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Comment by staticassertion | Hacker News Reader

Growing up in NYC I walked home alone, took the subway to meet friends, walked around all of manhattan a million times, etc. Most of that started around age 13-14, and as a preteen I would have my slightly older sister along with me.

At 15 I started to bike everywhere. I took my bike to the Hudson river path and I could get anywhere I wanted in 10-20 minutes - visiting a friend who lived downtown, or head up to Central Park to meet up and bike around with others, try out some diners uptown, etc.

At 16 my friends and I would walk around the east side, walking for miles in the middle of the night.

I don't think it was negligent at all, but I felt extremely independent because I could get anywhere as a kid without needing a car. I've always found that growing up in a city that felt safe and had great public transportation made me extremely independent at an early age.

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For even more context to this: when you're a child in NYC, the public school system gives you a free MetroCard as soon as you start elementary school. They're meant to be for commuting, but they have a small enough eligibility radius and extra rides to make them generally useful. Once I got one (I was maybe 8 or 9) I was more or less independent, as were all of my childhood friends.

This is in stark contrast to people I befriended in college, who were (1) largely reliant on their parents for socialization and exploration until they were old enough to drive, and (2) incapable of handling the general mishegass that happens in urban environments without me as their tour guide. This doesn't make them bad people or dependent in some profoundly handicapping way; it just goes to show that a frontiersman's notion of "independence" is perhaps not the most interesting one in 2020.

Oh hell yeah. Those cards were like little slices of plastic magic. Every once in a while someone would lose one, or claim to lose it, and you could snag the extra and get yourself anywhere from an extra 3 to 6 rides, and with free transfers that basically meant you could be anywhere any time for free.

I went to school upstate and it was impossible to get around without a car. Everyone was totally reliant on them, and I guess as kids you were always beholden to whoever was licensed/ had a car. To me that's insane, we could get anywhere for free, whenever.

Yep! I seem to recall the MetroCards claiming to only have three daily rides on them, but actually working at least four or five times (presumably as a margin of error/safety for lost kids). I used mine more than once to ditch school and take the D out to Coney Island :-)

Two of my kids got to see the before/after of this sort of thing when we took them to Berlin for a semester (I was guest lecturing at the TU). Since they had to take the S/U-Bahn to get to school, we got them monthly passes that let them go anywhere, anytime "for free". For a 14 and 17 year old, I think it seemed like heaven. The older one would go to nightclubs and come home at 03:00 and we weren't worried about drunk driving etc. The younger one could explore the whole city (hello, Dolores Burritos!) with her friends, or go to Idea to get art supplies, without us.

Getting back to Philadelphia where everything collapsed back to "Dad, can you drive me to ..." was depressing for everyone I think.

A curious word I'd never heard before:

meshugaas - noun (slang): Crazy or senseless activity and behavior

What advice do you have for raising a kid in a city in this day and age? My biggest concern is all the addicts in my city. Some 60k live on the street, certainly many are working and are invisible, but the most visible of the unhoused are certainly concerning and have put myself on edge a few times riding pubic transportation, being personally accosted, watching fights break out over nothing due to someone being mentally unstable making eye contact with another person, seeing knives pulled on the train and being trapped in the car until the next station. I worry that if I let my child out and about unsupervised like this that they would be targeted as an easy mark for what little they happen to carry on them by desperate people looking to feed their addiction, because I know adults who've experienced this simply due to appearing vulnerable and alone. The kids I do see on public transit and on the sidewalk are typically shuttled around by their grandparents, or in a pack with a half dozen other kids. Maybe I'll teach them to use my skateboard so they'd at least have a blunt object like I do when I am out and about by myself on transit.

I don't know if I trust SF or LA if those are the cities you're talking about. NYC has been a much safer city in comparison since the start.

I don't know about your city, so it depends. I wouldn't feel the same way I did in SF, for example.

In NYC you learn quickly what's safe and what's not. I was taught that, at a very early age. You learn how to spot the difference between someone who's homeless and someone who's dangerous. You learn to be aware of your surroundings, you learn to duck into places like shops if you think someone is following you, etc.

It sounds awful listing it out like that, but those were just what we learned growing up. It was just how we took care of ourselves.

Same. I bicycled around my neighborhood with friends when I was I think 10 without any real oversight. I'm guessing some adults kept watch either outside or from windows when we played on our block but we could roam further out on our own.

Yeah, but you had to grow up in a constant cloud of pee smell .

