New York City's Graveyard Shift | Hacker News Reader

New York City's Graveyard Shift

newyorker.com

78 pointssamclemens43 comments

I have such respect for these people. Partly because without them, NYC would be devoid of life. NYC is unlike any city in the world. I challenge anyone to live there for a time in their life. You won't regret it.

How is it different than other metropolises like London or Paris, Tokyo or Seoul? (I live here and I'm not sure).

Sometimes I hear people say these things and I wonder if you have to live in Manhattan to understand, I commute from Brooklyn.

The real never-ending life of it. Most cities have off-hours- NYC is literally a 24/7 city.

I think I Seoul rivals NYC in terms of the 24/7 nightlife or entertainment that isn't Las Vegas. When I was there you could literally go out every day of the week if you wanted to whereas NYC does settle down during the week.

Seoul is a bit sanitized, though. I don't think you can replicate NYC's "busyness" or grittiness which is why I love it here.

You have graveyeard shift in any city that's big enough, it is not limited to NYC.

People working, yeah. But NYC has more businesses that stay open to the public all night.

So do London, Berlin, Tel-Aviv and a few other cities.

At least for London, this is simply not true. Sure, you may find there are some things open late, like maybe a gas station off The Highway, or casinos devoid of anything interesting beyond buckets to sink your money into.

And that's what it comes down to I think. While London (I can't speak for Berlin and Tel-Aviv, I've never been) may be a big city, it's far from interesting at 3am. Hell, in most areas it stops being interesting around midnight or 1am, when most pubs close. You'll have a hard time finding anything that's more interesting than a seedy chicken shop at that point.

That the only public transport available 24/7 are buses, most of departs perhaps once an hour, probably doesn't help making a city active 24/7.

On the other hand, in London you'll see bankers having a large pint at 8am. So I guess there's that.

When I used to frequent London (which would be 15-10 years ago), there was stuff to do at 3am, clubs, etc. It wasn't everywhere, but you didn't have to look hard. The tube stops running at some point, but the buses take over and are actually useful.

When I lived in NYC, it was the basically the same. Most subways switch to 1/hr after midnight, most parts of the city are sleeping. Union Square wasn't interesting at 3am, neither was Madison Square Park or anywhere around Central Park. There's stuff in SoHo/Tribeca, but not that much. At least that was my experience.

No NYC subway lines drop to 1/hr late night. Some lines stop running entirely, and others switch to making local stops, but the scheduled late-night headway is 20 minutes between trains [1] on all lines that run at night. It's been that way the whole time I've lived here (a decade) at least, probably longer.

Obviously this can be affected by track maintenance, police activity, etc but that's not the norm.

Other rapid transit systems in the area are a bit worse, but still not 1/hr. PATH late-night headway is 35 minutes; Staten Island Railroad's is 30 minutes.

The commuter rail systems (LIRR, MetroNorth, NJ Transit) may indeed drop to 1/hr or worse per line, but that makes more sense for heavy rail.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Subway_s...

One big exception: NYC bus routes go down to 1 per hour between 1 and 5 AM in many cases.

3 tube lines (soon 5) are running an all-night service on Friday and Saturday nights.

https://tfl.gov.uk/campaign/tube-improvements/what-we-are-do...

They can't do it all week because of maintenance requirements - but London is pretty compact if you need to walk or take a taxi.

I think one telling feature is that the New York subway runs 24/7; every other metro in the world shuts down for nightly maintenance.

Berlin's U/S-Bahns certainly give the impression of being open 24/7 -- I've never had problems getting to/from clubs or airports at any time of day.

London can also claim a useful 24/7 service, with the night tube starting a couple months ago and the third and fourth lines (Jubilee and Northern) just opening up this week[1].

[1]: https://tfl.gov.uk/campaign/tube-improvements/what-we-are-do...

London's Night Tube only runs on Friday and Saturday nights, which I'd think makes it 24/2 rather than 24/7.

It's been a few years, but I remember getting stranded at the U-Bahn station a few times when I was in college because we got out of the bar too late and having to walk home or wait around for daylight.

