Lifelong New Yorker Gives ya the True Lowdown
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1/27/2006
I've lived here for forty-seven out of my fifty-three years and have seen the city morph from the post World WarII New Yawk of my childhood to the ravaged "Escape from New York" hellhole of the early eighties to this town's emergence as one of the country's safest cities. First, I'll tell you what I don't like: The weather, the crowding and the frenentic pace.
For people who have never been here, I will tell you that when the weather is good (Spring, fall, sunny winter days, and summer (just as long as you're at the beach) NYC and the surrounding areas are a lot more beautiful than you imagine. The terrain is downright spectacular, ranging from world-class beaches to rolling hills, to verdant mountains and the drop-dead gorgeous views from the cliffs along the Hudson River. The core city the rubes are used to seeing on "CSI" is Manhattan which only makes up about one-eighth of the the city proper. That is where you'll find everything you've heard about: Wall Street, Times Square, Broadway, Greenwich Village, Central Park, The upper West Side, ad nauseum. If you're into night life and culture up the wazoo, that is the place for you Also be prepared to drop thirty bucks to park your car and a C-note on a sushi dinner. But for a young person who has never been here -- I would say go for it -- there is no place on earth quite like it. Just be prepared to have several roommates in an apartment that does NOT look like something out of "Friends."
Most of us live in the outer boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx) with an average commute of thirty to forty-five minutes to "The City" (What the natives call Manhattan). Since New York is an older city, not designed by the central planners who are turning America into one giant strip mall, we are actually comprised of hundreds of smaller neightborhoods with mom and pop stores and a unique neighborhood personality. Me, I live way out in Brooklyn down by the seashore and the salt marshes. When I wake up in the morning, I hear the fishing boats blowing their horns and I sit out on my deck watching the seagulls fly around ans sniff the salt air. In the summer, I hop in my car (forget about owning one if you live in Manhattan. just hop the subway or grab a cab) and beat the heat by driving a half hour out to the gorgeous Long Island Beaches. On a fall evening I like to bike the green, leafy streets of Forest Hills, a lovely Tudor-style neighborhood. Believe me, despite the crowding the city is
Mike | ,