[mdnahas]

I lived in NYC for a decade. This is very true on the street, but less true waiting in a subway station, and even less true in a neighborhood bar. The more public, there is a “market for lemons” effect in conversation. The more it resembles a private club or a group suffering a common injustice, the more reliably good the conversation is. A crowd on an MTA platform where a train hasn’t shown up in 50 minutes can get pretty chatty.