Why is everyone so obsessed with NYC? I’m a 3rd generation Native of Brooklyn and suddenly it’s the “Hot Spot” to be?

[quote] But why is everyone suddenly so obsessed with Brooklyn?

No one who lives in Manhattan is obsessed with Brooklyn.

Not one of my European friends ever came to New York and spent more time in Brooklyn than Manhattan.

That's my anecdotal experience.

The "obsession with New York" is like the global obsession with Beyonce and other American celebrities... it exists solely in the minds of provincials who think that they are the center of the universe.

R1 I just met someone who DID. He’s been to Manhattan many times and this time wanted the “Brooklyn” gay experience. Lol.

And your friends sound obsessed with Manhattan then. Why? Cause they’re brainwashed and conditioned to.

New York, how cute.

[quote]And your friends sound obsessed with Manhattan then. Why? Cause they’re brainwashed and conditioned to.

Those who live in Brooklyn always sound so defensive - it takes 15 min. to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan on the subway!

Manhattan is Manhattan. It's what New York means to people who come to visit from other parts of the world.

For a native, you are pretty ignorant. The “fascination” with Brooklyn is hardly new. The reason is obvious: The young and creative were priced out of Manhattan and they and their energy decamped en masse to Brooklyn, starting in Williamsburg and spreading to adjacent areas. Now Brooklyn is too pricy. Bronx and Jersey City are next.

Sex and the City and Friends definitely played a part in it.

I'm a native of San Francisco and have experienced the SF lust exhibited by new comers. I also love NY and understand the obsession. For me, NY is just so different and a lifetime of movies set there make it even more glamorous. I've visited many times and my experiences back that up. Have been lucky to know people in theater and the arts and my visits are always focused on that.

I think the obsession with Brooklyn began when people from Manhattan started moving there when it was more affordable. Same thing is happening with SF as people move to Oakland because SF is way too expensive. Oakland and the East Bay also have a lot to offer.

I believe urban dwellers who seek out exciting cities want the arts, culture, diversity, interesting architecture, variety in restaurants, natural beauty outside of the city, great parks,lively social scenes etc.

Suddenly?

“Because”, OP, not “cause”.

OP, you are grossly overstating your premise. In fact, it's pretty clear to me that rather than EVERYONE loving or being "obsessed" with Brooklyn (or NYC; i.e, Manhattan), it is more a case of people being split down the middle. That is, if someone likes New York, they don't merely like it, they absolutely LOVE IT and think it's the GREATEST city in the world, bar none...and then you have the other camp who really think it's a tragically overrated place and that the first camp is deluded. There's practically no one in the middle. It's largely a "love it" or "can't stand it" place (and I'm talking relative to living there, not merely touristing). It's like Stevie Nicks' voice, ketchup on hotdogs, or the color chartreuse--the "love or loathe" paradigm, if you will, with very few waffling or indifferent.

From 1988 to the present I've resided in four cities--Boston, London, New York and Los Angeles (in that order), and New York was the only one that I disliked. I departed after three years. The scale and density are horrific. And yes, Central Park is a gorgeous jewel, but the lack of greenery elsewhere is disgusting. Add in the psychotic expense and a skeevy subway system...I could go on, but won't...

Lol r2, so true. No one outside the US even knows what a Beyonce is.

I stayed in Jersey City last December. r6 is correct.

R12 is that why Beyoncé sells out tours all over the world? You’re lost and mistaken, racist.

R8 it’s amazing how those white people want all those things and all that culture but don’t want black or Hispanic people around them. Amazing how that works.

Yup. Jersey City is becoming too expensive. Hoboken is already there.

Bronx and Queens are there. They want to push all the minorities out.

R15. Who are “they” to whom you refer?

These people r16......

Is OP posting from 2007?

What r9 and r18 said. I had to check the date to make sure this thread wasn't an old one bumped from years ago.

The "why Williamsburg is the hot place to be" shit is OLD at this point. Brooklyn has been hip.

Brooklyn got popular with non-Jewish whites starting over 15 years ago. It is now more expensive to live in Brooklyn than Manhattan. I used to live in Bushwick and when I moved out, around 2012, rents were starting to rise exponentially.

Anyways, who still lives in NYC these days?

R 20 here

I meant it has become popular with non-orthodox Jewish whites and all other whites

Yes, and 10 years ago Brooklyn priced out artists without trustfunds, and they all moved to Portland. Now my house is worth more, but all of my friends are decamping Portland for the same reasons. If I were younger, I wonder where I'd relocate.

I picture the new generation buying McMansions in the suburbs with 5 or 6 friends, and turning those monostrosities into works of art, much like the warehouses and lofts of yore.

Young white people moved to Brooklyn. Manhattan is Nancy Pelosi to Brooklyn's Beto.

