NYC truly has devolved into a shithole

I was back for the final time to move my shit into storage and the city has undeniably gone downhill. Garbage everywhere, people begging for money literally every 10 steps, apparently people shooting up just a few blocks up in broad daylight. I was out for a minute at like 7pm one night and people were yelling about someone with a knife while others are sitting 5ft away eating $40 pasta in 95 degree weather.

What the actual fuck. We will need a Bloomberg (or even Giuliani) type back to get shit even close to pre-Covid but peace out until then folks

171 Comments
 

WV/Greenwich village but even down here doesn’t feel safe anymore, like I would feel guilty even ordering seamless at this point.

Honestly saw so many moving trucks that I wonder who the hell is even staying at this point

 

The glorious shithole with the gloriously high rent

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

It's the hilarious "You can't say that about ___, only we can say that about ____" mentality.

"Who am I? I'm the guy that does his job. You must be the other guy."
 
Most Helpful

We need a Giuliani character ASAP

DeBlasio is the biggest joke of a mayor. Dude even changed his name to sound more New York-ish. Fucking Warren Wilhelm Jr... get him out

 

I was about to phrase this in the exact same way, what a wild idea when that was a thing

Quant (ˈkwänt) n: An expert, someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
 

De Blasio is an awful mayor.  But we also need to stop lionizing Giuliani.  Most of what he's given credit for is directly attributable to the Dinkins Administration.  And even then, most of the improvement was simply changing socio-economic conditions for the city as a whole.

Bloomberg was a beast though.  Even when I didn't agree with him I respected the fact that he had values and a work ethic and governed accordingly.

 
"Emergingmarket" Nyc peaked and it is the saddest thing ever. It was once the greatest city in the world

Lol when do you think it was so much better?

Get busy living
 

Is there a better US city that has a finance presence? SF? COL through the roof, homeless everywhere. LA? Super spread out, can’t walk anywhere. Chicago? Insane crime levels. Charlotte? Tiny. Houston? Spread out, too heavy in oil & gas. Menlo? More suburb than city.

Is NY still the best?

 

Best answer I’ve heard, but is Palo Alto really a city? Kinda seems like Menlo in that sense. I know the tech presence is huge and the vibe has to be way different because of that.

 

Current Bostonian here...that would be sweet to see Boston became a major cosmopolitan city, but i don't see that happening..at least in the time it would matter for us

 

Having grown up just outside of the city (10 mins away), I truly disagree. Boston is just really good at hiding its problems and MA's biggest issues tend to congregate in other parts of the state. Boston really caters to people not from there, and most people I know who moved there after college have never left the nice parts Boston proper with the exception of Cambridge and Somerville maybe and whatever towns have golf courses they like. MA needs to fix a lot of problems before Boston can be called a top tier city. Don't get me wrong--I fucking love Boston and bleed city pride, and even though I live elsewhere, the B will always be my home. I am just not blind to it's issues. It is very strong in the education/finance/medical/pharma/tech departments, but if you are talking about the city as one gigantic package and not narrowing your view solely on performance in an industry, there are a lot of issues that hold both Boston and the state as a whole back.

Dayman?
 
"Analyst 1 in AM - Equities"

Boston is likely the next best answer. It has a great deal of public investing and a few private equity shops. It just needs more IB and it could be poised to become the next finance hub.

Boston is a dump when you get outside of the main business district. Talk about a city that thinks it’s improved like NYC wow that’s delusion. Rent a car and take a five minute drive outside the city core, and skip the nicer suburbs. Looks like freakin post conflict Mogadishu

Get busy living
 

NYC is still the best

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Chicago has gangbangers shooting each other, in the process killing bystanders. But that’s ghetto stuff and means nothing beyond headlines and local TV types hyperventilating.

For those of us in the Loop/Near North/Lakefront, we’re living and working in America’s best city.

 

NYC is still the best, yes. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Chicago would be a very close second, if not on par with NYC, if it weren't for the crime. If New York was ever destroyed in a nuclear blast, a good chunk of the industry would reconstitute itself in Chicago.

 
Controversial

Democratic leadership for you LOL stay the hell away from Texas crazy liberals

 
"Prospect in Other" Democratic leadership for you LOL stay the hell away from Texas crazy liberals

Liberals run pretty much every major TX city...

Array
 

Ironic how leftists don’t ever want to reap the benefits of the policies they vote for and instead flee to better, pocket-friendlier places (which they consequently destroy also, of course)

 

Sadly Cities like Austin, Dallas and Houston are already ruined by stupid corrupted Politicians from the Left!

 

I love these threads. So long that's clear whose fault is it.

Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

DeBlasio

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

I'm pretty bullish on Charlotte. Better weather than Houston, Miami and Boston. Lower COL than LA, SF and Chicago. Yes it is smaller than all of them but its one of the fastest growing cities in the country. The finance presence for its size is good (WF, Jefferies, Lazard, Blair, Barings, 5/3, Regions, Truist, Piper Sandler, Deliotte CF) and should grow with the city. I've never been there so just my thoughts from the outside looking in. Would love to hear anyone's insights that's been there before.

 

I’m a student doing online college from Charlotte right now. The weather is nice, a little too hot for me sometimes but that’s summer in the south. COL is nice too. I’m not sure I’d agree that finance presence is growing, though, since BAML moved all its IB juniors to NY, making WF the only BB (if it’s even that) type bank here. I didn’t know Lazard had an office. I probably won’t recruit for any banks here, because I think the exits will be limited by location.

 

Miami is incredibly hot and humid; it's not like SoCal, Utah, or anywhere temperate. I would agree that Charlotte has better weather since it doesn't get as cold as the northeast or as hot as the deep south. Then again, my favorite temperature is low 60s so I may not be a good person to ask

I’m a fun guy. Obviously I love the game of basketball. I mean there’s more questions you have to ask me in order for me to tell you about myself. I'm not just gonna give you a whole spill... I mean, I don't even know where you're sitting at
 

Yeah.. its got very bad. I live in West Village. In a 36 hour time frame last month I saw the following:

  • Homeless guy in Washington Square Park ask for a cigarette from a girl sitting. She wasn't smoking one, obviously said no and ignored him. Her started screaming and getting in her face
  • less than 5 minutes after that, a different homeless guy goes up to a lesbian couple. Screams bigotrys at them and spits on them.
  • That night a homeless guy slaps a random girl, proceeds to get the shit beat out of him by 2 busboys who saw.
  • Next night at dinner on the street, a bartender told a homeless guy to get lost. he starts spitting on him. Throws a traffic cone at him and block traffic for a few minutes. Finally leaves when another homeless guy threatens to beat the shit out of him.
  • Same night at same dinner, different homeless person runs up to random guy and grabs his neck and violently attacking him for no reason.

That doesn't even count a number of other things I see daily. My gf leaves my apartment in the morning and always texts me what she encounters (mostly guys getting close and saying creepy things) or the open air drug market on 23rd and 6th avenue. I went to Carbone the other night. When walking home, I saw two people smoking crack half a block from the restaurant. Then on the next block, I see an old man shooting up heroin on the sidewalk. The whole city is a mess right now. I want to stay long-term, but that dream is rapidly dying.

 

It’s crazy how much changed in a month. I needed to go to Home Depot to grab a few things and my bud advised that I take a car there and back as some girl he knew got (surprise) spit on and had food thrown at her right near the bed bath beyond on 6th, and that the area is now sketchy as hell. What the hell happened

 

I’m always a bit concerned about my girlfriend going out on her own at certain times due to the constant harassment that any decently attractive girl gets in the city. Had multiple occasions where she is harassed and followed by creepy dudes/druggies/homeless even though I’m walking next to her. I had to intervene at times if us ignoring doesn’t stop, but always a bit nervous of what a crazy fuck can do.

 

Been in this city long enough to know that it’s only good as long as it’s attracting talent. Not much phases me at this point, but things are changing around here. Taxes are high, problems are plenty.

 

While I'm not necessarily "scared" like some here commenting, it certainly has changed before your eyes. The homeless are becoming a larger problem than before, but all the murders are not happening in Manhattan, I hope everyone knows that. It's worse in the Bronx and Brooklyn. At the same time though, who knows what these homeless folks are capable of - that's why I carry a 5" hunting knife with me at all times.

I've lived on 16th and 6th for the past 2 years and can say I feel the same amount of safety (or lack thereof) from 2018 compared to now. Just more loonies out in the public eye and I blame the mayor for that. Takes the sides of criminals before his own tax-paying citizens, in-fucking-credible. I thought NYC would be my home for my 20s, and I really hope it is, but this kook of a mayor has got to go and honestly NYC needs to vote red whenever the next mayoral election is.

 

Oh man...I was planning on coming back some time in the fall. A little concerned bc I don't think the mayoral election is until late 2021 and it sounds like the city can't wait that long. Does anyone know of any neighborhoods in Manhattan that are less affected by the surge in homeless/loonies? Or it everywhere?

Array
 

Upper east seems to be ok, but lower Manhattan and upper west side are worse than before. My hood east village now has regular encampments and the usual gutter punks that congregate in certain parts during the summer have been replaced by hardcore cruties that shoot up in broad daylight. Still it's not too bad. Issue is that with outdoor dining you're running into homeless a lot more than people are used to..and these people are getting more desperate and crazy.

