What do you think differentiates New York City from

[RZ1029]

That's pretty interesting granny, thanks for sharing that. I have a slightly different take on it, though, being a southerner who spent some time in the Big Apple.

 

I saw some of the richest and poorest neighborhoods I have ever seen, and that's saying something since I come from the land of the trailer parks.

 

The thing that floored me was the cultural diversity, and how well everything just coexisted. In my home town, we had THREE restaurants that weren't your basic steak house or burger joint. Two were Japanese restraunts owned and run by third(?) generation Japanese-Americans. The third was a Mexican restaurant owned by probably the only Hispanic family within ten miles. I visit New York and there's block after block of culture, from the Middle-East to the Far-East to Europe and Central/Southern America. I could eat lunch in Italy, breakfast in McDonalds (international ftw?) and then catch dinner in China or India.

 

While the food was amazing, the culture was what impressed me the most. They didn't just bring their cooking, they brought their dreams, their story, their world, or at least part of it, with them. I remember one man who told me about his trip to America from India... almost thirty years ago, now, over some rice and a drink.

 

But to answer the question, I think the thing that makes New York different is that it is what America as a whole claims to be. They say we're the 'Great American Melting Pot', but where I come from, there's no melting. There was an African-American community a ways west of town, then if you headed south-east you had a pretty good size community of various Asian descents that ran a couple farms.

 

NYC was, and hopefully still is, the Melting Pot America claims to be, as are a few other cities in the US. New York is kind of the iconic picture, combined with things like the Statue of Liberty, the site that used to be the Twin Towers, both when they stood and now, Time Square.

 

Probably not my best writing ever, doped up as I currently am, but I hope I got my point across well.

[Vagrant0]

I wouldn't say no different but I don't think my life would extremely different living in Boston or Chicago than it would be in New York.

Then you have not yet had good pizza, hotdogs, or beef sandwiches... Good Chicago food can be totally life changing.

[ub3rman123]

I couldn't understand most of the talk in New York. When I was in Atlanta I.. Couldn't understand them either. Maybe that's not it..

[csgators]

I wouldn't say no different but I don't think my life would extremely different living in Boston or Chicago than it would be in New York.

Then you have not yet had good pizza, hotdogs, or beef sandwiches... Good Chicago food can be totally life changing.

 

Chicago has the best steaks I've ever eaten. I would sell my grandmother into slavery to eat at the Ruth's Chris there again.

[Aurielius]

Having at one point lived in NYC I will say that it has everything and it is available almost 24/7. NYC is one of the very few truly cosmopolitan cities of the US easy on par with Paris, London, Berlin or Rome, something that other great American cities cannot say. Almost every European I have met who has not been to the states puts a visit there as first on their 'to do' list. It should also be said that most true New Yorkers think civilization begins on the Hudson River and ends at the East River other wise why the dry reference to the 'Planet New Jersey'? I think that it does have the highest concentrations of qualitatively best museums in the country, the largest variations of incredible cuisines and is the nexus of the American business world. It would only be fair to point out that the air is awful, the living cost astronomical and the traffic almost unendurable.Central park though an oasis in the center of a steel megalopolis is a pitiful example of forestry. Though I live within 90 minutes of NYC I always detour around it when traveling north. There is NYC and then there is the rest of New York State which actually have extremely little in common with each other in composition of people, attitude, or viewpoints. NYC for most ex New Yorkers is a love / hate relationship, otherwise why would we be so happy somewhere else? Just my two cents. Edited April 22, 2011 by Aurielius