Long Island or New York City?

NYC is better (provided you can afford it.).

Is there really any discussion to be had? It’s like choosing between Paris and Akron.

Are you serious. Its like comparing a Louis bag to some bootleg Chinatown knockoff.

Long Island has the trashiest, tackiest, most obnoxious people you will ever see in your life.

Anyone who has a home on Long Island is trash.

Bill O'Reilly is from Long Island, and he truly represents a LOT of the type one finds there.

Grew up on LI, have lived in NYC for 20 years. They're the same people but each thinks they're better than the other.

New York City (specifically Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn) attract people from all over the world. It’s an international city whereas Long Island is provincial.

Nassau county trash might as well be in Peoria. They act as if they’re not 45 minutes from the greatest city in the world.

Aren't Queens and Brooklyn (boroughs of NYC) actually ON Long Island?

Whatever New York City is, Long Island will always be worse.

Where on Long Island OP?

The Hamptons, Montauk, Shelter Island and the North Fork are on Long Island but a world away from the people and places referred to in R1 - R9

Most of Long Island is filled with trash

Are you high R10? The Hamptons crowd is the epitome of nouveau riche trash. And shelter island, don’t even get me started. it used to be quiet until people like you started to hear about it. Now it’s filled with the same pieces of shit.

Remember figure-8 racing from Islip Speedway on ABC's Wide World of Sports?

[quote]New York City (specifically Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn) attract people from all over the world.

Why does Queens always get left out? It's the most diverse place on the planet, let alone NYC.

The Hamptons are mostly the nouveau vulgar rich these days.

R12 R15- Not Sag.

Where does the fresh water supply come from? Wells?

Queens isn't cool r14. The movers and shakers are in Manhattan and the cool parts of Brooklyn.

Yes, R14 Flushing, jackson Heights and bellerose attract Asians from all over Asia!

The biggest trash on LI lives in Quogue; it's a disgrace. Worse than ( ugh) Brooklyn.

Manhattan is as far off of the continental US as I care to be. If you must choose a suburb, try New Jersey. You're automatically a couple of hours closer to everywhere than if you were in Nassau or Suffolk County.

Long Island is too large and inconsistent culturally to generalize. I grew up on the north shore ...the Gold Coast. Gatsby territory. One of the most expensive regions in the country. All of my classmates were the sons and daughters of C-suite execs, wealthy Wall Street traders and displaced Iranian aristocrats who fled their country with millions stashed in offshore accounts. Travel 10 miles south and you would swear you were in Staten Island.

Anyway, oyster bay, locust valley, old brookville, lattingtown and many other areas are crazy posh.

Personally, there is no comparison. I’ve lived in NYC my whole adult life and would never dream of moving out to LI while still working.

That said, my partner and I have discussed retiring to the north fork one day...it’s gorgeous.

R22 the JAPs in those areas are hideous cunts. The north shore used to be WASP and now it’s Persian jews and their ilk. Yes, the area is posh but the people are no less insufferable than their counterparts to the south.

r5 I grew up in the same town and at the same time as O'Reilly. We are NOT all the same.

Long Island was a great place to grow up in the 50's/60's. But it is not what it used to be.

The bi who broke my heart was from Roslyn. Now he lives in Oyster Bay. He always wanted to be a goy, and never wanted (really) to be with a boy. So he's been married all these years. He used to find me wherever I was living (pre-internet) and drop in, wanting to have sex. I said no each and every time. Go home to your Jappingtown bitch, Jappingtown bi-bitch.

Bye, bitch.

"the JAPs in those areas are hideous cunts. The north shore used to be WASP and now it’s Persian jews "

you're thinking of Great Neck and Jericho.

I assure you, Locust Valley, Old Brookville, et al are NOT teeming with JAPS.

Both. Grew up on LI. Live in NYC. Both are my home.

New York City is a mass of culture. Long Island is a mass of multiculture without any cultural sensibilities whatsoever. They are the epitome of bourgeois taste, copycat syndrome, keeping up with the Joneses, playing hero for recognition and rewards (when they really couldn't give a fuck), charging a fortune for mediocre goods and services, feigning a quality of life that hasn't existed since the days of potato and sod farms, endless construction of supermarkets, gas stations, 7-11s, CVSes, and Starbucks on every available patch of land. Incompetent and rude customer service, food and restaurants that would inspire anorexia and bulimia.; virility is measured by the loudest of a muffler and the black tinted windows on a BMW, Mercedes, Dodge RAM; the size of a cock is measured with a zip code. Even the whores are rank amateur. Should I go on?

Men who lack humility, civility, sincerity, and integrity, and fat, disgusting Entenmann's chomping bitches who are always primed to cut your heart out; children who are ill bred, spoiled, and disruptive; In short, entitled, overblown, and condescending entities, straight and gay, and their neighborhood watch communities who are "watching" to make sure the few honest people out there don't catch onto to their vile and nefarious actions; always looking to screw someone and not in the way anyone on this thread would want it.

These are miserable people of the highest order. So miserable that if they were happy, they'd be more miserable. That's Long Island. If you live here, move. And if you're thinking of moving here, run for the hills..

R28, you are describing America.

Thank you R28. That was a great diatribe - funny and in my option accurate. “If they were happy, they’d be more miserable” is a gem and a bizarrely accurate description of the LI mindset. Lol

Sorry, Kingspoint was a great place in which to be raised. And, its great.

There are parts of Long Island that are unbelievably beautiful. Some of the people there are the realest motherfuckers you'll ever meet. Of course, there are assholes and crazy people like anywhere. Long Island inherited Brooklyn's no-bullshit attitude once Brooklyn became the home of soft-handed art boys who want a curated mustache wax shop on every corner. Also, Queens' food scene is cooler than anything imagined in Brooklyn or Manhattan. Immigrant chefs are making the most amazing shit you've ever eaten in unpretentious, affordable ways. Fuck the fucking grad school, white-boy bullshit of Manhattan.