R14, where did you get the idea that white people in metropolitan cities don't want people of color around them? One of the great things about growing up in SF was the racial diversity. More than half the people I know are Hispanic, Black, or Chinese and I've worked with people from all over the world. In fact, whites are less than 45% of the population. It's growing again though because techies have moved in and are pricing other groups out.

Sorry, in link above the white population is 53%. It was down to under 45% but is growing again due to the wealthy tech industry.

Sorry Brooklyn, but this is the worst viral marketing evah.

R24 you’re speaking of people that grew up in those areas vs the white trash that moves here from their white towns. I grew up in Brooklyn and never personally experienced racism until recently with these transplants.

Only time I did was when I was 5 and the blonde Russian girl said she doesn’t like me cause of my skin color. That’s it. (Although that broke my heart and I cried to my white mother about how I hate my brown skin and wish I were white). After that growing up all was fine until recent. Many of the people moving here DONT want minorities around them and try turning the city into the suburbs.

Like making complaints about the ice cream truck music, or trying to get an elementary school to stop outside recess cause they feel it’s too noisy etc. This shit really happened.

R14 = Jada Pinkett-Smith

Oh god, are you trying to make Greenpoint trendy?

It's all about the real estate and the "bones" of those brownstones.

How do people afford these places? I can't even afford a one bedroom in Dayton OH

I really thought the OP was going to date back to like 2008 or so when that sort of observation might be considered fresh.

I grew up in Manhattan, moved to Brooklyn, then back to Manhattan and realized how much more I liked Brooklyn so now I've been in Brooklyn for many years, before it was trendy and not for financial reasons. I just love Brooklyn but hate the rich trust fund people who live here now and even more the triple stroller moms with who travel with their nanny because they just want to have the brats, not care for them. There is little peace in eating out around here anymore without the brats screaming and running around and no one saying a word to their useless parents. Still, I'd never want to live in Manhattan again.

r31 = Joe Gillis

R33 the stroller moms are the worst. And I get nauseous seeing all these black women raising white peoples kids. It reminds me of The Help. Like nothing has changed.

I'm a white New Yorker and even I realize that R14 is 100% correct. Much of the advertisements being produced by the city and the real estate developers who bribe them promote the street art and culture of the city without featuring any black or brown people. That's not an accident. White, mid-western gentrifiers want the culture without the people. They are simply culture vultures and it's why New York has lost its edge in the last seven years. They are taking their racism with them and it is going to result in another Giuliani type mayor in 2021 if the Democrats don't get off the gentrification train. It may help them with campaign donations in the short term, but it will result in their electoral demise long term. Once your base can no longer afford to live there, you can't win elections. You'd think people would understand this, but greed has a way of making people blind to reality.

Yup. They want the culture and experience without the actual people. They wanna live in “urban areas” without urban folks. They literally tear down history and erase the culture and rewrite is as white History.

There was an article in the NY Times a while ago - one of those "lifestyle" real estate articles - about a (gay) couple who purchased a tiny two-bedroom apartment for about $2million. It was located a stone's throw from JFK airport! $2million and it's way out by JFK! Reading that article, I thought "okay, NYC is officially insane now."

Hey, OP!

You'll never be never be never be Manhattan!

Is OP posting from 1990?

I lived in Brooklyn 25 years ago, it was a shithole then.

Went back to visit 3 years ago, it's still a shithole but now inhabited by posers and that makes it even worse.

Brooklyn to me means Brooklyn Heights. It’s lovely and restful there, like you left the drama of the city across the river.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn is great. No strollers, diverse but safe, tons of great bars/restaurants/shopping, you can buy a nice apartment with a backyard for under $2M, taxes are low compared to manhattan, you can get to most locations in Manhattan in 10-20 min.

I'm also a 4th generation NYC resident, but NYC is nothing new? People have been wanting to live here for 100's of years....

[quote]Oh god, are you trying to make Greenpoint trendy?

You haven’t been to Greenpoint in quite a while, have you?

[quote]you can get to most locations in Manhattan in 10-20 min.

LOL

From northwest Brooklyn you can, R46.

Well, until they shut down the L train sem-permanently.

Which they’re already doing on weekends...

It ain't Baltimore

Is the OP posting from the 18th Century? People have been dreaming about Manhatten and Brooklyn a long long time before Sex and the City. It's been the unofficial Capitol of the US since Alexander Hsmilton. The man not the musical.

[quote] From northwest Brooklyn you can, [R46].

Yes, if you count the time on the train only. I lived in East Village and just getting from the 14th and 1st to Bedford took at least half an hour (and my apt was three blocks from the station); walking to the station, waiting for the L train, the longish ride under the river... If you were to meet with someone in East Village, you wouldn't say - see you in ten. You'd give yourself at least half an hour if not more. I would never say, for example, that it takes ten to fifteen minutes to get from East to West Village, even if the subway ride is about that long. That's what I mean.

