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by goldenkey 1992 days ago
Yeah no issue except the muggers, rapists, murderers, and other criminal predators you have to fend off.

As someone who lived in NYC most of my life, hold on to that pepper spray and that 4" pocket knife real tight.

And make sure no cops see it, because they love collecting souvenirs and couldn't care less about the legality of your self-defense items.

Now, with the police budget cut $1B dollars, crime is skyrocketing.

Gotta love how this kind of stuff can happen in broad daylight with little no immediate security response:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaF2AdlXAus

Gotham is back baby!

And if we aren't gonna talk about crime, let's talk about that beautifully sludge smelling runoff from the subway tracks whenever it rains. Quick way to a nice putrid hair conditioning!

And let's not talk about the condition of the tracks and how much electricity is being wasted by the poorly lubricated trains and tracks. Those thunderous sounds when the subway passes? That is the sound of energy being wasted, being converted to sound energy instead of locomotion.

I hate everything about NYC except the melting pot of intellectual diversity that it is.

P.S. I still live here, so don't tell me that my perspective is an outsider's one.

7 comments

Hmm. I haven't ridden the NYC subway much but I'd not worry about those risks in either London or Paris.
It’s probably safer, I don’t know the stats though. However, I myself have witnessed a young kid getting stabbed at a Paris subway station and a box fight at a Berlin subway station. So it’s not like things don’t happen in Europe.

EDIT: boxing fight

What's a "box fight"? People hitting each other with cardboard boxes?
I saw the biggest rat of my life waiting for a train in NYC. At first I though it was a racoon or beaver or something. I spent some time in the city (East Village) during the late 70's and again off and on through out the 80's. Good Lord people who experienced NYC after Giuliani have no idea what it was like.

If you were there during that era, you can wear it like a badge of honor...like yeah fuck, I survived that fucking place, yeah man I can survive anywhere....

Yeah, it's pretty bad now again, but it's kind of disingenuous the way you framed it.

NYC has been Disneyland since 9/11. Even before that it had almost a decade of cleaning up.

It might feel like the mid-80s again now, but only JUST now.

"They hated him because he told the truth."

I can't stand the subway. LIRR on the other hand is quite nice.

> LIRR on the other hand is quite nice.

I haven't been on any train after 6pm that wasn't loaded with drunks, in either direction. It gets especially bad going back out around 1am. I wish they didn't allow drinking on the trains.

Hah! That's something to behold! Grab a beer to go in Penn, and drink it on the ride!

I'd rather be loaded with drunks on LIRR than take the trash chute that is the subway any day of the week.

And yet, none of your criticisms apply to transit per se. Really you're just complaining about New York in general.
Zoo York
The driver stopped short, causing a cyclist behind him to crash. That's a crime. He can play victim all he wants in his BMW SUV, he got off lucky, both legally and extralegally.

Of course the video's edited to only show the pissed of cyclists.

Having done a lot of this kind of riding, let me tell you what likely happened: The kids were riding as a group, acting stupid (running reds, popping wheelies, etc.). BMW driver either said something to them, or drove aggressively near the group. The group rides, surrounding his car to fuck with him a little. BMW driver hits his brakes rather than slow down, cyclist crashes into the SUV (this part is confirmed). Kids are livid, and the pedestrian camera rolls.

The alternative to that sequence is that these kids are beating the shit out of an SUV with their bicycles unprovoked. Not buying it.

What would they have done if they'd gotten into the car or the driver got out?
They wouldn't realistically get into the car (they didn't), but if they did, they'd trash the interior too. If the driver got out to fight, they'd beat him up obviously. If he just got out to "clear things up", they'd insult him and maybe slap him around a bit.

The driver's problem is he's in his own little bubble and was infuriated by bicyclists inconveniencing his drive (oh dear). I bet he'll tell people how scary NYC is, like commenter `goldenkey` above, and hopefully won't return to be so inconvenienced by kids on bicycles. His conundrum was 100% avoidable by not being a tool.

Anyway I hate selectively edited videos like that, making the driver look like some victim. It's Andy Ngo-quality material.

Would you please provide full video or evidence backing up your claims?