Yes. In the US, sure. Compared to cities outside the US it is horrible. Less walkable than most, food is ok if you know where to go but nothing special and also super expensive like everything else, aggressive drug addicts wandering the streets, high crime including random acts of violence for literally no reason at all, incessant aggressive honking at all hours of the night, even when you are paying $5k a month for your 1 bedroom apartment it the apartment itself is not a nice place to live in terms of things like sunlight and ventilation, and the city itself is super corrupt. There’s a million folks in unions and other arrangements who are “grandfathered in” to all sorts of privileges that are used to secure their vote. The city has an astronomical budget, all the money is going to more or less bribe key voting blocks. It has been this way for well over a century.

The thing that NYC really has going for it is that the rest of the country is a giant suburban dystopia.

i live in NYC and have traveled to plenty of other international cities.

none of the things that you're saying are true compared to my experiences (or those of my friends) in any way that i can think of as meaningful.

the only city i've been to that feels like it's captured the same "vibe" as NYC, for me, has been Paris.

Tokyo was more impressive in its sprawl and history (and obviously cleanliness), but there is a sense of Japanese monoculture that saturates everything in a way that is almost tactile. not in a bad way, but definitely such that i felt like something was "missing" during my visit.

Singapore gets really close to the same feeling, but for all of its heterogeneity there's an undercurrent of authoritarian sterility that made it very difficult to feel comfortable (Disneyland with the Death Penalty, indeed).

anyway this is already pretty long winded so i should probably stop talking, but NYC has a lot "going for it" besides the rest of the US just sort of being a suburban hellscape. at some point i'll move out, but living here has been a really comforting reminder that international views such as yours of American cities are incorrect.

I was born in Manhattan and lived in the city for over a decade and still own an apartment downtown. I know a thing or two about the place. It's cool that you get a vibe from being a transplant here for a couple years, that has literally nothing to do with anything I said. The lawlessness is also quite a different experience for women--I am guessing having random guys off the street try to force your door open and follow you into your building or corner you on a subway or follow you around riding a bike aggressively catcalling you is probably not something you are dealing with on a regular basis.

The day I left I moved out over a pool of dried blood from a stabbing in front of my door the night before. I've lived in over 20 countries since then and not experience anything similar except maybe in Canada, which has similar drug problems as the US.

With the caveat that I moved away (due to work) a little under a decade ago... what you describe doesn't match my experience with NYC at all. Maybe back in the 80s, before it was cleaned up... but I was less frequently there back then. Before you said you lived in the city, the message from your first post made me assume you were talking about the city as someone who learned everything they know about it from the news.

Visiting another city is not in any way comparable to living there. Or would you defer to the opinion of some tourist who visited NYC for a random weekend?

I haven’t been to NYC recently but I read that the public transport has become filthier. Homelessness has become a major issue too.

I already felt like I was ranting for too long, but yes that too. People are paying far more now for a much worse experience/quality of life compared to before the pandemic. I was at one point in the city among my reasons because it had good public transit, but then taking taxis all the time because my partner did not feel safe on the subway after numerous incidents, and just had a “what the fuck am I even doing here” moment.

I think he meant "the worst" in the same way that Britta is the worst.

This kind of reflexive defensiveness by some New Yorkers feels annoying to the rest of us