a few simple observations about New York

As a fairly complete outsider, the things that really strike me are as follows. Many of these points are completely unsurprising and unoriginal, I’m just trying to record the ones that actually strike me with a certain force while here, whether original or not.

*Everything is too crowded.

*Everything is too expensive. I’ve long allowed myself to be shocked by the cost of spending time in London, but New York must be as bad or worse. (I thought Tokyo was less expensive than expected, as was Helsinki. The one that was even worse than expected was Reykjavik, perhaps the worst money-burning city I’ve ever visited. But that was back in 2006, before the financial crisis, and I would guess it’s far cheaper there now.)

*There seem to be a lot of building fires in New York. Or at least there seems to be a fire truck rushing past this hotel a couple of times per hour. It’s not at all a special event here.

*People are far more polite in New York than rumor gives them credit for. The same is even more true of Paris, however. (All the warnings about Parisian snobbery that filled my childhood turned out to be utter falsehoods. The same holds for New York brusqueness and aggressiveness, of which there actually isn’t all that much.)