For the longest of time, I have raved about NYC being one of the best cities in the US for a single guy. Before the pandemic, NYC was one of the best cities in the world for a single guy. You saw an abundance of beautiful women from all parts of the world, a largely unrivaled nightlife, and a culture that didn’t care if you were a guy even in his forties that slept around with randoms instead of getting married with kids. Even after the pandemic, NYC was still a great city for young men but then things started to change.
Before all of this happened, NYC truly was a top five place on the planet for men in their twenties and thirties that did not want to settle down with a wife and kids. What I experienced in NYC were some of the most fun years of my life which gave me amazing friends, put amazing women in my life, and parties that would be the envy of a kid that goes to FSU. NYC in the 2010s (around the 2012 to 2018 time range) was arguably the best city for any guy to live in and experienced.
Then a lot happened, yeah….politics. While I will not use this post to berate poor leadership too much, I will use it to speak on why NYC is no longer an ideal city for a bachelor.
Skyrocketing crime rate.
You can read more on this article here but NYC has seen an increased crime rate. One might think you can avoid it if you avoid the bad areas and while that may have been true before the pandemic, it is not the case anymore. The infamous Union Square train station has become unsafe and now you are even witnessing a rise in the homelessness.
I have said all of this to let you know that NYC is not nearly as safe as it used to be and the pandemic has just made it much worse. While five years ago you could walk down certain streets in Manhattan and be okay, that has changed now with homeless encampments and a rise in drugged out homeless people in subways and on the streets.
An economy that is not doing so hot.
For one, it is the rising unemployment in the city itself. A lot of workers in the city work in the service industry and in the buildings for some of the largest firms out there. Unfortunately, remote work and lockdowns have ruined all of that as people no longer come into the office as they used to do so. This has also impacted physical retail outlets in Manhattan who are hurting from remote work and less people on the streets.
While you can definitely get a job in the city and will have no problems getting work in the service industry, even if you have no experience now, the trends still impact you. For example, you will face emptier streets, a higher crime rate due to increased joblessness, and subways which are sketchier than normal now.
And it’s still as expensive as ever, even more so.
While the pandemic saw decreased rent prices, the cost of living in NYC is as bad as ever. For one, it has some of the highest tax rates in the nation. Now, it is once again more expensive to rent here than it is in San Francisco. So not only are you paying a high price despite the increased crime rate and an economy that is struggling, you are also getting taxed out of the ass for it. Now that’s not even the worst of it.
The politics have become invasive to where people are being forced to move.
Despite some of the issues, past mayors in NYC managed to keep the city in a good condition by just being savvy and practical. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case as recent trends will show. You now need proof that you have been jabbed to even sit and eat indoors as well as go to the gym itself. So you pay all of those taxes and the high rents while dealing with the rising crime rate only to show proof of the jab to carry out your daily duties.
New Yorkers can best be described as center left or those who didn’t really act like the progressives in California, that has changed. Thanks to the radical wing taking over NYC politics, you no longer have that practical mentality towards business and life while also avoiding the wackiness of flyover country politics that you used to have.
Now there is no telling how much more invasive the politics get in the city, this is all just a start. Soon, you may need proof of the jab to even get out of the city itself along with a host of other things. Scary thought isn’t it?
The nightlife scene is no longer what it used to be.
While the nightlife kept the city alive and pumping as women were in equal numbers or just flat out outnumbered men in some establishments, that is all but gone. Due to the movement of tech companies into the city, the quality of people you would find in the nightlife went down by a lot. While you would normally get cool Europeans and Americans from smaller towns moving here en masse, now it became Californians and people from flashy cities moving here because Williamsburg became popular all of a sudden.
It will take years before NYC nightlife is as low quality as San Francisco or as a lot of southern cities but it is on a steep decline. Perhaps this is all due to pandemic trends, who knows, but it is tough to really come up with other reasons. Even before the pandemic, the quality of women got lower as you were stuck with more blue-haired SJWs and boring San Francisco girls with the facial expression of the Zuck.
In perspective, is it awful by any means?
It amazes me how even at its worst, NYC has a lot of attractive women walking its streets. Even at its worst, the nightlife in NYC is still a lot better than that of the average city itself. The question really becomes, is it so good to the point that you can deal with everything else about the city which has become a major setback since the pandemic? For that, I would have to answer no which is why I have decided that I will be leaving.