It's open 24 hours on weekends but close at nights preceeding working days.

Copenhagen's metro runs all night.

It helps that it's new and driverless.

New York City is definitely the most ethnically and linguistically diverse place in the world, and because of this you have a myriad of different lifestyles taking place side by side. I don't think you need to live in Manhattan to understand that.

I don't disagree with that - but it's the ultimate parent comment I was replying to that suggested it was because of the graveyard shift specifically that NYC is unique, not it's diversity. I totally agree on the diversity part being unique.

> New York City is definitely the most ethnically and linguistically diverse place in the world

Citation needed. FYI, other cities such as Auckland, Toronto and Los Angles and London are ahead by some metrics.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/75964986/Auckland-a-melting-...

And NYC is probably ahead, but about level with London on others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_born#Cities_with_large...

Queens is the most diverse place on Earth. http://traveltips.usatoday.com/indoor-attractions-queens-new...

Elmhurst Hospital has to have translators for 153 languages. (the article is also really good, would recommend it heartily!) http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/13/every-disease-o...

Foreign-born seems like a bad metric for diversity. For example if you had an American city where 50% of the population was from Canada, I wouldn't call that very diverse.

Also, a neighborhood that's 100%, say, Chinese, is the least diverse neighborhood possible.

> Foreign-born seems like a bad metric for diversity.

On it's own, it will mislead yes. Note that Dubai is top of the foreign-born list whereas I'm told (never been there) that it's really mono-cultural with lots of poor guest workers who all come from a handful of eastern countries.

However I don't think a place could be "most diverse" without being on that list at all.

The term "foreign born" means very different things in London vs. New York. I don't think it's a meaningful comparison.

That's why it's a bad metric - native born in the US is much more likely to be something VERY different, like Gullah people vs Minneapolitans.

I don't think there are any perfect metrics for this - it's subjective. So saying "city x is the most diverse" is hard to give real meaning to.

What are those different meanings?

With exception of Canadians, "foreign born" in New York means "born at least 2000 miles away" (and thus usually having a different native language and culture). In London, it's "born at least 200 miles away"; usually already speaks English and/or has some ancestry from Britain.

All very subjective, but plenty of people in London who are born 200 or more miles away, "have a different native language and culture", and no ancestry from Britain.

You seem to be saying that proximity of more different countries results in less diversity. Which is odd.

OK, that's what I figured. Thanks for the elaboration.

Once I landed back home in Paris on a Sunday. I couldn't find any grocery store open. I couldn't find any restaurant open. I lived there 20 years and I was honestly lost... I literally forgot how different NYC and Paris were. I ended up eating at McDonalds...

I ended taking a nap in CDG until sunrise. The RER stops after midnight for maintenance and I didn't want to tsk the night buses. Once you factor in transfers it would get me to the city just a few minutes before sunrise.

Or Quick? lol

NYC has a 24/367 Apple Store (Fifth Ave), a 24 hour Best Buy (Union Square -- at least 5 days/week), 24 hour Staples and Fedex, 24 hour quality grocers (Fairway, West Side Market,...), pharmacies, subway 24 hours, also many fast food 24 hours.

Population is diverse: 40% of New Yorkers not born in USA.

Chicagoan here. I think a lot of the "Only in NYC, right guys?" sentiment applies to pretty much any city with more than 2m people. Big city life follows certain predictable patterns. Ironically, I find it fairly provincial when people say that because it tells me they don't spend time in other big cities. You don't look terribly worldly when you ignore the rest of the world.

I love how the images are in grayscale!

Represents the fact that all these photos were taken during the graveyard hours far better than if they were in color.

Also, it's likely pretty dark everywhere the photos were taken so the available light for photography is not great. So, shooting with high ISO/gain settings is going to be pretty noisy, which is less noticeable when in black and white.

You'd be surprised what a modern full-frame sensor picks up these days. They're not shooting with a D2H in 2004.

I love the coast guard picture.

I'm wondering how they got such a large depth of field at night.

Great photos, getting a big Brassaï vibe from them.

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