How I Feel About New York City

I'm doing something. Yo! For someone to see me like this is goofy. I'm eating this banana, holding this camera, flowers, banana, strapped to my chest, backpack. Who cares though? New York people, they just got too much to think about. They ain't thinking about me. Is New York City really the happiest city in America? Let's talk about it. Alright everybody, I'm on 34th Street right now, walking through Midtown Manhattan. Yeah, don't, never mind the flowers that I got strapped to my chest, okay, I got a lot going on right here. But, I'm gonna talk about the three realizations I have about New York. There's probably more, there might be a part two to this, but here's just the three starting things that you gotta remember about New York City. But first, let's break down this study that said New York City is the happiest city in America. It was a new study by the Institute of Quality of Life. They assessed 26 key metrics and ranked NYC the happiest in the nation. What are these key metrics? Well, affordability, safety, public transit, education, housing, jobs, business innovation, mental health, waste management. I'm just gonna break down these really quick because obviously in the comments section a lot of people don't agree. Let's see what else they said. They said New York City received especially high marks for innovation, inclusivity, and healthcare. Okay, possibly, I can see that. Well, I mean, this is all healthcare according to American standards, so it's not great. But yes, there are a lot of city MDs around. But yeah, let's just talk about affordability real quick. I'm gonna go ahead and say that's tough to give that to New York because New York is known for extremely high rent. But honestly, there is a lot of housing lotteries and rent control places, but there's not as many. And so overall, most people agree that honestly, New York is just getting higher and higher in rent. Safety, obviously, this one's questionable as well because of all the cases that you see coming out of New York, whether it's random attacks and crazy things happening. But I will say this, considering New York's density, you have to take into account New York's density, okay? You cannot compare New York City to Houston, Texas. You cannot compare it to Asheville, North Carolina. Do not compare New York City to even... It's hard to even compare it to Los Angeles because the density is crazy out here. Look at this. There's people who live in these units, a lot of them. There's businesses down below. There's people who live above. This city is built vertically. So the density of people is unmatched to any other city in America, okay? Maybe only a shred or a part of San Francisco can it even compare to, but really, honestly, the crime is not horrific, given that. But yes, obviously, crazy things happen in this city all the time. And yeah, sometimes, you know, Asian people get randomly hit. So that one, anyways, education, hard for me to speak on, but lots of colleges out in New York. Public transit, subway system in the Metro is good, to be honest. There's a lot of public transit, although it's kind of old and dirty. And sometimes there's crazy people and piss. But yeah, business innovation, sure, jobs, yes, mental health, waste management. Waste management, I'm not so sure of. But anyways, guys, here are three things that I learned about New York City, okay? The number one thing you got to remember that I realized about New York City is that it's very tempting. New York is a tempting city. It's a tempting city to move to. The allure of New York still exists with the argument that, oh, New York went down in past years, you know, it's already kind of bouncing back from COVID, you know, 2021, 22 was pretty bad in New York. I'm not gonna lie. But it feels quite different right now. It's tempting and just there's so many tempting things out here to spend money on. Like literally everything I walk by, like there's these stores, okay, 34th Street is not a great example, but there's so many food spots and, you know, I'm into food and culture. So of course, I have a desire to almost try everything, but all those things cost at least like 14 bucks. I mean, you want to talk about a cool matcha latte is at least $7.50, you know? So drinks, cool drinks are anywhere from $5 to $8. And then if you want to get something cool to eat, even if it's fast casual, so it's like a to-go bowl spot or something, or, you know, something that is catering to the lunch crowd, it's still, you're looking at at least $14 to $18, $19 after tax. And if you tip, but if it's fast casual, you don't have to tip, come on, let's be real. But anyway, so, you know, it's just very tempting. There's so many things to do in the city. So many little ways that you can spend five, 10, $15 here, $15 there, $15 there. Usually anything cool costs at least $10 to be honest, but man, New York is just tempting. Places to go, places to eat, things to see, things to walk into. So yeah, it's just a very tempting city, but I will say this, man, a lot of people still moving to New York. A lot of people got that New York dream. I know a lot of people also moved away from the New York dream, but a lot of people still got that New York dream. Another reason why New York is so tempting is that you can walk to all these places. It's tempting to go to like three to four different venues on a weekend in the same night. It's not like LA and other cities where you have to drive and you have a destination in mind. You get in your car, you pull up Google Maps or you know where you're going. Like literally New York is spontaneous like that. If you have a social group of friends, you could be bouncing around to so many different spots in the same night. So that's why it's tempting because you're also walking past things. You know, when you're driving past things, very rarely are you driving on the street, you see something and then you pull over. But when you're walking, you're like, oh, I'm right next to this. Like look, there's San Juan Garden. That's going to be like a new, is that a new like Korean barbecue spot? Haiti just opened up right here. I'm near K-Town right now, obviously tons of new spots in K-Town. So it's just tempting because I'm like, oh, I want, if I'm just walking, I can just walk into all these spots. I don't have to park my car and get out of my car. It's very easy and accessible once you're in the city. The second thing that I realized about New York is that the energy here is unmatched. I mean, if you just look at all these people behind me, the energy is unmatched. All these people are going or coming back from doing