What the hell happened to Manhattan

Ok Park Ave is dead!!!! WTF

Oh good now we're veered past Rosy O Grady's. What the heck?

Gee, OP, I am sure glad you posted this as nobody ever talks about this stuff.

Welcome to my world. That's why I walk everywhere these days. Takes an hour to get from 55th and Park to 47th and 8th in a car. Never again. Thank you Eric Adams and Kathy Hokul or whatever your name is.

Broadway was a hot mess today. Is there some kind of festival?

Perhaps people are clogging the roads while they're free of charge.

I'm experiencing second-hand hustle and bustle.

OP, you chose to live in a shithole. Deal with it.

Have you been there in the last 30 years? Have you been anywhere in the last 30 years?

[quote] I miss gritty actual NYC

Sure but most of DL were whining about homeless people during the height of the pandemic.

Would they have lasted an hour during the 1970s?

Blame the Dutch.

San Francisco isn't what it used to be either, bud.

Weirdly placed bike lanes with entrenched parking and bus lanes are making it even harder to make turns.

e-bikes are coming out of nowhere and nearly mowing pedestrians down, restaurants are in the street. Trucks and taxis and ubers, oh my!

^semicolon needed^

OP, you couldn't use the subway?

the pedicabs lurching about are hazardous

[quote] What the hell happened to Manhattan

We took it.

If you take the subway, you'll find plenty of grit.

I used to take the 6 from 34th and Park to Soho.

Traffic has gotten terrible. I agree. It takes forever to get anywhere unless it’s early in the morning or late at night.

I had family visiting recently and we had to Uber because of an elderly relative - was maddening how long it took.

With the fear of attack on the subways, more people are using ground transportation, thus clogging up the narrowed streets.

I am reminded of my late father's usual response when someone complained about the way things were in the city they resided in. He would simply say "well, that's what you get for living there".

^ NYC has always been about survival of the fittest. Leave the elderly behind and carry on with your lives.

[quote] e-bikes are coming out of nowhere and nearly mowing pedestrians down

The maniacal, meth'd-up bike messengers and delivery guys were always a far bigger threat to the average pedestrian than cars, muggers, or wilding street gangs combined.

Better options would have been just take the subway, or even walking briskly would have taken perhaps 40 minutes.

R23: The elderly seem to do ok in NYC. Lots of them on the UWS, in particular. The density makes it better than being in some far suburb--elevator buildings and walkable neighborhoods.

R24 Indeed. I was hit by a courier on 6th Ave in 1988. The bike landed on me and the rider flew over my head.

No, WE took it!

They are about to implement congestion tolls.

Sounds an awful lot like...FLYOVER COUNTRY!!!

[quote] I miss gritty actual NYC

The South Americans will give you what you want

I miss X rated Times square. It's like Atlantic city now.

I’ve noticed a lot more cars in the last couple of years. I chalked it up to Covid fear.

The streets of Manhattan used to be quiet on Sundays, now they’re clogged with cars. I live in the Village and I can’t understand why so many drive down Bleecker Street. Can’t you just drive a few more blocks and take Houston? Why is Bleecker Street so clogged up?

[quote]I live in the Village and I can’t understand why so many drive down Bleecker Street. Can’t you just drive a few more blocks and take Houston? Why is Bleecker Street so clogged up?

Because Bleecker is one of those name NY streets from story and song, like Park and Fifth Avenues?

New York (Manhattan) hasn't been gritty for forty or fifty years. It's got a little more Lord of the Flies since COVID. What do people want?

Stores in Manhattan are too expensive to be used for the kinds of small businesses that make street life interesting. But with the collapse of office life, those prices will come down. Manhattan is constantly changing.

It's the future of city living!

The last time Manhattan had grit was the 1980s and by the end of that decade, the grit was only in pockets here and there. Viewed in hindsight, and now that I'm over 60, the clean up and blandification was SWIFT!

Fox, r31? Bless your heart.

Bike and bus lanes that reduced the width of the road. Some cross streets (23rd, 14th) are single lane now. North/South that were 3-4 lanes wide are down to 2.

[Quote] The streets used to be quiet Sundays

I offered to drive someone to a matinee a few weeks ago. The streets were filled from 55th & across to Lex and below like it was a workday.

It used to be fairly easy to find Sunday parking.

It’s actually interesting reading all of this because I haven’t been to NYC for maybe 5 years now. Makes me sad how corporate our cities have become and how it’s damaged the actual culture. But this has happened across all of our cities.

Do the bikes even use the bike lanes?

What are you talking about, OP? High speed paparazzi chases regularly happen on its streets!

Here’s where in the thread the jaded NYer pops in and tells all us Flyoverstands to “fuck right off!”

I don't blame the chains first and foremost. They're the only ones who can afford the retail rents. So it's the landlords and the municipalities or some combination that is at the root of the problem.