[quote]Yes, if you count the time on the train only. I lived in East Village and just getting from the 14th and 1st to Bedford took at least half an hour (and my apt was three blocks from the station); walking to the station, waiting for the L train, the longish ride under the river... If you were to meet with someone in East Village, you wouldn't say - see you in ten. You'd give yourself at least half an hour if not more. I would never say, for example, that it takes ten to fifteen minutes to get from East to West Village, even if the subway ride is about that long. That's what I mean.

This is a really outdated perspective. The L train runs every 3-5 minutes, and it takes no more than 2 minutes to pass underwater and arrive at Bedford Avenue from 1st Avenue. My job requires me to make this trip over a dozen times every week. I’m sick to death of it, but I know it very well and it does NOT take a half hour. Seriously: 7 minutes or less.

I’m not *advocating* for it; I’m sick of the L train and everything about it, including the weekend suspension of it. I have no love for Bedford Ave hipsters, and the E Village is all basic bitches from NYU. Haaaaaate it. But you’re just plain wrong about the commute time. If you live in NYC, try that ride sometime this week. 1st Avenue to Bedford: 7 minutes or less including waiting for the train. You can’t include the time it takes to walk TO the subway because that’s different for everyone. You no doubt would insist on adding the time it takes to walk to 1st Ave/14th Street from the farthest possible location in the East Village or Gramercy.

R14 and R36 are spot on.

They want it to "feel" like working class minorities live there but they don't want to deal with the actual people unless they magically transform themselves into J. Crew wearing clones of the white folks.

These people talk about "diversity" all the time, but will send their kids to private school if the public schools are too "diverse" for their liking, e.g., if there are lots of minority kids who aren't planning which Ivy to attend when they're in 4th grade.

The only real "diversity" I see in NYC area is in suburban towns, mostly predominantly Jewish ones, where Indian, Korean and Chinese families have moved in to take advantage of the excellent public schools. They're at the same economic level as their new neighbors so there's not that weird tension you get in Brooklyn when the white people all live in $2MM townhouses and the POCs mostly live in the projects.

Where in Brooklyn did the Cosby's live?

Lisbon has peaked. Don't bother. Everyone is obsessed Seville and Vienna. Brooklyn? Hahahahahahahhaahha

[quote]you can get to most locations in Manhattan in 10-20 min.

[quote]Seriously: 7 minutes or less.

Did you even read what I wrote? I said that when you ADD the time that it takes to walk to the station and the wait time and the 7 minute ride, it is not 10-20 minutes. The actual trip is more like half an hour, and that's just one stop across the river.

[quote]You no doubt would insist on adding the time it takes to walk to 1st Ave/14th Street from the farthest possible location in the East Village or Gramercy.

I lived on 12th and Second. Yeah, I know what I'm talking about.

I think it's because people lack imagination and can't think of a place they'd actually want to go because they have no personality.

It's a good thing they're fixing the L. The rush hour situation is unsustainable (people standing on platforms at Lorimer & Bedford watching packed trains pass by), there are issues with the line when there are two days of bad weather in a row (flooded tracks usually), mobs of people at Lorimer & Bedford every morning (at least they'll be revamping Bedford and 1st Avenue stations). Just fix it already.

To the guy saying “I LIVED there”....

I live here now. I live in Williamsburg and work at Union Square. My door-to-door commute is 10 min. That includes leaving my house, waiting for the train, getting to work. I’ve never had to wait more than a couple of minutes for the L.

The L will be shut down for 15 months, but can take the ferry, the G, a ten minute walk to the J, and they will apparently have a shuttle running every 3 minutes (not optimistic about the shuttle). Uber, Lyft, Via, etc are all options. I also have a car and a bike, and may drive. I’ll have to see. But at least the L shut down is temporary and I’ll have a great house for years to come.

I’ve been taking alternate routes on weekends since the L shutdown began, and travel times on the G with a connection have been much shorter than i imagined.

Good to hear people are still obsessed with nyc.

It's aways hilarious when flyovers and hipster trust fund assholes try to be experts about certain cities.

Ever wonder what's going to happen when the same wealthy flyovers and hipster trust assholes get bored and leave Bklyn, LIC, Ridgewood, Hoboken etc, when they go back to their home states or countries? I've noticed lots of bougie South Asians in the 'hip' areas of Bklyn and Queens. Like the rest of the trust funders, they all seem to have 'creative' jobs.

All these newbies have already ruined these neighborhoods for the original work class population. Some local needed businesses are holding on by a thread, meanwhile some poseur opens up a $15 grill cheese joint! Talk about a useless business.