R32 Agreed. Queens is highly underrated and far more cultural in a lot of ways. Long Island is the home of the wannabe, the second banana, and the imposter. There is no originality, innovation, or genuine creation of any sort whatsoever.

Music is shit tribute bands in crappy restaurants and dive bars in Patchogue or Huntington; karaoke slopfests where alcohol is the symphony; art exhibits for paint by number; contractors that abandon a job half way through because they got a better paying gig; chefs that are serving you up animals that aren't necessarily chicken and beef; fast food joints where you're eating a burger that's been on the floor for the last 15 minutes; guys with 47 pairs of sneakers who will talk about their relationship with God, the list is endless.

Long Island needs not a Sandy, but a Sandra to put it out of its misery.

[quote]Kingspoint was a great place in which to be raised.

So great, you didn't need to learn how to spell it. Someone would do it for you.

R28 brilliant. The saddest thing about Long Island is how insular it is. The same irish Italian Polish Catholic people hanging around the same Irish italian Polish Catholics generation after generation, passing down those hideous accents that don’t betray any sense of culture or intelligence. They could hop on the train and be in the capital of the world, but they don’t and when they do they barely stray from Penn Station/madison square garden. I’m sure most frauen who live in nassau county actually have no idea how to drive to the city, even though it means staying on one road (the LIE) until the tunnel.

Long Island is a pretty insular place, I mean even geographically it is just very cut off from the rest of the world.

Like r21 said, by living there you are living a decent bit off from the continental US.

My Aunt and Uncle had a second home on the North Fork. They are selling because all their neighbors are Trumpsters.

I had a fantastic childhood growing up on Long Island in the 70s-80s. I can't imagine a better childhood in a better place. Now I live in Queens, and although it's being over-built, literally as I type, I love it.

Leaving Long Island. Moving to New England. Lived on the east end, Manhattan and the Bronx (don’t ask). I don’t care where you go on Long Island, Rich poor and in between. Just fucking awful. And the drivers are trying to kill themselves and others. Aggressive, nasty. Ugh. Tacky, shallow and so vapid.

R36 can you explain how living 35 minutes from the largest international airport in the US and 45 minutes from the largest city in the US cut off from the rest of the world? Long Island is hardly Hawaii or cape cod. Get a map and give yourself a cursory geography lesson.

[Quote]can you explain how

Sure.

1) It's an island

2) It extends pretty far from the mainland US. Some might call it Long.

You’re all kinds of stupid, R41.

[quote]Long Island has the trashiest, tackiest, most obnoxious people you will ever see in your life.

You obviously haven't been to the South, you'll find Grade A trash.. I too grew up on LI and loved it. Nice house, backyard and in forty five minutes you're sitting in a Broadway theater, or at the best museums in the world. Syosset had two state of the art movie theaters, the South Shore has Jones Beach and Fire Island, further east the Hamptons. The best of both.

Guaranteed the DLEGs hissing about how the Hamptons are filled with "nouveau riche trash" are mostly familiar with it as a result of reading about Lizzie Grubman and similar.

Which is like saying the UES is all about Anne Coulter types.

No r44 it's a lot of nouveau riche trash. I see it firsthand all the time.

I lived in Nassau years ago and I'm grateful to have gotten the fuck out such a pretentious, costly, bucket of trash in every color of the rainbow. The worst.

LOL R45

When you deliver the food?

Most of the wealth in America is new, Wall Street and tech fortunes.

The old Gilded Era wealth is gone.

There are tacky people in Hamptons and plenty who are not

Depends where you go.

To be successful on Long Island, being a sociopath isn't preferred. It's mandatory.

What about Kings Point? They were from there and also my neighbors in a midtown coop. Called them "Long Island shit" in the elevator and asked the wife another time if she took it up the ass.

No r47 when I go out there to stay.

CT is much nicer than Long Island. And the wealthier enclaves in CT aren't nearly as tacky.

[quote] No [R47] when I go out there to stay in my share house.

And the beautiful beaches everyone talks about has water that's brown and green. Check out Sunken Ghetto some time.

I don't own a house in the Hamptons, never will. I stay with friends. And YMF your privileged lifestyle comes mostly from your parents (do you own that house in the Hamptons?) so you're really not one to talk.

[quote] I stay with friends. At THEIR share house. Sometimes I even get a couch to sleep on rather than an air mattress on the floor.

Nice juvenile response, r55. I assure you, it's hardly accurate.

Most of the people under 30 who own homes have a parental cash cow, a trust fund, or a sugar daddy/mama. They've never earned a fucking thing for themselves, at least legitimately. The honest slobs have to work two and three jobs to afford the rape of a $2000 a month studio apartment rent. Totally not worth to live amidst the epitome of mediocrity.

As a Manhattanite with no skin in the suburban game, I've found that people in Westchester and CT are usually very conscious of status and class and what everyone else has. Whereas NJ and LI are a mix-- you get both super-tacky Sopranos/Trump types and people who are not into the whole who-has-what scene are are happy to fly under the radar. There's nothing tacky about towns like Cold Spring Harbor, LI or Chatham, NJ.

[quote] I assure you, it's hardly accurate. I ALWAYS get the couch. At my age I am NOT sleeping on an air mattress.

You can thank Long Island for a lot of things, Long Island Iced Tea, Ben & Jerry's, Snapple, Entenmanns, the Miracle Mop and this....

R58 Why the fuck are you bringing up Chatham? Are you another one of the morris county fraus who skulk about on the DL?

I grew up in Sea Cliff, a small town on the north shore of LI with lots of beautiful Victorian houses. It was super-artsy/hippie/bohemian when I was there in the 70s and 80s. A mad mix of types: academics, artists, advertising people, shrinks, etc. Many families had moved out there from NYC - including mine. My dad was an artist who was also a well-known art director, and some of his ad friends lived in Sea Cliff - so we followed from the west village.

I love Long Island. Yep, it's chock full o trash in many areas. But some of the more charmed enclaves give it a small, localized degree of class.

And not for nothing, but to be a young gay kid around all those crazy-sexy Italian boys nearby - holy fucking hell. I still jerk off to some of the memories.

