A Great Place to Visit But...
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4/3/2009
I've lived in New York since 1978, with the exception of brief periods of time that I've lived overseas.
To anyone considering living in Manhattan or the NY metro area I would like to offer the following cautions:
1. Expensive. Everything is expensive. If you make less than $150,000 you will feel poor all the time.
2. Crowded. Shakespeare in the Park? Keven Kline? Nice idea? Try getting on line for your "free tickets" at 7am waiting for the ticket booth to open at 12pm. Bring a lawn chair and a few good books. You're going to need them.
3. Schools. Public schools vary widely in quality from horrible to world class. I've had 4 kids go through the system. It's a nightmare. Prepare to spend more time with your third grader than you spent in 3rd grade going through it yourself. 5th grade? Do your research! The 6th grade middle school rush makes your own experience getting into college look like a walk in the park.
4. Climate. It sucks. No two ways about it. NYC has a hot and sticky summer and a long endless winter.
5. Sports. NYC can be an awesome running town if you live by Central Park. It is a very good bike town, but not for kids. It sucks for everything else. Skiing? No. I call it sitting in traffic followed by icy granular fake snow. Going to the beach? Prepare to wait in traffic for hours, followed by a long hot walk with all your stuff to "the beach." Do not bring anything sharper than plastic butter knives or you will surely try to cut your wrists as you are slowly eaten alive by horse flies while you try to read a book in blinding sunlight with a gale force wind with enough sand and salt water to make your sunglasses useless in about 20 minutes.
6. Dating. Aha. The honeypot. NYC is probably the best place in the world to be single. The diversity of passionate, intelligent and good looking people is just amazing. Check out match dot com for NYC versus any other city in the country. Score 1 point for NYC.
7. Culture, Food, Music. World class, yeah, yeah, yeah, so what? If you're twenty something with money to spend, hakuna matata. If you have kids just remember that there are so many people crowded into the Museum of Natural History on any given day that it takes 100% of the fun out of going there.
Summary: A great place to visit, but I'm ready to move on. Been here way too long.
Adam | New York, NY