How New York is different.

Last night I found myself in the city.

It was a nice night to be out and about in the city.

Warm but not too warm, it was the kind of night when there are a lot of people out and about on the streets just doing things and being social. I take that for granted I imagine.

I’m not in the city and my corner of the world is relatively quiet by comparison but the city is close enough that I can avail myself of it if the mood strikes me.

I had started this back in July of 2008, it’s hard for me to think of what I was doing at the time. There are times I think that I should get some kind of notebook and just enter a month and year on each page and try to catalog life’s events because it simply becomes a jumbled mess if you let it.

The thing about our nostalgia for the past is that we always look at the past through rose colored glasses without putting it into its full context. All that horrible stuff that has faded from our memory just isn’t there.

I’ve spoken of my views of New York of my past, it seemed to me as something that was more urban and more vital. In the ensuing years New York has gotten way better, way safer but now those gains are going the other way.

There was a period of time when I wasn’t working in the city and I would go in on the weekends and I really enjoyed the city then. Probably much more than I ever enjoyed it when I was commuting or even when I was living in the city.

I lived in the boroughs for a good stretch of time and I even lived in Manhattan for a few years. The problem with living in Manhattan is that you get a very myopic view of the world as a result. You are not just living on an island physically but you also develop this mentality that separates you from the greater nation at large and there are a lot of prominent people in our society who do just that.

Over the years one of the things that I loved about New York that has gone away was the middle class in Manhattan. Manhattan was ‘the city’ if you lived in the five boroughs but even so, there were neighborhoods along with commercial districts and that made all the difference.

That’s gone and today Manhattan has developed into a place for the very rich, for businesses and for tourists. It’s just sad.

The other thing is that the city government now figures that they can dig deeper into the pocket of the middle class more than ever before but the reality is that it just drives people away. More for subway, buses and commuter trains - charges for people who want to drive into the city - parking fines that are through the roof... that’s great for the very rich who isolate themselves from these things but for the rest of us it’s just an increasing burden.

The city now though is backpedaling with crime and violence increasing because the people running things believe that the best way to govern is to placate folks rather than set boundaries.

I know folks through the years that fooled themselves... they couldn’t see living outside of the city because their ‘coolness,’ their identity was so wrapped up in being in Manhattan or somewhere nearby. Honestly, I find it more than a little funny and shallow as well. In their minds being creative can’t happen anywhere else.

Sorry.

Today, I am at a point where I think my love affair with New York may be over. It’s too expensive. The other thing is that although there are so many things to do and see in New York, the average New Yorker is struggling so very hard to keep their head above water that they simply don’t have the time or the energy to take advantage of those things.

I’m starting to think living somewhere else much cheaper and visiting would be a much, much better option.