Wish some historian would do an in depth study on how neighborhoods don't always change for the better. Ever wonder where the working class, who keep NYC humming, live? The cabbies, waiters, cooks, basically everyone in the service industry. No one wonders how they survive when their neighborhoods have become too expensive.

I commute from UES to Brooklyn....hell!

My commute from La Condamine to Monte Carlo is literally killing me.

Believe me not everyone wants to live in a city where the underbelly is the habitat and breeding ground of hundreds of millions of rats. Disease carrying rats.

OP, they are obsessed with Williamsburg and Bushwick. How many hipsters have moved to Bath Beach, Bensonhurst, or East New York?

OP, what neighborhood did you grow up in?

I want someone to address R61's question: Where is the NYC working class living? Quoted for emphasis:

[quote]The cabbies, waiters, cooks, basically everyone in the service industry. No one wonders how they survive when their neighborhoods have become too expensive.

[quote]they are obsessed with Williamsburg and Bushwick. How many hipsters have moved to Bath Beach, Bensonhurst, or East New York?

Bushwick was the LAST Bklyn neighborhood anyone could have predicted would become 'hip'. It's actually shocking. The architecture isn't even desirable, not many brownstones, maybe near Broadway. I haven't been there in ages. There was one part of Bushwick with huge mansions, wealthy Jewish people had lived there many years ago. The mansions had been turned into event venues, mostly for weddings. A a kid I remember going to a wedding in one of those gorgeous mansions.

Hipsters are clannish, they sure aren't going to move to neighborhoods where the original residents still live. That wouldn't be 'cool' to them. They start moving in like roaches when the original people have already been driven out. Williamsburg was Jewish and black, same for Bed-Sty and Fort Greene, then the trust fund hipsters started moving in and caused rents to sly rocket.

In the past, Bushwick was fairly mixed. What was weird about it, a whole block would be white (Italian, Irish, German etc), the next block black, then the next block Puerto Rican, yet all the residents were working class and co-existed.

Lots of my relatives lived in Bushwick, they left and moved to Queens, Long Island and upstate NY.

R54 You are right on the mark!

Me: born in LA --> Palm Springs-->NYC-->Hudson Valley --> bored and planning to move to one of my favorite cities: Sevilla. Not hard to get a non-lucrative visa that allows residency in Spain as long as you do not need to work there.

We got out of Bushwick years ago, when the schvartzes started coming on.

[quote]Did you even read what I wrote? I said that when you ADD the time that it takes to walk to the station and the wait time and the 7 minute ride, it is not 10-20 minutes. The actual trip is more like half an hour, and that's just one stop across the river.

You can NEVER ADD the time it takes to walk to the station because it’s different FOR EVERYONE and it makes no sense from any practical standpoint to add on some vague walking time that is different for every person and depends on where they originate. DUH.

Also, I live in Greenpoint along the G line, and I live farther away from my train station than you did at 12/2 and I take the G train two stops to the L and ten take the L 3 stops to 3rd Ave., and it never takes me more than TWENTY MINUTES to do all of that. From my door to where I work at 14th and 3rd, is TWENTY MINUTES OR LESS. I’ve done this trip approximately a thousand times and I know what I’m taking about.

I mean, there’s a reason why everyone says “you can be in Manhattan in 10-15 minutes.” I don’t know how long ago you lived at 12th and 2nd; maybe the L train runs more frequently now?

[quote]To the guy saying “I LIVED there”.... I live here now. I live in Williamsburg and work at Union Square. My door-to-door commute is 10 min. That includes leaving my house, waiting for the train, getting to work. I’ve never had to wait more than a couple of minutes for the L.

Thank you, R43/59!!! I wrote my last two posts before I saw yours. I have no idea what that slow fuck’s problem is.

[quote] Not hard to get a non-lucrative visa that allows residency in Spain as long as you do not need to work there.

R69, we have similar taste in cities, except I DO have to work, unfortunately. If you had to stay in the U.S. which other places might be on your list?

Madrid is fabulous, I would have no problem living there if I could.

R74 I work remotely and am paid by an American company so that is how I can support myself in Spain, or really anywhere with decent wifi.

You asked a good question about where in the US to move to, and I don't know what to the answer is. I just got back from visiting family in LA and I would not move back there for all the usual reasons. If the Hudson Valley didn't have such cold winters, well I might stay here. But it can be a cultural desert.

Anyone with any ideas? No cold winters!

R66 until I was 15 I lived on a block called Dahill Road. All houses and private houses.

At 15, on September 1, 2011 we moved to Windsor, right by Prospect Park.

May I add that the weather here has become BI-POLAR.

Growing up the weather was never as bad as it is now and the summers lasted longer. Now it’s cold most of the year!!! I can’t understand why people flock here.

But most don’t even stay...