R62 I completely agree about Sea Cliff. I loved it in the 90s.

I agree with the entirety of r32.

The vineyards, beaches, and farms of Eastern Long Island were a revelation to this PA native on a recent visit.

As for the food scene: I've asked foreign-born cabbies where to find the best restaurants featuring their native cuisine. The answers have so far been, to a man, somewhere in Queens.

And, r43, Syosset was frequently mentioned in MAD!

Oscar winner Natalie Portman, Judd Apatow, Idina Menzel and Adam Pascal (who did "RENT" together) grew up in Syosset.

What became the five boroughs of New York City in 1898, originally included today's Nassau County,

I feel sorry for anyone living in either NYC or Long Island unless they are incredibly wealthy.

It depends where you work and your tolerance for stress.

One out of 38 people in the USA lives in NYC. NYC has a larger population than 40 out of 50 states.

Manhattan has 1.6 million people, 4 percent or 65k voted for President Pampers. He even lost the Rep primary to Kasich.

I like being surrounded by sensible people.

BTW- Jersey Italians are WAY hotter than Lawn Guylanders and have excellent anal hygiene.

Long Island Italians haven't been hot since the early 90s. Many of them have relocated, died, or bred into other ethnicities. The millennial generation is basically a hodgepodge of Irish, German, Polish, some Hispanic, and even black among other things. They seem to have lost their pedigree. But they still retain their ATTITUDE.

[quote]R58 Why the fuck are you bringing up Chatham? Are you another one of the morris county fraus who skulk about on the DL?

Given he also said, "As a Manhattanite with no skin in the suburban game," he probably brought it up for the same reason he also brought up Cold Spring Harbor, LI

And let us add that for those who think LI is a gay friendly mecca, you'd better think again. There was, is, and always has been a silent redneck quality to many Long Islanders, especially farther east. There are silent white supremacists and a lot of internalized homophobia and discrimination in disguise. They're just a little more manipulative about it, because they have to work with you or require your services. They don't like you.

And whatever gay "community" remains on LI is as exclusive and imperious as the old Sachem Quality of Life. They might as well be a continent away from NYC. The place is the LaBrea tarpits.

Speaking into the phone, R34. God.

Sure you did, R49, sure you did.

I have to give points for Sea Cliff, and that was especially true for many years. Not so much now. But Sea Cliff was probably the closest LI ever came to a Greenwich Village-like community. Sag Harbor, too, at least through the 1960s and 70s. A lot of writers, poets, painters, and sculptors. Also a heavy lesbian community. That is, until bureaucrats took over like Grant took Richmond, reassessed the properties, hiked taxes to unthinkable proportions, and drove out any semblance of creativity and independent thought. They instead filled it with nouveau riche scum who instilled the attitude and separatism that characterizes most of the Godforsaken peninsula.

Peninsula, r75?

R76 LI is a peninsula, yes. Among other things. Google it.

It’s true. At first it was called Long Peninsula, but they had to change it because of the penis jokes.

Good point - real estate taxes in LI are insane. Not sure why anyone would buy there unless for schools. Otherwise you are better off in Queens or Brooklyn - RE taxes are 1/3 of LI.

Is this a NY envy thread?

Long Island is surrounded by water on all sides, but it is officially "a peninsula"

I see your Long Island, and raise you a Camarillo, California.

YourMillennialFriend is so charmless and insufferable.

Like the island from which he most likely resides.

So it’s not a peninsula peninsula.

My childhood home real estate taxes are now $14, 000 a year. Unbelievable.

I wonder how many LI haters here actually GREW UP on LI???

I did, and it was a GREAT place to live. And, it still is.

Most famous haunted house in the world.

I did, R87, and the only good thing about it was being 40 minutes from NYC on the LIRR. I’m not even going to say the beaches were good because they weren’t. The only beach that’s decent is Long Beach and it’s impossible to park there in the summer so we never went there.

You don't need to park in Long Beach - just take the train. It's easy.

R87 I grew up on LI and I'd like to know the town you're from and the criteria you have for "a great place to live." Unless you have a shitload of money, don't mind endless lights and lines, constructing your day around traffic patterns, crude, boorish, and entitled people, and the generosity of a pack of bandits, then I agree, it's a fine place to live. Some areas are visually appealing, and then other images come to mind, such as Hempstead, Uniondale, Medford, Brentwood, Yaphank, Massapequa, Hicksville, and I better stop before I throw up.

Sayville is lovely.

R90 you don’t take the train if you live on Long Island.

R91 you forgot Roosevelt. Hometown of Howard stern.

Nothing wrong with Massapequa. Jerry Seinfeld, The Baldwin boys, Steve Guttenberg, John Savage, Helen Slater, Brian Setzer of The Stray Cats, Tim Van Patten are all from Massapequa.

Thanks to the large Jewish and Italian population of Massapequa, locals call it Matzo-Pizza.

Well I will say one thing. The hate for Long Island has inspired some of the purplest prose I’ve read in awhile.

And I still contend...the Italian boys in the 70s and 80s were fucking studs. Jones Beach in July circa 1985 would have had you nellies spontaneously ejaculating,

R97 field 4?

What r83?! Long Island Railroad is one of the busiest train lines in the country.

Tons of people in LI take the train into the city.

R93*

One plus for LIRR over NJ Transit, you can drink alcohol as long as it's in a bag.

[quote] Aren't Queens and Brooklyn (boroughs of NYC) actually ON Long Island

Yes. And Long Island City is in Queens.

The Long Island Troll always tries to get people all riled up when it’s pointed out that Brooklyn & Queens are on Long Island. Because for some reason, he cares. He also wants people living on .Long Island to defend it, but they really don’t care. I’m pretty sure he just argues with himself.

I think Babylon is rather lovely. Their private town beaches are 👌🏻.

R97 Yes. The Italian boys of the 70s and 80s. Better known as guidos, which are now pretty much obsolete. The Latinos replaced them and are frankly much hotter. Much less selfish and more passionate in the sack.

