My Blog by Stephen Venters

Friday, November 15, 2013

10 Things New York City does Better than Your City

A while back I created a list of 15 Cultural Things about NYC You Never Knew. As a follow up, I’ve been inclined to create a list of 10 Things NYC does Better than Your City. Now that I’ve lived here a while, I’m getting more in tune with how this dense city operates.

This list won’t include things such as public transportation, which NYC does amazingly, but it’s not a fair comparison because, one, not every city has a need for such an extensive public transportation system, but more importantly, NYC has a lot more money to spend on it than most cities. So, in regards to things that are better simply because more money is available to be spent on it, I’ve not included.

1. Driving – Simply put, New Yorkers are better drivers. I am aware this statement is in stark contrast to the general opinion that New York drivers are terrible, but the fact is the streets of Manhattan are filled with cars, bikes and pedestrians who are all stopping and going on their own schedule. It takes a keen and constant awareness of your surroundings to keep in the flow. Furthermore, getting to your destination quickly is important, so there is no relaxing or zoning out.
2. Walking – On a related note, New Yorkers are better walkers. They walk fast, with purpose, and follow many unspoken rules of etiquette. These include: walking to the right, not stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, managing numerous umbrellas on rainy days. One of the main reasons New Yorkers avoid Times Square is to avoid inability of tourist to follow those rules.
3. Restaurant Efficiency – Restaurants here, especially lunch cafeterias, have serving food (made-to-order, no less) down to a science. A given take-out place can make over dozens of made-to-order meals in only several minutes. I used to stop at a Starbucks for morning coffee which never had less than 15 people in line at any given time. However, I it never too me more than 7 minutes to order, pay, and receive my coffee.
4. Food Quality – Not only are the orders made fast, but quality of the food is high, too. There is too much competition in the restaurant business here to have poorly made food. If so, the place with better food across the street will get all of the business and you won’t be in business very long. So every place has to be quality (within the price range).
5. Health Food Options – New Yorkers are quite healthy. Every restaurant has several vegetarian (if not vegan) options, many have more than one gluten free options, and a lot have several organic options. And I’m not just talking about high dollar places, even the lunch joints have them. Even the dump of a grocery store in my building has a wide variety of soy milk options and most milk you find in New York is either hormone free and/or organic.
6. Tuning Out – When you see someone on the train (i.e. underground subway) with their sunglasses on and ear buds in, it’s important to realize they aren’t trying to be cooler than you; they are tuning you and everything else out. The constant and intense stimuli that is New York is a double edged sword that people who live here must learn to tune out sometimes just to get some sort of peace and quiet. Sitting in Central Park with dozens of others within 20 feet of you and you’re not even remotely aware of their existence.
7. Tolerating Differences – New York is truly the World’s City. Its residents have come from every corner of the world and represent all of their cultures. It’s not uncommon for me to be the only “white” person on the train. In fact, more likely there isn’t one race or demographic that would dominate a given train car or sidewalk spot.
8. Working – New Yorkers work hard. A lot of people here are Alpha’s driving their career, so working ten hour days is normal and twelve hour days are not uncommon (especially in the financial industry).
9. Making Money – Correspondingly, New Yorkers know how to make money. Plus, they know how to network business contacts to build their business and wealth (it is the financial capital of the West, after all). New York has about 389,000 millionaires (second only to Tokyo) and 70 billionaires (most in the world).
10. Spending Money – Of course, New Yorkers are also experts at spending money. Spending $12 on a cocktail is the usual. Some people rent penthouse apartments that cost them a cool $50k or more a month, and that’s RENT meaning no equity.

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