New York City Can Be One Lonely Place

NYC is for people who like a lot of stimulation and the opportunity, not the guarantee, of being very successful at whatever they end up doing. NYC is littered with people who have money but don't care about meaningful relationships. There's a HUGE rich/poor divide, and that's means people in general are more on guard. A woman that you cold approach doesn't know if you're a hedge fund manager, or a busboy, unless you show value very early on. In most places in the USA, the guy who parks your car is someone you might party with later on. In NYC, the guy who parks your car doesn't speak English.

It is a cutthroat city and you have to be able to handle it. In Manhattan, I know many people who have left claiming that they have a hard time making friends. The corporate-model is what killed the city's unique diversity and character...once the transnationals began establishing disposable white-collar labor-pools---investment bankers---the rents crept steadily up to meet the demand of recent college grads flocking to Manhattan to compete for these corporate jobs...City landlords took full advantage of this influx, and chopped up apartments into ( conversions ) so as to exploit the corporate labor-force that needed to live in the city. After two decades of this model, Manhattan is a giant corporate dormitory and the rest is headed that way.

The transition from a melting pot to a corporate enclave has taken half a century, in 2014 the city is no longer what it was...the arts communities cannot afford the rents, the quirky bars and night-spots have been replaced by The GAP...STARBUCKS, and a vapid variety of other Yuppie venues...corporate-conformity does not blend with an edgy, gilded neon-washed metropolis---just the opposite, it it instills recognizable signatures and confirmations of it's saturation...in a sense the eradication of this once mysterious, lively and unpredictable mystique called Manhattan is emblematic/symptomatic of the corporate takeover of our lives and politics over the last thirty years.

Eventually the rose-colored glasses come off and it turns into just another place to live, so you have to be very honest with yourself whether the cost of admission is worth it to you. After a while, a city is just a city. 9/10 people are dying to come to NYC (or leave) because they feel like they're missing (or looking for) something. That something often has more to do with a human connection with like-minded people and interests, rather than any particular spatial preference. Once they find (or fail to find) this, they make up all the reasons in the world why they love or hate their particular city.

Positive aspects:

1. Lots of stuff to do.

2. People in the Northeast are definitely more 'real' and 'genuine' than people in California.

3. Lots of women to date

Negatives:

1. NYC will financially eat you alive, dig out your pockets until they're empty.

2. Big cities do not foster relationships; rather, making people you know impersonal.

3. The lack of easy access to nature and the ocean