Ireland or New Zealand?

Which is better? Which is worse? Where are the nicer people? Or are both going down the shitter?

The problem for both Long Island and NYC is that NYC ended up with a lot of Long Island overflow (who could afford it) and they brought a lot of their bourgeois, middle of the road tastes into Manhattan. Greenwich Village once had coffee houses. Now they have Starbuck's. NYC was once the city that never slept. Now the folk are tucked away in bed rather early and if an establishment stays open past 1am it's a rarity. Remember the all-night diners?

Unfortunately, very little of NYC's culture and sensibility has rubbed off on Long Island, though many would tend to disagree. I've actually heard people say that Patchogue is the new Greenwich Village. Patchogue!

Rodney Dangerfield, Geraldo Rivera, Butterfly McQueen, Captain Kangaroo- Bob Keeshan, and Midnight Express' Billy Hayes were from Babylon and Guglielmo Marconi sent the first trans- Atlantic wireless signal from there.

Long Island is filled with Captain Kangaroos.

R100 context! I was replying to the idiot who suggested one take the train to Long Beach. If you live on Long Island you don’t take the LIRR to Long Beach.

R103 oh yeah Babylon is so great if you want to kill a string of prostitutes and dump their bodies on the 👌🏻 private town beaches.

Son of Sam or Long Island Serial Killer?

Are these deplorable types of people still out there? This clip is from 2010. Scary.

Suffolk county is even worse than Nassau. Sure, nassau is filled with trashy, uneducated, provincial fraus but Suffolk has the same type of people PLUS tons of rednecks and white supremacists. Center Moriches and Mastic Beach have people driving quads down the street and active neo nazi cells.

No one has even touched on the one enclave worth escaping to for so many years, Fire Island. Cherry Grove, especially. This was the true Never Never Land for the gays, and to anyone who remembers its golden years, they are aghast to see what's it turned into: a literal sewer of the tackiest, most cloying heterosexuals, fraus, hen parties, stone-derek dykes, and drag queens up the wazoo. It's become a slopfest worse than Ocean Beach with price-gouging that would jar the eyeballs out of their sockets.

Any elder gay could never have imagined the day they'd see the stroller pushers complaining about actions in the Meat Rack, because they like to take their kiddies on Sunday strolls through the woods. As the elders are dying off and being forced to sell their summer homes, who's buying them up? The fraus and their fageleh husbands! They sound their voices, and guess what? The meat rack is a morgue. And the millenials are just too classy for sleeping with the oak trees. Final analysis: Another Point of Woods is coming down the pike, and within a generation, the gays will disappear entirely from one of the few places anywhere they could call their own. We don't need AIDS.

So far the Pines is still mostly men, but the cunts are multiplying there, too. And if you want attitude that's a vile mix of Long Island and New York City's worst, plan an outing there sometime. No pun intended. It'll give you a taste of both hells.

[Quote]The fraus and their fageleh husbands!

I love you for that alone, r114.

Gosh R109 is certainly riled up. Why not take the LIRR to Long Beach if you live on Long Island and it's convenient? You can drink and not have to worry about it.

I think R114 is overstated but, yeah, Cherry Grove has sure gone downhill lately in terms of nightlife. It's the same old drag queens doing the same old act over and over and over. Their audience are a bunch of mid-Island day-tripping fraus and their bored boyfriends. Once the last ferry of the night leaves, all the bars are EMPTY. The only really gay night is the Underwear party.

R117 And THAT would be more appealing if it were the space suit party!

Oh I dunno. I like to go and gross out all the Pines boys. They like visibly cringe when they see me. It's hysterical.

oh yah. that's the flip side. LI is rancid with these assholes with these types of cunts.

R116 have you ever taken the LIRR? It’s not like the New York City subway. The lines don’t all interconnect. You would have to take a westbound train to Jamaica, queens and wait for an eastbound Long Beach train and depending on where you’re coming from, that could take hours.

Long Island City.

Problem solved.

R121, you can do it if you live, say near the locust manor station and want to go to Island Park. Or, any of the lines that move forward without having to do a loop to Jamaica. But, yeah...otherwise it would not be worth it.

Actually, R121, i have taken the LIRR and take it once or twice a month. I said "if it's convenient." That is, if you live on the LB line. People from Port Jeff wouldn't really do that but others can.

Has all of this negativity affected the property value on Long Island?

[quote]Another Point of Woods

Point [bold]O'[/bold] Woods, dear.

[quote] Has all of this negativity affected the property value on Long Island?

Good lord, yes. Prices have bottomed out thanks to Datalounge. You can get a place in Montauk for $200,000 easily. Nassau County is about $100k for a 4 bedroom, 3 bath. Suffolk County has gone down to about $25k because its reputation has been trashed so badly.

Sayville comes off as gay friendly, trendy, quaint, and innovative. That's an overlay for an underlying redneck and highly prejudiced town. Eldergays coming off the ferry or frequenting the old Bunk House were not met with kindness by the locals. Many have stories to tell.

Everybody is quick to bash Long Island, and ironically, most of those people actually live there, and have no intention of leaving.

There are some exciting and legendary places on Long Island filled with history, culture, and social relevance.

I met people in college and later in work who grew up on Long Island, and 95% of them seemed wholesome with good family support. Whenever I visited, everything seemed nice enough.

This was upper middle class and rich people.

"Everybody is quick to bash Long Island, and ironically, most of those people actually live there, and have no intention of leaving."

Probably because nobody wants their homes. Remember, Long Island is where the suburbs, as we know them, were born in the postwar era. If their racist grandparents and parents did not "flee" the blacks and Puerto Ricans, they would have found those $10,000 homes they fled worth $1.5 million and above.

I bet it was real pretty in 1819.

It was indeed beautiful in 1919, which is long after when most of the preferred Brooklyn homes were built.

[quote] If their racist grandparents and parents did not "flee" the blacks and Puerto Ricans, they would have found those $10,000 homes they fled worth $1.5 million and above.

Not worth it.

