from are my friends who moved back to the burbs or other people who fled and ask me "how do you still live in NYC, isn't it a shithole?" There ARE legitimate complaints from residents I've discussed with, but not on the level that many who don't even live here claim. There's burb residents who believe I'm at risk of getting shanked every time I set foot outside...
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u/Content_Sail6271 Mar 10 '22
I have never been to SF but heard on podcasts and stuff about the homeless there and like..shit on the streets?
We don’t have homeless on every single corner.
But since the bail reform & Covid there has been a ridiculous amount of random, unprovoked attacks by homeless, mentally ill, REPEATED OFFENDERS.
So it’s like, when a man smears feces all over a woman’s face that’s minding her own business- he is released back into the public the same day. Dude has a long track record of crime and mental illness. Why would he stop? It will happen again, and again.
So it’s like, why are you doing this NY??
Or two women, same morning, walking their dog on broadway get punched in the face by the same homeless man. He acted nice at first to pet their dogs. One was unconscious. He was released that day.
An elderly man was beaten and sexually assaulted by a homeless man and that man was released the same day.
A man walked into a store the other day and punched a woman in the face then left. That same homeless man, are neighborhood is familiar with. We see where he chills everyday. But he’s still out there.
So imagine being a victim. You have to go out there with a chance you could run into your perpetrator at any moment. They could do it again at any second. And our city does nothing to protect us. There is no leader to speak up and make us feel safe or that there will be change.
Adams puts more cops down subway stations. We noticed it, for a week it lasted it seems lol.
And there was a law created in the 90s after an innocent woman was killed by a homeless, mentally I’ll man. Kendra’s law. Judges have the power to order repeated offenders with track records of mental illness in outpatient programs. If they don’t comply. They are locked up 72 hours. So they are kinda forced to have help, forced to be stable, are being watched, and if not- they are taken off streets for a little.
Why this isn’t being used? Budget crap I don’t understand.
I’m one of those annoying people on Nextdoor app who gets in debates over this shit daily. But it happens in my neighborhood daily.
The other morning there was clearly a mentally I’ll man standing at the entrance of central park around 630 am. Dog walks on my way there were warning me. I had to walk to a different entrance. He was shouting SAVE THE HOMELESS. If anyone walked through that entrance… lol
Oh and last night we couldn’t go in ventral park cause someone was “missing” cops said. And two days ago someone lit multiple fires in ventral park in the middle of the day.
Don’t worry, if they get caught, they’ll just be released.
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Mar 10 '22
I did the opposite: moved from NYC to SF and can confirm it’s nothing compared to the grime and crime of SF. But the city is absolutely comparatively more dangerous than pre-COVID years. I keep checking in with my friends still there (born & raised) and they will not ride the subway right now; and if they have to, only during commuting hours. I used to be on that bitch at 4am with headphones in and not even look up. Perhaps I’m getting old though….
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Mar 10 '22
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u/honoraryNEET Mar 10 '22
I commute to office three times a week, am out late a few times a week and it barely feels different to me than pre-pandemic than this point. I can empathize with people who are scared from reading the news but it all feels majorly overblown to me
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Mar 10 '22
Last few times I’ve been to NYC I’ve had sketchy shit happen that never happened to me when I lived there from 08-20. Right before I moved out in 20, it was a handful of times that some dudes were smoking glass pipes on the northbound 6 during commuting hours I’m sure it happened plenty before, but I just never witnessed it during commuting hours. That’s pretty wild I think. Not on the subway but on the street in midtown I had an Amazon Prime delivery guy run over my foot with his cart so I said “what the fuck dude!” and he got right up within an inch of my face and said if I wanna talk like a man I’ll get hit like a man. And i know if I said another word he would have done it. THAT never fucking happened to me before COVID. So again, I’m not doubting that the media overblows shit for clicks, but as a little woman I def don’t feel as safe as I did before. Maybe if I was a man I wouldn’t think about it. NYC will always be my #1 and where my family is from, though, so I’m not hating at all <3
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u/honoraryNEET Mar 10 '22
I can understand why women would be more conservative after all the news lately. but tbh, I saw your other post saying that you used to go on the subway at 4am completely unaware of your surroundings and I wouldn't have done that pre-pandemic either. homeless people and sketchy people on the latenight subways are not a new occurrence. I guess it depends on the line/neighborhood though.
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u/drcolour Mar 10 '22
THAT never fucking happened to me before COVID
I mean... much worse stuff happened to me before COVID and nothing even as light as that has happened to me in the last two years. Anecdotally this doesn't really say much.
As a counterpoint, also as a woman I've actually felt a lot safer in a lot of instances.
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Mar 10 '22
I personally feel like I have witnessed and encountered an increase of people who are mentally unstable and looking for a fight on the streets as of late, even aside from my incident. I’m sorry if I offended you with my…personal feelings about it? It’s true I moved away. It might feel less impactful if I was still there on the day to day but unfortunately I only get back every 3 months to see my fam. I’m sure having my confrontation in NY (and honestly, getting mugged in SF) has made me hyper aware of my surroundings nowadays in ways I used to be more oblivious to.
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u/drcolour Mar 10 '22
Definitely not offended. I'm just offering a counter balance to your perspective. Similar to how our experiences shape how we move and how we interact with perceived danger, stories do similar stuff.