NYC has allowed America's decline towards conglomerate corporate marketing strategies to corrupt its uniqueness.

Because, after all, it's in America.

OP you choose to take a car in Manhattan rather than the train, and you are complaining about traffic? You are the traffic!

But you see now why they are moving forward with congestion pricing. Manhattan is choked with cars, might as well charge them if they don't want to take the train.

I hear cannabis retails on every other block.

It gave us Donald Trump. Nuff said.

That was Queens, r50.

Poor Donny, he came from such humble beginnings. A backwater shack in Jamaica Queens. And he has lied for decades that he only took a loan of $1M from his father and build a real estate empire with it. The truth is he inherited over $400M in money and assets and he still managed to go bankrupt 4 times.

Six times.

How much was the cab ride?

People are never happy in Manhattan. No matter the era, it was more exciting back when. And “back when” people were complaining it was better before. And so on. And so forth.

Man who should have been in jail for punching a woman punches a little girl.

The district attorney office is responsible for all this repeat offender shit. Unless there is an actual corpse, they will continue to release all the perps regardless of what they do and how often they repeat it. And they bring in the national guard to police the subway system. That's because you have your police ignoring most of the crimes, and when they do arrest the criminals, the DA office releases them anyway. So who is kidding who here? We went from one extreme with the over the top stop & frisk, to the current lax I don't give a flying fuck attitude and policy of law enforcement in NYC.

Just as in my reaction to Fla and all of the shit DeSantis is pulling, I don't feel sorry for New York. You voted for this, and only you can fix it. Vote the assholes out, even if they carry the precious "D" after their name.

D = dickhead?

Manhattan has been NOTHING but chains since the aughts. Terrible.

We have the same big box stores you can find anywhere in America now. The more mid-high rises we build with 3-4,000 sq ft apartments, the more small buildings on the avenues get torn down. The same buildings that used to house small mom and pop-type stores in their much smaller retail space. Even those small spaces still had astronomical monthly rents. Many of the new $$$$ buildings put residential entrances on the side streets, often with commercial space in the avenue sides of the properties. These spaces are enormous and the rents unthinkable for a corner deli, framing store, cozy restaurant, etc, etc... All the little spots that made us unique. Only the huge chain places can afford the rent, and even they often fail after a few years. The city and/or state should be doing something to keep some retail space available for small businesses. These new mammoth apartment buildings have less apartments than the smaller buildings they tore down, and a large percentage of the owners don't even live here full-time. It's disgraceful.

R61, I agree!!!! Why are we allowing our state and local governments to sit on their hands while every fucking small business just DIES???

What happened to the big apple? Having 72,918 residents per square mile might get a bit tricky.

[quote]D = dickhead?

Many of the "D"s have turned out to be dickheads.

I like the island Manhattan. (I know you do!)

The latest subway delight are mentally ill spitting at you on the stairs out of you don’t give them money.

Lexington in the 50ies and 60ies still has loads of small businesses.

It's not complicated r61. As Manhattan gets more expensive interesting small businesses get priced out. It's the same reason the artsy hipster crowd was forced to move from the East Village to Williamsburg and then to Bushwick.

Have to go where land is cheaper. Now even Bushwick is getting pricey.

[quote] Have to go where land is cheaper. Now even Bushwick is getting pricey.

Elmira or bust!

Get on a train bozo.

[quote] We went from one extreme with the over the top stop & frisk, to the current lax I don't give a flying fuck attitude

One of these is not like the other

R61 The same thing has happened to Chicago in the last 10-15 years. It seems like every other store is now a Target, Whole Foods, Home Depot, Apple Store, etc. Subways and Chipotles where interesting lunch spots used to be, TJ Maxx and Burlington Coat Factories where mini garment districts used to be. It's like big cities are turning into suburban bigbox interstate strips. Hideous cookie cutter highrises replacing grey and brownstones left and right. Everything is starting to look the same.

[quote] Get on a train bozo.

Smoosh in and stuck with raving lunatics, silly!

Time to outlaw cars there. Just mass public transportation, bikes and walking.

How do you propose moving apartments, R74, or getting food delivered to grocery stores? Where do ambulances fit in? And taxis? How do we keep the wandering herd, AirPods at the ready, and the St. Cyclists out of the way when they're in it?

I was there 2 wee is ago and was horrified when we were going uptown. Almost all the 6 story buildings that used to have restaurants and shops on the ground floor are gone and it’s nothing but giant condo skyscrapers everywhere. It was making me sick with claustrophobia.

It made me think of all the shops I used to go to that stopped existing. Camera shops, little Israeli electronics shops, stationery stores, copying shops, video stores, green grocers, Chinese restaurants, bagel shops, bakeries.

We went past a small market that still exists …it was there in 1985 when I first moved there - and it was packed with literally lines of young people inside. We wondered why it was so crowded and then we realized it’s because it was the only small market left standing.