And for all the kvetching, Long Island still remains one of the "desirable" places to live in the US. People can't love it or leave it. They love to hate it and continue to take shit from it, and hate themselves and others for doing so. That's the mystique of it.

Long Island hasn’t had a bad wildfire since 1995. So there’s that....

Best. Place. Ever. LI.

There's always Jersey City.

It;s shit like this that give LI a bad name.

The Martone family.

Good old Italo-Americans representing NY & NJ, as usual.

Who the fuck are the Martone family? On second thought, don't answer.

A great. Place. To Live. Well, take this, Guido: BEWARE OF: The Long Island CVS frauen with the confetti length paper boa of coupons who have no compunction in holding up a line 20 deep while they haggle and debate and bitch about what's included, the expiration date, or the 20% off on a $10 purchase when she spend $9.97.

The late night supermarket ilk. usually fat frauen, but sometimes the Weeble, Hippity Hop men, the mommy's basement boys, who do their shopping, 2 to 3 carts full of some of the most unhealthy, unenviable shit in creation, who will hold up the line (Stop n Shop is notorious for this) for 30+ minutes, sifting through their sloppy coupon cutouts, taking forever to bag their shit and maneuvering their overstuffed carts and fat asses through the slim aisle with the poor cashier already having thoughts of suicide. Godforbid you get stuck behind them as they're lumbering out the door, and the automatic door happens to not work!

Fried chicken cutlets in any deli or supermarket virtually anywhere on Long Island. No one knows how to make these correctly. No one, no where. They are the most disgusting you will ever find anywhere. Way too thick, too chewy, either overcooked or undercooked, defrosted from months of deep freezing, microwaved, refrozen, and microwaved again, irradiated repeatedly until each and everyone of these roadkill specialties is sold to the gullible and no-taste public. Nothing is ever thrown away. Ted Allen and Martha Stewart should make a surprise visit to some of these places and sample some of what these greed monging, white-collar criminals purvey onto the unquestioning and brain-dead customer. You might as well be eating dead flesh deep fried in lard and oversaturated floury bread bread crumbs that would make you choke and break apart like coffee cake. Not an Italian grandma's cooking and don't even get me started on the meatballs. If an illegal immigrant is doing the cooking, that's your cue. Run!

Long Island. The only place where someone earning $200.000 complains (quite truthfully) that it isn't enough. A great. Place. To Live.

Get those cataracts checked, Helen.

^I'll have what she's having. LOL

R143 $200,000 a year not enough. How true. And how sad.

Plenty of size meat out there!

R146 That doesn't pay the bills, Louise. unless you're a ho.

Also, build your life around traffic patterns. Stay off the roads between 3pm and 7pm, especially if you're travelling south to north, or vice versa. West to East is just as much hell.

R143, you write about LI as if all it is is a supermarket and a place to buy fried chicken cutlets(Yuck). Sad.

Great place to be raised, to be lived.

Long Island, if you can't make it there, you can't make it anywhere.

To be raised. To be lived. You must have received your education in English from one of those "blue ribbon" school districts.

Long Island was paradise to me.

R149 R150 You reek of under 30, and you typify the naivete and distorted thinking that defines most of this region. When a median salary of $250,000 a year is needed to sustain a basic, middle-class lifestyle, don't even begin to preach that it's a great place to live. For corrupt business owners, politicians, drug lords, and overgrown frat boys, maybe. Not for the working class people that built this fucking shit hole from the bottom up and keep its flatulence roaring and stinking. It's people trying to survive, and perhaps, that's the reason they're so fucking miserable so much of the time. Check in in 10 years. If you're still here.

R153, yes I am under 30. I was raised on LI and it was the BEST place to live. And, all of my friends love it too. I live in NYC right now as a student-and I will probably remain here but I will ALWAYS visit my family on LI, and I always feel great and at home as soon as the LIRR pulls into my station. Sorry, but its a GREAT place.

What town do you live in?

I was raised in Kings Point.

Grew up on the north shore in a harbor town in Suffolk. There were five beaches within ten minutes. Loved it. What I remember most (in the 60s) were the cars. Fabulous masterpieces of sheet metal and chrome.

I get the feeling the haters are not from LI and have never been.

R158 Seriously. Share 5 positive things about Long Island and its people. What do you think makes Long Island great?

Poor Manhattan got lost in this thread.

I only visited my college friends out there. I loved the ocean beaches but none of them seemed easy access as they are on the barrier islands and there aren't many bridges. Takes a while to drive way out there from one's suburban town on the Island proper.

Huh? What beaches are you taking about, it's an island, the whole place surround by water.

Yeah we had to drive over those highways and bridges to get to the beaches. 10 minutes? No way! No coastal Atlantic beaches until the Hamptons. Or if you have a house somewhere actually on Fire Island.

North Shore and Connecticut have lots of tiny pleasant beaches on the Sound.

"Not for the working class people that built this fucking shit hole from the bottom up and keep its flatulence roaring and stinking."

Wellll, hate to disrupt another one of your bilious rants - but those poor working class people you seem so concerned about? The ones who "built this fucking shit hole from the bottom up"...??? Many of them ended up stinking rich. The contractors, the landscapers and restaurant owners, the construction folk, master electricians and plumbers, the firemen and the cops. They either owned profitable businesses or were able to get in on the ground floor of buying real estate via their pretty generous city salaries. Oh maybe it was the teachers you were referring to? Many of them from back in the day retired literal millionaires from healthy pensions, union brokered investment accounts and again, real estate that was at the time easy to buy.

I actually agree with much of your rage speech. 75% of LI is the prolapsed anus of the east coast. But I'm a snob who grew up on the north shore - and I also love it when my train pulls into Sea Cliff, and my aged mother is there waving to me in her equally aged diesel Mercedes, ready to whisk me back home to our lovely yet ramshackle Victorian house. I love the old yacht club daddies and the Irish taverns and Fire Island (where my parents met in the 60s) - and the Italian food and the Long Island Sound at dusk during the summer. I love the north fork and the vineyards and the old blue blood women in their luxury jalopies and the estates of Lattigntown and the hands down best Chinese food ever of Hunan Taste in Greenvale, with its parking lot full of Maseratis and Porsches. And I REALLY love St Roccos Feast and the stink of zeppole grease and powdered sugar, offset by the aroma of sausage and peppers.