 

All the issues with crusties and homeless have been here for years, they were just less visible because there were millions of extra people in Manhattan every day. Now it's all out in the open.

What made it worse is the city releasing thousands of inmates with no where for them to go besides the streets and then housing homeless from all 5 boroughs in Manhattan hotels on taxpayer dime.. that's a recipe for disaster. Something like 100+ hotels all over Manhattan now house homeless- a 3rd of all hotels in the borough.. insane. And some of these people can barely take care of themselves.. so you can imagine whats going on in the rooms and outside of the hotels.

 

Imagine having to carry a 5" hunting knife with you at all times - at that point, I'd rather live in Arkansas or Tennessee.

 
"KREBSCYCLEOMG" I was back for the final time to move my shit into storage and the city has undeniably gone downhill. Garbage everywhere, people begging for money literally every 10 steps, apparently people shooting up just a few blocks up in broad daylight. I was out for a minute at like 7pm one night and people were yelling about someone with a knife while others are sitting 5ft away eating $40 pasta in 95 degree weather.

What the actual fuck. We will need a Bloomberg (or even Giuliani) type back to get shit even close to pre-Covid but peace out until then folks

No we definitely dont want another guiliani. italians have messed up nyc for sure

 

Question is, does this negative progress build momentum or does it fade.

Momentum: pro-growth people leave the city and the voting base is even more liberal than before, ensuring the next mayor caters to that side again and takes the city further down the anti-growth path of high taxes, lax crime policy etc.

Fade: Moderate voters respond to growing shithole conditions and switch to the right, similar to what they did in 94 with Giuliani.

Not sure which happens. Question is, of the 60-70% of voters who would ordinarily vote Democrat in normal times, what % of them are upset at these new developments. If vast majority think it’s OK or “worth it for equality” then I think it’s a momentum situation.

 
"anthro123"

Sneak peak into Joe Biden’s America :)

acab!!!

Actually, you’re looking at trumps America at this moment. But drink deep the republican propaganda kiddo, whatever scroats your goats.

Get busy living
 

Just got back to the city last week. Definitely seeing some more homeless people, but Tbh it doesn’t seem that bad here? I agree with an above commenter who mentioned it’s just much easier to notice the homeless people now that this place isn’t packed 24/7.

Kinda enjoying the lack of crowds. Got a discount on the lease. Still ten times better than SF. It’s not that bad, guys

 

I'm the same boat man - feel like west side (wv / gv / chelsea / hk) seem to have it worst anecdotally. I'm down in tribeca and haven't seen anything drastic here or in soho but that's just me. Have heard plenty of corroborating stories from friends about a more rampant homeless issue..

 

I think it has to do with who lived in the neighborhoods before COVID. West side always seemed to have a lot of transient/celebrity/international types who could easily live anywhere, but are just in NYC for nightlife and business opportunities. A lot of other areas that hollowed out were known for college kids and analyst-level professionals (1-2 years out of school, not afraid to run back to Mom and Dad).

The neighborhoods that look like they’re holding up best now are the ones that had either native New Yorkers or people who plan to stay in the city for the long term - think Queens, gentrified Brooklyn, UES, etc. I walk around LIC and don’t really notice any fewer people around than before the pandemic.

 

pasta in the heat? fucking disgusting maybe a linguine with clams and a sparkling white but still go fuck yourself

heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/
 

I understand the sentiments here. And the argument on optics (ie more in the open since there are less people around) is a very good one.

OP and some others, you do realize it's kind of a pandemic recession, right? Financial markets (tech stocks and central banks liquidity) aside, its a tough tough world, and NYC is no different...

I used to do Asia-Pacific PE (kind of like FoF). Now I do something else but happy to try and answer questions on that stuff.
 
"Jamoldo" I understand the sentiments here. And the argument on optics (ie more in the open since there are less people around) is a very good one.

OP and some others, you do realize it's kind of a pandemic recession, right? Financial markets (tech stocks and central banks liquidity) aside, its a tough tough world, and NYC is no different...

they got no alleys. garbage in the streets. more rats than humans. thats different

heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/
 

Wahhh a republican isn’t mayor

There’s a global fucking plague right now, you want fucking rose petals strewn before your stride?

You think it’s bad? It was bad in the fucking 80s and 90s, republican or not in office.

Get busy living
 

I got the same vibe from OP and others like him commenting. Acting like scared mice when walking through WV/GV/Chelsea because of some homeless people? Get real dog. Go walk around Soundview or Hunts Point, then lmk how you feel.

 

New York City Liberals: Throwing things in your face is not assult, but saying almost any word can be.

 

I have no idea what you're talking about. Summer is always like this - more homeless and encampments - there's just more room for them to spread out because 50% of the working population is at home and not on the sidewalks everyday.

