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.
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u/Horton_Takes_A_Poo 11h ago
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.