But that's just me.

Yeah, it was 10 minutes if you were on the South Shore. But Long Island is long, not wide, you get across it in 15 minutes. Gosh watching that video I could smell the salt water.

[quote] Poor Manhattan got lost in this thread.

Back on track.

I grew up on the south shore. We could just walk to the beach on the bay. Or take the ferry to fire island. Or drive to Dune Road in Westhampton. Or drive to Montauk for ice cream and the lighthouse. Or go to the Sound on the North Shore. When we went to the beach on the Sound we had to wear our cheap sneakers, not our good ones, because the water was so rocky we had to have shoes on. Flip flops weren’t good in the water, we’d always lose one while swimming.

My mother had a really bad case of arachnophobia. She would scream and run and practically knock people down to get away from a spider. It was embarrassing. One day we went to the Sound and were enjoying a nice day when all of a sudden, all of these things came out of the water and were scurrying up the sand. They were hermit crabs, as far as the eye could see. I’ll never forget the terror on my mother’s face and her scream. My cousins and I laughed so hard we pulled muscles in our abdomens.

R159:

The beaches. Long Beach and basically any of the beaches are great.

The schools. While I was home schooled, a lot of my friends that went to PS loved it. The LI schools are known to be good.

Beauty. Most of the neighborhoods are tree lined and well taken care of, people take pride in their homes.

Transit. Wanna go to the city? Hop on the LIRR. You are there within an hour. Buses can take you there too. Will just take longer.

Beautiful parks. Like, everywhere.

Beautiful hiking trails.

GREAT restaurants, great food.

Wanna go to a farm? Well, you can and they are great. Pick your own produce.

Jones Beach concerts--and a LOT of other free concerts on the grass in different areas.

There are so many reasons why I LOVE LI. It is fantastic, really. Where else can you live that offers everything AND a short trip to the greatest city in the world?

wait wait! one other reason to love Long Island: the beefy firemen who play volleyball on Long Beach in the summertime.

MMMMMMMmmmmomma likey!!!

Good restaurants? Good food? You have to got to be kidding! One of the biggest declines of LI is the quality of the food. As posted earlier in that food diatribe, LI used to be chock full of unique delis and coffee shops that offered some of the best simple things anywhere. Great homecooked burgers, fresh cold cuts in delis, fantastic sandwiches. There were mom and pop Italian restaurants that gave authentic, home cooked Italian cuisine. My aunt ran a small Italian restaurant for years that had a great following. She would never make meatballs with frozen meat. They would always be made with fresh beef, pork, and veal purchased the same the day. Anything unused would get discarded. Today more than half the restaurants get their frozen billiard ball supply from Costco and Restaurant Depot, thaw them out, throw them in a pot of Ragu, spill them over boxed pasta, and charge you a fortune. Find me a restaurant that makes fresh pasta, homemade, daily. We have the highest electric rates in the nation, beaches with water that's brown and green, and full of biohazardous waste and contaminated marine life. (Most of these people praising the beaches obviously haven't traveled); a total rape of the environment to make way for more gas stations, supermarkets, CVSes, Starbuck's, and 7-Elevens, which is the language most Long Islanders speak and understand. Let's not even get started on what's happened to the once thriving gay nightlife on LI. That, tragically, speaks for itself.

DINERS! Nothing beats a late night diner burger, fries and bowl of colelaw like the Nautilus in Massapequa. Tia Leoni's show "Madam Secretary" filmed there.

R171, that is a subjective element that one can either dispute or not. I disagree with you, completely.

By the way, R171..."gay nightlife" is really not a thing anywhere. Theres a few in the E.Village and WVilage. But, not impressive. I don't hang in them nor do my gay friends. So, not sure what you are referring to, really.

[quote] Find me a restaurant that makes fresh pasta, homemade, daily

I don’t like fresh homemade pasta

Always remember Robert Moses lowered the bridges over the highways going into Jones Beach in order to insure the buses (then filled with "coloreds", to use the vile parlance of the day) would not be able to access to the beach filled with the families of those posting here, defending Long island.

^Thanks for the history lesson. More recently, Duke University denied access for a light rail system that went through part of the campus for the same reason. The excuses they gave are laughable. This was pure racism.

so what re Robert Moses? what does that have to do with the individual experiences of the people posting here? or the totality of Long Island in general? there are racist assholes everywhere. I was told "die faggot" in the west village last month. does that mean it's a hotbed of intolerance and bigotry?

I really wanna know where R169 is from. It doesn’t sound like anywhere in central Nassau County. If you’re a snob from the North Shore, get fucked.

What parks are beautiful? Where are these hiking trails? What’s so great about Jones Beach concerts? The traffic getting in/out of there?

Not all of Long Island is a shithole, but a lot of it is.

I am sorry about that, but R178 the West Village has not been gay in 20+ years.

The appeal of Long Island all those decades ago WAS the fact that they could flee New York and the "minorities" for the all-white suburbs. The policy of Robert Moses, enacted in architecture, was not a secret - it was almost a selling point!

My family has lived on LI since the 1640s. We didn’t have anything to do with icky Robert Moses. We were quakers who settled in some seaside and farming areas and got along fine with the local tribes, when they were actual Native Americans.

[quote]What’s so great about Jones Beach concerts?

You're kidding right? A gorgeous summer night on the water with cool salt water breezes? Never had a bad time here.

You never said where you’re from R182

15 minutes away R183

Still wanna know where you can hike on the south shore

^Look at a fucking map.

Robert Moses was responsible for hideous beach areas like Sunken Meadow. His low-slung buildings looked like prisons with no trees or attractive touches. We decided to go camping at one on the south shore (forget the name) and it was just a flat space separated by shrubs. Turned out to be a homeless mecca. There was a woman with kids who lived in a tent in the next site (six feet away) who entertained men all night. Going past a campsite to get water, I was called a faggot, as in "wanna suck my dick faggot?" I kept walking, faster. The next morning we went down to the beach just in time to get caught up in a baptist revival. It was totally surreal and sad.

