new york city (13)
Hello visitor.
I'm tagging this post as "life" because I do plan to move to NYC at some point in the near future. NYC is very hip. Residents of the city are intense and passionate, if a bit jaded. They are also very resourceful; you have to be a bit resourceful if you want to live in one of the highest cost of living cities in the world. I have a very limited knowledge of NYC and have only been there like, 4 times (I should go more often), but I have a general understanding of the culture, stereotypes, and area of the city.
My experience of New York so far is literally all Manhattan. I've never been to Brooklyn or Queens in my life. My dad calls these areas "bad", which perplexes me, because Google says they're very large areas that have many good and bad parts. Brooklyn itself is about as large as Philadelphia, so there's no way it's all bad. Anyways, I've also been to Staten Island. An incredibly boring place, in my opinion. It's the rural NJ part of NY. I don't even know if people there do fun stuff. I've only visited relatives there, though, so maybe their residential area is just tame compared to the rest.
Pictured: Some church or cathedral something in Manhattan, a block away from St. Patrick's Cathedral.
I know that rent in New York is extremely high. I'm looking at the NY housing facebook group right now, and it seems to start around $1,600 for a room with roommates. That's about 2-2.5x what you would pay in New Brunswick, NJ; totally worth it, though, because New Brunswick is super lame compared to NY.
Thus, to move to New York City, I can't really live off my parents anymore. I'm gonna have to get a real grown up job. This is a bit of a rough area of my life right now; I'm going into junior year of college with no experience, resume, or internship. I'm fairly confident that things will work out, but I am also aware that I won't be living a wealthy life anytime soon, which is why I've been straying away from materialism. I think I would be content with having roommates for a while until I can get my own place, so no sweat. You can supposedly afford a $1,500 room making $50,000 per year. I think I can make that much fairly soon. It can't be that hard; 1.66 million Manhattan residents make it work.
The food, shopping, art, and cultural scene in New York is completely unmatched in any other part of the east coast I've seen. I went to NYC yesterday with a friend to eat at Semma NYC, my first Michelin Star restaurant. I went into it knowing that I kind of dislike fine dining; I'd heard that Semma was a bit more down to earth, though. We went to MoMa first. Seeing the incredibly famous Starry Night was crazy. They had a bunch of other really cool pieces too. MoMa is a very nice place, and I think I'd buy a membership if I lived in NYC and could afford it. They also had a pretty cool design store.
Pictured: The crowd in front of Starry Night.
Semma was OK. The dosa was awesome, but my friend has tried other gunpowder dosa (I have not) and he says it's similar. The lamb chops were also the best I've had, and the dumpling appetizer was pretty good. Unfortunately, we just had to ruin the meal by ordering the Kanyakumari Nandu Masala. This beastly food item has an entire Dungeness crab inside it. They give you some tools straight out of Dexter to cut this thing open and eat the moderate amount of meat inside it. The meat is good, but it's so embarassing to wear gloves and use tools to eat your meal. I honestly knew it would be this way before pre-ordering the crab. They said not to miss it, so I gave in, but it really was the lowlight of the meal.
Pictured: Plastic single-use gloves, an industrial cutter of some sort, and a small pick given to each guest for the crab. I thought this was comical enough for me to snap a picture.
I don't think I'm the fine dining type at all. I'd much rather go to Chinatown and grab a $7 meal; I'll probably do that today. I'm actually going back to NYC today to buy clothes and see The Odyssey in 70mm IMAX. I'll probably spend an hour or two just walking around and seeing what the rest of the city is like. Maybe I'll visit Brooklyn and try SEY Coffee, supposedly a world-class coffee shop. See you!
Goodbye,
Ayaan