something. Yo! Exactly. Like, and there's so many personalities here. There's a theater of it all. Like I'm telling you, there is just so much to see in this city. And it's not just to see, and it's not just people that are wasting time, but there's people doing things. I always believe that New York is a city full of experts. They might not be an expert in the thing that you need to know. They might not be an expert in something that makes money, but everybody here, you could stop them and they could have like a 30 minute conversation with you about something. And they are geeky about something. By geeky, I just mean very much into and educated about and have a lot of thoughts about, right? And are passionate about something. So it's a city full of passion. You don't move here just to be a super shallow non-thinker. That's not why you come to New York. That doesn't mean everybody here is necessarily a great person, or that doesn't mean that everybody here has the knowledge that's going to help you pursue your dreams. But I'm telling you, everybody here can talk to you about something. I could pick up, I could pick on anybody here. They're like educated in something. Maybe they're not formally educated, but a lot of people are formally educated, especially in Midtown Manhattan, to be honest. Look at all these people. This lady right here. I could go talk to her. She probably knows a bunch about something. Let me give you an anecdote. There's so much energy in the city that I just went to an event, I took a meeting, and I have dinner later in Midtown Manhattan, and in between, I'm finding the energy to film this video. And honestly, some part of me doesn't like filming in public like this because it makes me look like a tourist and people probably don't know that I actually live in New York. And I feel like I'm part of New York at this point, but I'm doing something very touristy and some people think it's cringe because they're probably like, oh, look at this YouTuber, this newbie trying to build his channel. And I'm like, actually, man, my channel's been built, but I'm just finding the energy here and it's fun, man. Look, hold up. Let me get some bananas. I need some potassium. Let me just buy one. This one looks pretty ripe, pretty solid, lots of brown. I'm going to eat this right away. Pretty sweet. This looks like a sweet banana. Okay. One is 50 cents, but I have no change. Oh, you have no change. So it's actually 50 cents. But he told me straight up, he's honest with me. He says, I got no change, so just give me a dollar or just buy two. I'll take two bananas then. All right. Thank you, man. Where are you from, bro? Bangladesh. Bangladesh? Oh, man. I got a good Bengali friend. You? I'm Chinese. Chinese? Yeah. Close friend. Yes. My country, China is close. Hey, Bangladesh and China. We're homies. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. China is the best. Yeah. China is the best. See, that's what I love about New York, the energy. Everybody you want to have a conversation with about culture, they love to have it. You know, whether you agree or disagree with their opinion, they got thoughts. Guys, just look at this real quick. Like what am I holding? Seriously. What am I doing? Okay. So my third point about New York, this is expensive, man. I'm in the Nomad District, north of Madison is what it means. Rent's really high. On average, a one-bedroom apartment ranges from about $5,500 to $6,000. That's the average one-bedroom. You don't have to live in this neighborhood. No one tells you to spend this much money on rent, but this is smack dab in the middle of the city in a really nice area. And it's funny because Nomad's right next to a bunch of other apartments. I mean, listen, you can get a one-bedroom for like $4,000 here at like the Herald Towers on 34th or something like that, but listen, New York is expensive and it ties into point number one where New York is tempting. So not only is New York tempting, but New York's expensive. Luckily, I was able to buy this banana for 50 cents, which I thought was not a bad deal. You want a picture? Hell yeah. Let's do it. I got to get my camera and my banana in there. This is hilarious. Look at what this picture I'm taking. Appreciate that, bro. Good meeting you. Thank you, bro. Thank you so much. Like for someone to see me like this, this is goofy. I don't think he knows how goofy this is. Like I'm eating this banana, holding this camera, flowers, banana strapped to my chest, backpack. Who cares though? New York people, they just got too much to think about. They ain't thinking about me. Can I call you back in like, I'm filming. Can I call you back in 10 minutes, 10 minutes, I'm finishing up. You're going to be in the video right now. This clip, I'm putting it in. Hey man, I saw these pigeons over here. They were trying to eat the spilled fried rice, but they didn't really want it. How come you don't want that, man? It's fried rice. Come on. I'm going to just post up here real quick, finish the rest of the video here. All right, so basically my point is this. I still think New York City is in a way the most tempting city in America. Maybe not if you have a family. I think you can find a ton of excuses to leave, but if you're young and you want to live an interesting life and you want to be around interesting people who are passionate, and there's a lot of legit people out here, yes, you have some scammers, but for the density of people, it's actually not that unsafe of a city. And especially if you talk to anybody who grew up here in the nineties, they will tell you of course the nineties was worse. It maybe is a little bit worse right now than it was in the 2010s. Everybody says Bloomberg following Giuliani, it was really nice. And then it took a dip during COVID and now it's just coming out of it. So anyways, that's kind of the state of New York City. I love this city. I think it's my favorite city in all of America because of just the passion and people here and the amount of things you can do. And I've been able to kind of build a little bit of a nice life, you know, in the network out here. Will I stay here forever? I don't know. Forever is a very long time. What does forever mean? But I like it. Let me know what you guys think in the comments down below. Those are my three things about New York City. I know they're not necessarily mind blowing. It wasn't supposed to be. It's just my perspective. I'm giving you my thoughts, giving you the realness. I'll make another video about if you should move to New York City and who should move to New York City, but I will explain that later. But anyways, I mean, come on, come on, look at this. This ain't dope?