Oh my God a Robert Moses troll. Gotta love DL!

We have a Robert Moses Troll.

Tell us about the bridges, trol

Tell us about the Bronx!

Tell us about the beaches, the state parks.

Tell us about the Southern State Parkway

Tell us about the Northern State Parkway!

Tell us about the causeway.

Put down the bong and pick up a book.

Fire Island has some of the most gorgeous beaches imaginable. Yet some retard is hung up on Robert Moses.

R176,

Buses go to Jones Beach all the time. I used to take the shuttle bus from the LIRR to the East bathhouse several times a summer.

Sure. And there are buses that will take you to LIRR stations. Take the bus, then the train, get off in Freeport & there’s a shuttle every half hour to Jones Beach.

I prefer Manhattan, but live on Long Island (oh well - happy wife, happy life)

Long Island really is cut off from the rest of the country. The geographic distance doesn’t seem long, but driving to, through and out of the city turns 30 miles into three hours.

If you want to drive to Long Beach in the summer, park in the LIRR parking lot and then take a local bus east or west so you don’t crowd the same block of the beach. Long Beach also has the best surfing on the East coast and hosts Long Island Pride.

And I don’t get the hate about Long Island restaurants. Southern Italian food is better than in Manhattan and there are a ton of immigrants so good Peruvian, Colombian, Chinese etc. It is nothing like the dreck of flyover land.

The accents are grating.

[quote]Still wanna know where you can hike on the south shore

Nassau-Suffolk Greenbelt Trail Merrick Rd, Massapequa, NY 11758

Gardiner County Park in West Bay Shore, New York

Southards Pond Park, Babylon, NY

Lol, I am proud to be a Robert Moses troll and how amusing to see racist Robert Moses defended here!

We arguably would not have Trump if Robert Moses did not come first. Trump was not the first public official to call someone "scum" - Robert Moses labeled the Puerto Ricans scum decades ago and even insured the water temperature was lower in the Harlem Public pool he constructed (he firmly believed "Negros" did not like to swim in colder water.

One cannot talk about Long Island without discussing the impact of Robert Moses which lasts to today. Read just this one article - I could attach many but won't, since your capabilities seem limited, at best. So nobody is a "retard" for being hung up" on Robert Moses, (such a wordsmith you have become, r191, the racists from whom you descend must be so proud!)

Interesting how this has morphed into a Robert Moses retrospective. But needless to say, Long Island has always had a homophobic and racist underlay, which continues to this very day, perhaps, worsened by the increasing presence of minorities.

Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island

Lots of kayaking along the Peconic bays

Boats leave from Montauk foe whale watching

Vineyard tours

Ale Trail

There are whiskey fests and distillery tours

Kayak, canoe & paddle boarding in Carmens River

Filmed at actual old toll booths on the The Jones Beach Causeway to the beach.

Sands Point preserve

Bayard Cutting Arboretum

The Pink Mansion, home of the romance novelist Mary Fisher (played by Streep) was real and pink and the home of Nadia de Navarro Farber, a Bulgarian-born countess. Located in Belle Terre it overlooked the Long Island Sound but since demolished.

And scores of farms for strawberry picking, apple picking, pumpkin picking, farmstands with organic fruits, vegetables, pies, salsas, preserves from local growers. Farmers markets in villages, too.

The Long island Chamber of Commerce has invaded DL! Sound the trumpets! Regardless, I'd take Manhattan over LI any day of the week!

In "Jaws" the novel, the story is set in Amity, a seaside resort town on Long Island, New York. Quint was largely based on shark hunter Frank Mundus, who began shark fishing in 1951 off Montauk.

[quote]The Long island Chamber of Commerce has invaded DL! Sound the trumpets! Regardless, I'd take Manhattan over LI any day of the week!

Darling, living on LI you get the best of both worlds.

I take the Hampton jitney’s ambassador class into the city. It’s about 2 hours to the midtown tunnel. It used to make stops up to E. 86th St, but they cut that stop out

Can the LI Hiking troll upthread fucking stop? Stop suggesting things that are far out in Suffolk county as if that's available to the majority of the miserable pieces of shit in Nassau County.

Heckscher Park is lovely, as is Sayville. If you can afford it and find a nice little community and plan your tiny cramped life around traffic, Long Island is lovely. I did it for 10 years.

Then I got the hell out and saved a bundle in property taxes and grift and just going about life without it being such a damn headache every freaking day.

If money and beaches aren't a factor, choose NYC. If you want more than one big park, choose LI.

I'm from CT and Long Islanders were always thought of as trash.

Sands Point Preserve is in Nassau county I think as is Muttontown Preserve.

[quote]I'm from CT and Long Islanders were always thought of as trash.

Well, that was just jealousy because Connecticut was famous for well, nothing.

It's a nice place to live, r218.

Fairfield County eats balls. Their beaches are...not beaches. Non event pebbly bullshit.

Nutmeggers go to RI for the beaches.

Houston or Pasadena?

Which is better? Which is worse? Where are the nicer people? Or are both going down the shitter?

R221 does Rhode Island even have real beaches?

R216 that is hysterical. Even those over in Hartford?

I live on Long Island and I love it when I ask google to find me a good restaurant within 10 miles and locations in CT show up because it's just seven miles across Long Island Sound from me but about five hours driving time.

Sagamore Hill

^^^^^

Nassau County

[quote]that is hysterical. Even those over in Hartford?

Nobody counts the residents of Hartford, New Haven or Bridgeport when talking about "Connecticut."

Top 10 Movies Filmed on Long Island

Oheka castle, now a hotel was where Mark Feuerstein & Paulo Costanzo's characters lived in "Royal Pains", Cameron Diaz & Ashton Kutcher filmed "What Happens in Vegas" and Nicole Kidman filmed scenes from "The Others"

More famous Long Islanders on 20/20 tonight.

