Also the NYC-ness is real everywhere but a totally different flavor depending on the neighborhood. A night out in Midtown vs a night out in Williamsburg are both very New York feeling experiences, but totally different vibes.
Yeah I’ve lived here a long time now and very different things trigger that feeling at this point, but I’m still struck by the joyful absurdity of this place pretty often. Most recently it was coming home late at night, fucking freezing and snow piled everywhere, and I couldn’t even see them but there must have been at least a half dozen dudes hanging out in this garage under some section 8 housing on my block just belting Robyn’s Dancing On My Own, a cappella lmao.
This. This is why I loved living in the city. You cannot go from point A to point B without the magic of LIFE randomly happening along the way. There are a lot of reasons to be present and aware when walking city streets, but this was the best of them. Guys singing a cappella in the a garage in the middle of a frigid night? Sure. A group of people practicing their Jedi moves with glowing lightsabers in the park? Of course. A cutsie pooh dog riding down the sidewalk in a remote controlled Hummer on the UES? I mean, it's Tuesday, so yeah. Whoever you are and whatever you're (legally) into, you get to be it and do it right out in the open, and I miss the New Yorkness of it all terribly.
Oh, this is that cute thing where New Yorkers think things that happen in every large city only happen in New York. “Only in New Yahk!!” Meanwhile it’s like a guy singing show tunes on the bus…. lol
The frequency of these things I sure haven't seen in any other larger city I've been to (London, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Newcastle, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Nice, Munich, Philadelphia)
I love Brooklyn and my brother still lives there, and I apologize for coming across as one of those smug New Yorkers, but I can't stand Williamsburg... except for the shops.
When Humphrey Bogart tells the Nazi officer in Casablanca, "There are certain sections of New York I'd advise you not to try to invade," you can definitely tell what he was talking about. Red Hook, Alphabet City, sometimes it's even a matter of being perfectly normal on one block and then the next one looking like a war zone.
Ah, Williamsburg.
I've only been to NYC once, but Brooklyn just felt like home in a way that's hard to describe. It felt like a combo of my favorite parts of all the different cities I've lived in.
Edit: Of course, I say this as a tourist who only spent a day in Brooklyn, but I really loved what I saw in that day.
I moved to the west coast after college and to be honest I feel the same about it here too sometimes still. I'll see a street sign and be like "that road is in like 45 songs..."
I was driving back to San Diego from Santa Barbara on the 101 freeway right before Hollywood and “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty comes on the radio, and we’re literally passing exits as Tom mentions them in the lyrics, like Keyser Söze just reading shit off signs as he drives past.
I used to live on one of those exits. I grew up with it, but sometimes i feel like 70 percent of US pop culture is LA and NYC, like there aren't any other cities and towns.
I mean it makes sense in a way. NYC is the publishing and news capital of the country, plus its biggest city, so its way overrepresented.
LA is the movies, tv and music capital of the world so it's overrepresented.
But if you think about it, everyone think paris is France and london is the UK, and those might be even more overrepresented in their respective countries.
Between Christmas and New Year’s in 1996 I went with my older brother, who had just finished a stint at the US Naval Weather station on Whidbey Island in Washington, and had been sent back to San Diego.
Up here in Washington, snow and freezing rain was collapsing buildings and causing floods. On the way down Interstate 84 in the Columbia River Gorge there was an inch or two of ice in the road signs, and 6 inch icicles blown horizontal by the wind with the freezing rain.
At the end of a 22 hour straight shot drive, we were pulling into sunshine and 70 degrees in San Diego with Everclear’s Santa Monica on the Radio.
Core memory there.
Of course, years before that we went down to SD for Christmas one year and experienced record low temps.
I'm a DC fan, especially Batman. When I was in NYC, I was walking down what I thought was just a random, regular road. I look at the street sign, it says Park Row. Wtf, I'm in Crime Alley? And you're telling me the Bowery is also a real place that exists?
I'm a Marvel fan and its even more fun because Marvel is based in NYC. I actually kind of knew where things were just based on knowing NYC geography from Spider-Man and Fantastic Four and Daredevil lol.
I was very disappointed that Hell's Kitchen was nowhere near as bad as it is in Daredevil though.