Now, the 11 PM informal shutdown time sucks, but other than that I absolutely dig the outdoor culture. Restaurants and bars are doing their level best and I'm happy to see that many are still fully crowded. It's much more of a...European?...type scene now - in that you don't really just go out with your boys and meet up with randos, it's very much organized dinners and outings with friends and friends of friends. I'm out of the game, but my single buds have been crushing it.

Idk - this seems like a talking point from the cellphone-belt-clip dads of suburban america who make half what I do and make up for it by watching Fox News.

Array
 

No summer has not been this bad i went to school here and before Covid worked in the city (including two internships in the city)

Back in the day, only time I ever felt unsafe was when i was riding the trains super late at night but the fact that this is happening in broad daylight is vivid of the decline in the city . I mean it took a global pandemic for the city to wake up and realize the need to clean the subways daily and try to keep them safe for the millions of folks who ride them

Everyone is entitled to live where they want and have their own opinions on various cities throughout the country but at the very least I think it’s time for New Yorkers (or people in general) to stop defending NY and the shit it has got itself into

I liken NY to a friend who is an addict or has a drinking problem and has gotten to the point where they’ve damaged all the relationships around them and obviously their own lives.

You can love them from afar but clearly there’s a problem this person(NY-the city) has to work out on in order for them to return some sort of normalcy

 
"cbdbanker"No summer has not been this bad i went to school here and before Covid worked in the city (including two internships in the city)

You may be younger or speaking anecdotally, but there have been worse summers in nyc within the past 10 years. That said, it is still a shithole and I don't know when I'll return. Agreed that there is so much to be done to return to normalcy within the city

 

Ehh on the topic of dating I think it's limited only to apps at this point. Most people wear masks and sunglasses, so it's hard to really see if someone is what you'd consider attractive or not unless they're eating at a restaurant with friends. In that case, you need lots of balls to approach them and hold a convo in front of their friends and others who are eating at the restaurant!

 

http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/nancy-panza

Dr. Panza puts is wonderfully - (Not verbatim) "We actually need to increase funding for the police, because right now we have a system that turns good cops into bad cops. Police work is psychologically tiring and weighs people down. But they don't get any psychological help and some of them turn bad and do terrible things."

Funny thing is, researchers and think tanks already know how to fix the problem. Most politicians (both Democrats and Republicans) just don't give a fuck.

 

OP is clearly a newbie transplant, same with WillytheGent (waiting for the classic "I was actually born here" reply) ... If you're living in Manhattan and you think this is bad, you have lived a very sheltered life up until this point. You need to experience real struggles in non-Manhattan boroughs and you will realize it's not that bad in the city.

Your anecdotes are irrelevant to everyone because if you actually follow the news, you know the most serious of crime is not occurring in Manhattan.

 

Not really a helpful reply, anonymous poster. A heads up, nobody thinks you're cool for pretending there isn't a problem and bragging how much you like homeless people on the internet. I'm well aware the city is no where what it was like in the 70s and 80s and nobody wants it to be like that again. It was a complete shithole where you'd be robbed whenever you stepped on the subway. Everyone thought Bernard Goetz was a hero because they were sick of the way it was, but the city is no where near that level. My parents , and a bunch of others, left in the 70s/80s because it was no place to raise children.

Yes, I'm well aware most crime isn't in Manhattan or West Village. Theres a gang war going on in Brooklyn right now. The city is still safe as long as you're not in East NY, Brownsville, or the Bronx. Doesn't mean I have to love homeless people.

Pretending the problem doesn't exist is just foolish and "it used to be bad so don't complain" is just moronic. Yes COVID is keeping us outside so we have to deal with it more, but the homeless problem in the city is getting worse. Tents are set up throughout Chelsea and Washington Square Park, addicts are openly shooting up on the sidewalk, they're getting violent with people waiting for restaurants. The city was not at this level pre-covid. This city getting closer and closer to San Francisco, tons of rich people, tons of homeless people, nothing in between. Granted, the ones in California are much more violent.

As for me, I'm not afraid of a junkie attacking me. I'm a big, in-shape guy. They. mostly go after easy targets. When I tell these stories to people, I say them as I’m laughing bc honestly I think it’s funny. I’m not coming from a place of fear, clutching my pearls. My issues is if the city just transforms into tent city, I'll save the ridiculous rent and move when I have kids.

 

That's what I'm afraid of too - NYC turning into SF. I also am afraid for my 5'4 gf who goes to the subway at 6:00am each day.

I read somewhere on Reddit last night that the homeless are coming here in droves because they know they won't be kicked out of the city, that sounds like a major problem to me. What's also sad is that the wealth gap is going to continue to get worse and worse.

 

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