For the last several days I’ve had business in New York so I’ve been rather scarce here, responding to comments but not a lot else. I stayed in the Moxy Times Square, a hipster hotel in the garment district, a convenient 3-4 block walk from the company I was working with.
I wasn’t there to site-see; I’ve been to New York several times before and I was there to work but I did want to leave you with some impressions. It has been some time since I’ve been in New York and I found it had changed, greatly for the better. It was much cleaner and tidier than the last time I was there, perhaps 25 years ago. It gave the impression that somebody cared about it, which was distinctly not the case the last time I was there. Just for the record the city I’ve visited whose inhabitants clearly care the most about it is Paris.
Relative to Chicago New York is young and its inhabitants are of non-European descent. I can see how living in New York would give you a very skewed view of events. You think you see the future; what you’re actually seeing is New York’s present.
My sister-in-law lives there and we’ve gone to visit on several occasions. Being more of a mountain/wide-open-spaces kind of guy, I always figured that I would hate NYC, but I really do like it there. That said, I wouldn’t want to live there unless I was rich.
As a guy who has been in NYC hundreds of times I have to say it’s declining. You may be correct, Dave, vs 25-30 years ago. It was a mess It’s heyday has passed. That said, it has what only NYC from my perspective has – energy. Maybe London…..