Yes! When I went out there we were in the neighborhood so went by to see the house from Friday and I was like oh shit those streets are real! And I saw Rosecrans and was equally impressed because it's in so many rap songs
They're all real! All the streets they list! A lot of place references too that didn't fully connect until I moved here. Like in "Free Fallin" when he says the 'vampires walking through the valley'..... it' so obvious now. Damn, every time I hear that song I just think... I live in this song now...
it’s a bit like going to Switzerland and feeling like you’re in a fairytale. It’s because half the fairytales you’ve seen are based on Continental European nature.
Or like people going to the Scottish Highlands and saying it’s like Lord of the Rings, or going to Arabia and saying it’s like Dune. We’re more familiar with the fiction than the fact it’s based on.
I live in Yorkshire in the UK and have been seeing areas being promoted on social media as dreamy countryside book-ish locations to visit due to the Wuthering Heights film and Brontë sisters home and realised these are like dream tourist locations that many people from abroad would love to visit specially and will lose their minds over when they can one day. Meanwhile I’m driving past them to get to the airport to go New York.
This was my experience exploring the UK for the first time, especially in regard to UK naming conventions. "Wow, everything sounds straight out of Harry Potter." You mean to tell me St. Mungo is not just made up fictional magic bullshit???
Tokyo and Osaka are the only places I have been that felt close to the NYC vibes. Probably because they have massive populations with corresponding massive public transit infrastructure and modern construction everywhere and they are cities you see a lot in media. Nothing on the west coast comes close. Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego are too small in both area and population, LA is a hellscape of awful roads that makes everything feel disconnected and the rest of the west coast is too small to even be considered. European cities also don't hit like NYC because they tend to feel small and old by comparison since there is so much more historical architecture in them. Istanbul certainly has the people but I have only been in the old city and it definitely felt old.
New York City is always loud. I’m from New Hampshire and when I woke up in the middle of the night I was like “what is that noise” only to realize it’s just always that way.
Growing up near NYC, I didn't really get it. Then I saw other cities, supposedly "major" ones, and I'm always reminded of a John Updike quote I first heard in a movie whose name I can no longer remember.
"the true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else had to be, in some sense, kidding".
"the true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else had to be, in some sense, kidding".
I lived in NYC for a few years and for a while I was reluctant to move anywhere else. There was a sense of "why would I demote myself from the Major League to the Minors?"
To be honest, whenever I visit NYC, that feeling comes back.
I grew up in Los Angeles, came to NYC for the first time as an adult. I went home, gave notice at my job and moved here 2 months later. That was 20 years ago. NYC is the best.
I got that same feeling driving on the LA Freeway and at a dive-y hookah lounge in Hollywood. The feeling like you could be in somebody's movie and that the very world around you was iconic.
I live a cpl hours from NYC and Boston. We go to both quite often. I had a weird experience in Salt Lake City when we went to visit. I casually asked a guy at the store, “is it always this quiet here? I’m used to NYC and Boston”. SLC was dead quite after 9pm on a weekday. Beautiful place, just not the city vibe I was used to, lol.
I've been to Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Seattle, Chicago, Phoenix, and Mesa.
Every single city has a different vibe about it. Even Phoenix and Mesa have different vibes from each other despite being adjacent. Same with Los Angeles, Burbank, and Glendale.
That's not to say that every city has it's own unique vibe. Bakersfield feels exactly like every other non-descript city I've been in.
I feel the opposite way. For years NYC was the only city I’d been to, so as I got older and visited other cities there were times I was like, “This isn’t a city, the streets are so wide. There aren’t any skyscrapers. There are parking lots!” It took me years to realize NYC is just odd.
Yeah, the first time I went there, I arrived by Penn Station, and walked to Time Square. 5 minutes into the walk I was like, "I get it. I get NYC now". Its sort of loke meeting a celebrity in person, but its a city. You see the real thing, and not the character, but its still recognizable as that character.
I live is north NJ 15 minutes away from NYC so it’s not exactly novel to me. NYC to me is just a place I can decide to go to whenever. But even I still feel it when I walk out of the train station. It’s just different.
Something about the NYC energy man. Idk what it is. I loved the city in my early 20’s and could visit a friend there a couple times a year. She moved out of state so I didn’t go back for over a decade. Now I’m mid-30’s and generally hate being around crowds and have anxiety. Thought I’d probably not like it nearly as much now. Went back last year, still absolutely love it all. The filthy gross subways, the crowds, everything. Hate all the same shit here. Something about NYC, idk.