It amazes me how much this doesn't seem to bother people. New York smells like pee. Everywhere. I've only been a few times, but it has always smelled like pee. I don't feel like "all three times I went, everywhere smelled like pee" really deserves anymore chances when no other place I have ever visited or lived has ever smelled like pee, with the exception of a dirty horse barn. Is all of New York a dirty horse barn?

Maybe New Yorkers just like it? I mean, it has to be that. Because nothing in New York is all that great, such that you'd put up with the constant smell of pee.

Certainly not the pizza.

I'll have you know that Central Park smells like manure, not pee. The rest of the city smells like hot trash, but only in the summer ;)

Joking aside: NYC has a lot of smells, but human urine isn't actually one I pick up all that often (except for sometimes in the subway). As for why anybody would live here: it's one (maybe the most important) of the world's cultural nexuses, as well as the most thoroughly developed urban environment in the United States. Those are sufficient draws for many people.

I mean there are a billion reasons to live there, and I don't even live there anymore. Amazing museums, public transportations, entertainment, restaurants, and parks are some of the universal ones. If you're lucky enough to be well off you then gain access to some other amazing things, such as some top tier private schools.

Last time I hung out in Chelsea I was surprised at how tolerant the residents were of the trash stacked on the street in the heat of the summer. I was staying at a small “normal” place that I’m sure was a least 2 million dollars, and it was, just odd how this amount of trash everywhere was normal.

Still love to visit NYC though.

It's absurd how they tolerate that and pay the highest rent in the country for the privilege of having a swarm of rats scatter when they walk past the trash heap at night. No other city in the country just leaves waste in a pile unprotected on the side of the road like NYC. I don't understand why they don't at least have a god damn huge bin like any other first world city if it's going to be a pile of trash anyway on the sidewalk day in day out. It's downright medieval and I don't understand how it isn't a public health crisis having so many rats so close to eating and living.

Part of the problem is that Manhattan at least basically doesn't have alleys. BTW, if you think things are bad now, don't do any time traveling back to the 1970s/80s.

I don't have an alley where I live in LA, but we have bins at least

> it's one (maybe the most important) of the world's cultural nexuses

How does that translate into everyday living for people who don't have a job in culture creation (media, fashion etc.)?

For me: it means access to museums, performing arts, and just about any food I could ever want to try.

I don't know what to tell you lol it doesn't actually smell like pee. I lived there for over 20 years. Also NYC has amazing pizza, it sounds like you might just have really bad opinions.

See, I think this is just what New Yorkers tell the rest of the world to trick us into thinking New York is so great.

Like, Broadway. That's a big, inside joke, right?

Depending on how much energy you’re willing to invest in exploring and what your preferences are, it might take you a while to find the slice of NYC that’s appealing to you. Everyone’s different, but NYC definitely has something for everyone.

I’ve lived in NYC for almost seven years, and I’m just starting to feel comfortable. Not because I’ve changed too much, but because I now know what I like, what I don’t like, and how to seek out the former and avoid the latter.

It helps if you have friends who have already lived there for a long time, and who have similar interests, they’ll be able to short circuit you. Otherwise I’d recommend knowing yourself and researching, in that order.

The places that are most well known are the places with the biggest marketing budgets. (you mentioned Broadway). Most New Yorkers avoid those like the plague, fwiw. They’re built for people for whom money is not limiting factor to hedonism.

It didn't take my 7 years to feel comfortable in DC and DC doesn't constantly smell like pee.

That's valid, but of course everyone is different. It took me a while. Others get lucky and feel comfortable right away.

I wasn't meaning to imply that most people take as long as I do.

DC and NYC are geared towards different people, and that's OK. pg has written nice food for thought on this topic. http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html

Good pizza, but if there is a bar in walking distance you will be smelling pee. All my visits come with that ripe smell. I get that in DTLA too. It's just what happens when you have people drinking and no public restroom infrastructure to speak of. Maybe you are noseblind, or it's been a few since you've been on the bar scene in manhattan, but the piss smell is very real especially during hot summer nights.

I mean, if you walk around you will maybe smell pee sometimes? But saying the city "smells like pee" kind of implies that it's pervasive, contrasted with "outside of bars, at night, you might spell pee" (something I've never experience by the way).

NYC smells bad and the trash situation in Manhattan is straight out of the middle ages. That being said, I found New Orleans to have far worse smells. Something about how they do their trash there is even more degenerate than Manhattan. Imagine a little 5x5 alcove cut into the wall with a dumpster full of fried fish grease that hasn't been hosed out since Katrina. It was brutal. The entire city is a health code violation in any state but Louisiana. It straight up made me lightheaded sometimes in the french quarter, just putrid rank smells permeating the humid air with no breeze pushing it anywhere.

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