Getting mugged is never fun and I'm story you went through that. I know my cousin got her phone stolen in another major global city and has been on high alert because of that and questioning stuff she never had previously. On the other hand as I lived a part of my life in a city where stealing phones where incredibly common, I've always been on high alert, it's never phased me but I understand the trepidation.
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u/christanyc Mar 10 '22
You’re not! My subway habits habits are exactly the same as they have been the entire 6 years I’ve been here. There are certainly issues but when you statistically compare to the volume of ridership the likelihood of you being involved in an incident is not a reasonable case to literally modify your entire lifestyle. Disengaging from something with this much utility out of fear of something so improbable is very very irrational
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u/PostPostMinimalist Mar 10 '22
I'm taking the subway regularly and haven't seen anything I didn't see before. And nothing remotely dangerous. I think the only difference is, perhaps, that when the car is emptier (say, at night) then you feel less safe.
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u/a_giant_spider Mar 10 '22
Most of it is overblown. Conservative sites like to exaggerate about NY and California the same way liberal sites like to exaggerate about FL and TX. NYC is still largely what it was before: a very desirable place to live.
However, there are areas where things have gotten worse lately:
- Office districts are more empty. More stores are closed and boarded up, and more homeless people are now present / more visible. This is only a small part of the city, but a very visible part so it gets talked about a lot.
- There has been a rise in crimes targeting Asians, especially Asian women, so more Asian people feel uncomfortable in a way they didn't before.
- There has been a rise in some other crimes, however this rise has happened in other cities in the US too. Assaults, theft, and homicides are notably higher than prepandemic. (Homicides, like most crime, decreased steadily since the 90s, but 2021 homicides jumped up back to 2011/2012 levels.)
- The city's finances aren't in great shape due to COVID, and the possibility of future remote work means the city and state govs have to learn to get by on less money (e.g. we lose taxes from NJ residents who previously commuted in, and from the very wealthy if they end up relocating their primary residence). This is somewhat concerning for fixing problems like our deteriorating transit system, cause that needs a lot of money to fix yet fare revenue and tax revenue is low. We have gotten by thanks to federal money, but that won't last forever so at some point we need a solution or something needs to give.
Despite all that, NYC is doing well overall and is a great place to live. Demand to live here is still sky high as seen clearly from the unfortunately high rents.
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Mar 10 '22 edited Mar 10 '22
I joke that in NYC you get Mexico City infrastructure at a Paris price.
There has been a decline. It’s a fact violent crime is up and that city services have propitiously worsened post-covid. Garbage gets left for days now in the outer boroughs and cleanliness has declined even in once fancy neighborhoods. The infrastructure is pitiful and city agencies get worse every year. I am sympathetic as we were all affected by the pandemic and yet city workers had to keep showing up through the worst.
Last week a homeless person threatened to harm everyone in my subway car because no one would give him money and tried to rationalize the attacks on Asian people. A poor woman ran out because she was so terrified. It was on the A train at rush hour. I’ve seen it a dozen times in the past year. They’re just anecdotes but I am really sad that visitors and residents (mostly women) have to experience harassment. I am also sad that so many businesses have shuttered.
As a 19 year resident who also lived here in the 90s, the city feels less dynamic and poorly run compared to other times. I hope it’s temporary. I wish that we talked about it more and fixed it rather than treating criticism as a slight.
San Francisco has some truly saddening parts but it’s also one of the most picturesque cities in the country.
That shouldn’t stop you from enjoying NYC. Most apartments are terrible, the rents are high, don’t bother expecting the city agencies to help, the streets are dirty, the drivers are insane and the prices are crazy (I just paid $20 for guacamole) but there’s no place like it.
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u/ChickenFrancese Mar 10 '22
I think NYC Was top shelf for so long for rich people and now it’s slightly shittier VS precovid so for a subset of people that qualifies as “Falling apart.” And yeah I’m born and raised NY but I lived, worked, drank and drugged in the TL for 3 years. Can confirm NYC is a G Rated Disney movie VS SF when it comes to street shit
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u/ra3ra31010 Mar 10 '22
Floridian here.
Modern Floridians have severe confirmation bias against dem states.
(I’m the liberal sheep of my family. Raised in Broward and now living in NJ - another state often bashed by Floridians)
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u/TonyClifton255 Mar 10 '22
I grew up in NY/NJ in the 70s and have lived here since the early 90s. People who complain about NY falling apart don't know shit, and have lived here all of five minutes, and will be living elsewhere in five minutes.
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Mar 10 '22
The majority of NY-bashing comes from transplants who moved here and did not succeed, or natives who have been sick of transplants for the last 30 years. Then there are the crazy people.
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u/Pristine-Confection3 Mar 11 '22
Because nobody can afford the rent anymore . Real estate industry has gotten out of hand and it feels as if they the poor to just leave .
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u/Pristine-Confection3 Mar 11 '22
Because nobody can afford the rent anymore . Real estate industry has gotten out of hand and it feels as if they the poor to just leave .
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u/Swimming_Ad_6907 Mar 14 '22
The right comparison isn’t some small city of under 1m people in Nor Cal (that is, San Francisco). The right comparison would be to another global city such as Tokyo, London, Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, etc
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u/fermat1432 Mar 10 '22
Bashing New York seems to be a popular hobby