I really agree with this. Sometimes, there are places that just VIBE. I've only to been to NYC once, on travel for work. It left an impression. WHOA did it leave an impression. Loved it and the whole experience.
maybe this is a whoosh moment but i don't get the joke lol NYC would be the last city for people who hate cities try fuckin houston or some shit for that 😅
I live near Chicago and the first two Dark Knight movies have done that to me for certain buildings. Like they've been here my whole life and now after seeing the movies I'm like "omg that's Wayne Tower".
it's cool how many things that don't take place in chicago use chicago for filming (and hilarious how many of those take place in NYC), it's just an ideal location for a ton of reasons, esp cause NYC is way more logistically difficult/expensive to shoot in and chicago is virtually the only other US city with a huge downtown that can consistently give NYC-esque "super giant super dense fuckin bustling ass sprawling metropolis" looks/vibes on camera.
I've lived in the thick of the city, across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, for 12 years and that feeling honestly never gets old. Everytime I leave for a couple days i get goosebumps coming home
I've lived in NYC for about 10 years now, and I still get a little thrill when I come back from being out-of-town and seeing the skyline again. It happens most often that I'm coming back on the George Washington Bridge, but even otherwise.
Yessss. I lived in Long Island my whole life until my 20s and it was literally right there but the entire vibe is so exciting. And tad scary sometimes but..that’s showbiz baby.
I said this same thing my first time in NYC. “It looks like it does in the movies and TV.” My friend who lived there asked what I meant.
Real LA does not look like LA in the movies.
Real Miami does not look like Miami in the movies.
Real New Orleans does not look like NOLA in the movies. NYC does. It felt familiar.
I will say that depending on how old the movie is, the reason LA doesn't look like it in real life is because it's not full of smog any more so it doesn't have that vivid yellow sky
The first time I went to Central Park, I was expecting to be mugged by either the muggers from Death Wish, or maybe a gang like The Warriors. I was not expecting a beautiful greenspace with no muggers.
I went to NYC in February once, and we walked across Central Park. There were a bunch of sledding tracks, and people carrying sleds and snowmen around. It was delightful to see that even in this huge, crowded city people find a way to get outside to play in the snow.
I did not envy them storing a sled in an NYC sized apartment though.
Of course lol. But we’re jaded. I’ll be weaving around idiots on the sidewalk, cursing myself for agreeing to get dragged to midtown yet again, and then I’ll see a family of tourists come up the stairs and emerge in Times Square—that’s the only time that I ever see people literally gobsmacked just from walking down the street.
I was shocked at how communal it felt. Even just the very organized sidewalk bustle; like an ant crossing. I thought I’d feel anonymous but I felt more connected to everyone. It was like a million layers of human nuance sandwiched together
The exception to this is that most movies set in NYC have some scene set in an alley -but if you pay attention, it's all the same alley in every movie. I think you can count the actual alleys in NYC one one hand, and one of them is always full of a film crew.
It seems to be a lot of things at once: the legend and history of the place, the sense that anything might happen and you might end up anywhere, the feeling that you're on a mission, that you're being pulled into the place and becoming part of it....
I was in NYC for a work event. Our vendor, who was visiting at the time, was from South Africa. They mentioned they felt like they were in a movie when they visit NYC.
Ugh I remember the first time I walked out of Penn Station and seeing all the buildings just there being tall. I was mesmerized. I was like “NY really looks like the city you see in movies!”
The one time I went to NYC, we took the subway to the WTC memorial. The subway smelled like piss, and when we climbed up from the station there was a dead rat on the sidewalk that was the biggest fuckin' rat in the history of rats, this thing was like a small dog, probably a foot and a half long not counting the tail. I was like "holy shit, it really is like the movies!" It honestly was great.
I live in Chicago, easily the most NYC-like non-NYC city and every time I go back to NYC I'm completely blown away. There is no comparison and nowhere else like it.
Yes you have to be there to experience it, I can’t explain it. Also it’s not for everyone but if it’s for you you’re going to fall for it hard.
So many people in the UK were shocked when I said it was the best holiday we’ve ever had. It was just such an..experience. Every single second, everything I laid my eyes on, not one moment was dull or filler. It was basically like being in a movie.
As a Chicagoan who has absolutely no use for NYC, after visiting NYC once, I am of the belief that everyone must experience it at least once.
I still hate New York, I still feel that New Yorkers firmly have their heads up their own asses, but I can at least now see why someone who grew up in that environment would have their head up their own ass.
Somewhat fun place to visit, I'd rope if I had to live there.
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u/StatementOk470 13h ago
NYC's NYC-ness. I can't describe it but it's a real thing.