That whole Amy Fisher/Joey Buttafuoco saga in the early 90s was a huge national news story. It was really the first time that the rest of America saw the trashy, tacky side of Long Island. People were shocked at how low-class and vulgar it all was.

The early 90s were the heyday of chat shows. Phil Donahue, Oprah, Sally Jesse Raphael, Jenny Jones, Rikki Lake, Maury Povitch, Jerry Springer, Morton Downey Jr, Richard Bey, Bill Boggs. That’s why the Buttafuoci story exploded. There was a point when there were too many of these shows on TV & they needed to fill up airtime, so a story like the Buttafuoco story was gold for every show.

Most of those shows disappeared when CNN put Jerry Falwell on their network an expert religious commentator. . There was so much outrage and buzz that CNN (and other cable news networks) realized they got far more attention from having verbal gladiators on the air than for reporting news. Since they were 24/7, people tuned in to cable news for updates on outrageous stories rather than wait to watch it the next day on Sally Jesse.

Cable news turning into garbage put tabloid talk shows out of business.

Jessica Hahn from Massapequa, was raped by televangelist Jim Bakker and helped bring down the PTL Ministry.

I was born, grew-up, married, and 72-years later still live in Garden City.

Famous Massapequans Tonight on ABC at 10:00 Eastern

ALRT ------ "Growing Up Buttafuoco" airs from 9:00-11:00 Eastern.

Buttafuocos were a Suffolk county marriage of a tough, cut-your-face-off NY Irish American woman & schmaltzy man-baby NY Sicilian American. Amy Fisher was the screwed up, oversexed Jewish girl who knew more than she should know at her age & had a thing for married men. All 3 were walking stereotypes.

How about an $8,400 a month retirement apartment....

I trust and assume we're mostly gay men on this site. With that in mind, how can anyone begin to compare New York City with Long Island?! What could possibly be left on Long Island for a gay man? No nightlife whatsoever, no gay community, arts and entertainment that's laughable. Traipse through Patchogue some Saturday night.

Keep the green water beaches, the tick-infested hiking trails, the caboose-assed fraus and their Nellie husbands. I'm one of the few in my mid 50s who retired from my previous position, sold my strangulating, overtaxed house, and relocated in Stuyvesant town in the east 20s. I've never looked back. I have a fantastic new position, a great one bedroom with a view, and the hub of culture, arts, business, diversity, and opportunity right at my fingertips. And I could finally get rid of the goddamned car and walk to work.

This is not to say the city is without its problems, but for those who want a world outside their living room, there's no better place on earth to be. For those who live life in and for their living room, LI is your place.

Long Island guidos are hawt!

So glad I don't know you R240 You sound insufferable.

I like beaches. Fire Island is on LI.

R242 Not insufferable at all, I'm stating a fact and a personal preference. I assume you're from Long Island, and obviously, in defense of it. But without getting into an altercation, can you state to me 5 advantages a gay male has to living on Long Island? Are you honestly going to compare (favorably) the cultural, artistic, corporate, and historic infrastructure of Long Island to New York City? No. Because you can't, and if you did, you'd be lying.

A common poison that permeates many Long Island residents is denial. The single greatest shortcoming of most of the people living there is their nearly total inability to even acknowledge a problem, let alone taking measures to address it. Unfortunately, your statements suggest you fall into that category.

And it's my personal preference NOT to live in NYC

If you live in Stuyvesant Town, you have no right to brag. That place is a dressed up housing project.

[quote]can you state to me 5 advantages a gay male has to living on Long Island? Are you honestly going to compare (favorably) the cultural, artistic, corporate, and historic infrastructure of Long Island to New York City? No. Because you can't, and if you did, you'd be lying.

What advantages? Gay bars? Don't drink, been there done that and they are all dying now anyway. Grew up on LI and had the city 30 minutes away, all the culture I could ever hope for and most definitely took advantage of it. I moved to the city for years with the daily late subways with the fares constantly increasing, the double the price of food, everything cost more because the delivery trucks have to bridge or tunnel it in. I like a driveway instead of circling the block for a half hour, spent summer days in Central Park, I like a back yard better. The city is there when I want it.

[quote] Keep the green water beaches, the tick-infested hiking trails, the caboose-assed fraus and their Nellie husbands. I'm one of the few in my mid 50s who retired from my previous position, sold my strangulating, overtaxed house, and relocated in Stuyvesant town in the east 20s. I've never looked back. I have a fantastic new position, a great one bedroom with a view, and the hub of culture, arts, business, diversity, and opportunity right at my fingertips. And I could finally get rid of the goddamned car and walk to work.

So happy for you, R240. You're right in many ways. Give yourself a Metro Card, and the world's your oyster. Get out of the city, however, every once in a blue moon. If you enjoy beaches, nothing beats those of the Hamptons or Montauk. I grew up in the city...Brooklyn to be exact (which is the western tip of Long Island). I've lived in London. I do miss what cities have to offer in the way of cultural diversity and attractions, plus their easy availability thanks to public transportation and walking distance. I live in New Jersey now, and I've come to appreciate other aspects of life outside the city. One is the quiet at night.

R246 A housing project? A housing project you likely couldn't afford!

[quote]Cream of the Crop at the Top of the Heap

Just don't be "A-Number One."

I retired and my total income now is only $3400/mo. I could NEVER afford NYC even if I wanted to. Can barely afford LI. But . . . I like the little towns dotting the North Shore out here. I've never had a lot of friends but I'm not really lonely, only a little bored once in a while. Never was a culture vulture though I definitely LOVED the electricity in the City when I was younger. You felt it as soon as you came in through the Midtown Tunnel or the LIRR. I have generous friends I can stay with whenever I want. On my income, my place is (really) small but it's an accessory apt in the woods with friends who are gone half the year (so no utilities or TV or WiFi to pay). You do have to get used to driving more out here and not having everything at your fingertips, but I really feel like I have the best of both worlds with welcoming friends in the city and the quiet beauty of the Island.