{"id":518586,"date":"2015-09-15T08:11:25","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T12:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/?p=518586"},"modified":"2015-09-15T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T21:00:00","slug":"10-reasons-new-york-city-is-painfully-overrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/chelsea-fagan\/2015\/09\/10-reasons-new-york-city-is-painfully-overrated\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Reasons New York City Is Painfully Overrated"},"content":{"rendered":"
New York City is\u00a0just incredibly overrated, and yet people insist on acting like unpaid PR people for it. And these are the 10 biggest reasons why that\u2019s bullshit.<\/div>\n

1. People get overjoyed about the most objectively garbage living spaces.<\/b> I\u2019ve seen people brag about their $3,000\/month, rat-infested East Village one bedroom, where the kitchen has the approximate dimensions of an airplane bathroom, and faces an air shaft. People have Stockholm syndrome about the real estate here, and have learned to reduce their expectations from \u2018comfortable living situation\u2019 to \u2018dumpster with outlets.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

2. People who have no business living here choose to suffer for the cause.<\/b> Nothing makes me cringe more than people who are living their NeW yOrK DrEaM at the expense of basic ability to maintain their life and feed themselves, and are working four jobs (including one creative one) to fund their windowless basement room in Bushwick. There are theatres in Chicago and LA, and basically everywhere else. Go live in a place that will enable you to survive with more dignity than a raccoon.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Nearly everything people brag about getting here, you can get in most major cities.<\/b> Sometimes when you\u2019re talking to a New Yorker, it feels like they think no restaurants, bars, or museums exist outside of a ten-mile radius from the Empire State Building. Like I don\u2019t know if you realize, but you can go to a restaurant in Minneapolis, or a bar in Rome. And you\u2019ll probably pay way less for a beer.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. People act like junkies when it comes to new and exciting food.<\/b> I am so tired of seeing fusions-of-fusions-of-avant-garde-reimagining of food. It\u2019s like we\u2019re all addicted to New and Interesting Ways Of Eating, and kept raising our tolerance until every bar in Williamsburg served cured-shark gravlax over pine crisps with a kimchi reduction. <\/span><\/p>\n

5. People treat dating the way they treat ordering food.<\/b> I\u2019m not saying that this is unique to New York \u2013 I know that people do app dating everywhere \u2013 but good lord is it pronounced here, where people have as many options for their next date as they do their next order of Kung Pao chicken. I can\u2019t count the number of conversations I\u2019ve had with bored, vaguely despondent New Yorkers as they recall the dozen-or-so dating options they\u2019re keeping simmering on the stove, none with any actual interest. And I met my boyfriend of nearly five years online, so I\u2019m not averse to digital romance. But come on, at least put in more effort into the potential love of your life than you do the drunken Amazon cart you fill up after coming home from the bar.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. $10 – $15 is considered an acceptable price range for cocktails.<\/b> Unless it is made from top shelf liquor and champagne, and comes with a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies, no drink should be at that price point. And yet, that\u2019s what people here are comfortable paying for a cocktail that is mostly fancy mixers, and takes approximately 10 minutes to put together. (I admit that the giant, fancy, square ice cubes do have a certain allure, but not a 14-dollar allure.)<\/span><\/p>\n

7. 80 percent of the year is spent complaining about the weather.<\/b> And don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 I don\u2019t think these complaints are unnecessary, or unreasonable. I totally agree that New York City seems to get the absolute worst of the extreme seasons, punctuated by an admittedly gorgeous four-week period in spring and fall. It\u2019s either summer, and the whole city feels like a concrete-lined sweat lodge, full of molten garbage and a humidity level of \u201cbeef stew.\u201d Or it\u2019s winter, and each row of skyscrapers forms its own little wind tunnel, where your eyelashes have the pleasure of freezing off within five minutes of leaving work. But damn Rockefeller Center looks pretty come Christmastime! <\/span><\/p>\n

8. Everyone is super hyped up about all the amazing shit they can\u2019t afford here.<\/b> Yes, 90 percent of normal people in New York City can\u2019t afford to go shopping in the West Village, or try any of the twenty-something Michelin-starred restaurants, or stay in any of the magnificent, storied hotels. No one can enjoy a Carrie Bradshaw lifestyle, or even a Miranda Hobbes one. Pretty much everything the media teaches you is ~fabulous~ about NYC is out of everyone\u2019s price range. But people are totally content to get a contact high off of all the great stuff around them without ever being able to participate. Just walking past that amazing brunch spot with the four-hour wait is enough to motivate the New Yorker for their eight-hour shift at an Aldo.<\/span><\/p>\n

9. The stuff they can<\/i> afford \u2013 and brag about \u2013 New Yorkers never actually do.<\/b> People will tell you all the time how much the ~art and culture~ here is so incredible and irreplaceable (which, okay, but you can go to most cities for that, as seen in point three), in the same breath that they tell you they have not been to the Met in five years, and have never seen an opera or ballet. They just like to know that all of this art and culture is available<\/i>, waiting for the moment they will eventually choose to engage with it. They don\u2019t have to actually enjoy it to feel smug about it. <\/span><\/p>\n

10. Meanness becomes a default setting for everyone who lives here.<\/b> Now, I should specify that I\u2019ve only lived in two other major cities, so I am not an expert on how much city life hardens you to the world, and to your fellow human. But I can say with confidence that pretty much everyone I know who has lived in NYC and elsewhere agrees with me that this place is significant in how much of an asshole you become living here. You just live your life in a constant, simmering state of being pissed off at people, because they are getting in your way on the subway, in a coffee shop, or on the escalator at a department store because they\u2019ve chosen to eat their entire Wetzel\u2019s Pretzel between the sixth and seventh floor. Everyone knows that they\u2019re in a masochistic relationship with NYC, but I would argue that they\u2019re in an openly abusive relationship with the other ten million people who call this place home.<\/span><\/p>\n

They say you\u2019re not a New Yorker until you\u2019ve lived here for 10 years, but I would argue that you\u2019re not a New Yorker until you\u2019ve learned to quietly resent every single person you cross on your daily commute. \"Thought<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York City is\u00a0just incredibly overrated, and yet people insist on acting like unpaid PR people for it. And these are the 10 biggest reasons why that\u2019s bullshit. 1. People get overjoyed about the most objectively garbage living spaces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36248491,"featured_media":518588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"thoughtcatalog_call_to_action":"","tc_post_redirect":"","thoughtcatalog_is_sponsored_content":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[433425955],"tags":[],"anchortext":[],"posttemplate":[],"adcampaign":[],"coauthors":[178686843],"class_list":["post-518586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","featured_content-ftrd"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/img_4581.jpg","author_meta":null,"photo_credit":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36248491"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518586"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519209,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518586\/revisions\/519209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518586"},{"taxonomy":"anchortext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/anchortext?post=518586"},{"taxonomy":"posttemplate","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posttemplate?post=518586"},{"taxonomy":"adcampaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/adcampaign?post=518586"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=518586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}