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Comment by jgv | Hacker News Reader

As a Brooklynite, I am obviously biased here but a lot of these points are downright silly and the author seems astonishingly uninformed.

The first thing that struck me was how much this guy was paying in rent. I do agree that certain things about NYC get expensive but paying ~$2500 for a one bedroom is downright dumb if you're concerned about money. I have two roommates and pay $700 for a great place. Part of being a New Yorker is being savvy. Many people leave because they are not. They can't make rent, they can't save money, etc. Maybe they all move to California?

The sweeping generalizations here also make it very difficult to take this article seriously:

"New York has no comparable sources of intellectual firepower" - ITP, Courant, Columbia

"...most New Yorkers couldn’t fry an egg if their lives depended on it..." - http://brooklyngrangefarm.com/

"Manhattan didn’t get a Home Depot, or any sort of proper hardware store, until 2004" - ACE hardware

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Where in Brooklyn do you live where you're paying $700 (even with roommates) for a great place? I'm intensely curious as I'm planning on moving to BK soon!

I live near Grand St and Bushwick Ave. The place is also for a 4 bedroom and we only have 3 dudes which lets us have office space. If you look hard enough, great deals emerge.

I also live over there and pay $1500 for a big place (by NYC standards) two people could easily split.

Just curious: what's Bushwick like these days? It sounds like it's a lot safer now.

I haven't lived in Brooklyn since 1988 and back then when I visited my friend's in Bushwick and stayed late she'd drive me home cause she felt I'd probably get mugged on the way to the subway station.

Given that her dad's bodega was robbed on a regular basis, I think she had a reason to be concerned!

Rock, I'm about 10 blocks south of you at Moore St.

(If we were talking california, it'd be "45 minutes away on the freeway")

Any advice on finding housing in Brooklyn beyond Craigslist?

http://jumppost.com/ && http://www.padmapper.com/

-- or --

What really works, although its very low tech, is just going to the neighborhood you want to live in and walking around. Go to delis, pizza places, hardware stores and you'll find signs for apartments.

New York Times Real Estate Section. Both for sale and to let.

Yeah, ACE hardware isn't a proper hardware store, dude.

$2500 was about par for the course for a doorman building in the Financial District in 2005. Was the lowest price among the ones I looked at. The whole point is that you have to savvy (i.e. have some inside connection) to the local real estate scene to not get fleeced. A tool like Craigslist democratizes the market, and makes inside information less valuable (which is why I suspect it's never caught on in New York....cause New Yorkers like feeling like they got the 'deal').

As for the foodie scene: I'm aware there is a thriving one in New York. The point is that it's totally orthogonal from the sort of ambitious creative class that would create a startup. The guys I knew from Wall Street most certainly did not know how to fry an egg...they knew how to order stuff on SeamlessWeb, and that's about it.

In the Bay Area, those worlds intersect, if not directly overlap. Paul Graham of Y Combinator used to cook for his startups at the weekly dinners. I can't even begin to imagine a Goldman partner cooking for his desk.

Everyone in NYC besides bankers have been getting their apartments from craigslist since 1998. And, you can get a 500sq foot 1bdrm in battery park city for $1800.

Or Jersey City (the non-yuppie parts) for $1000.

I have to disagree with your Craigslist in NYC comment. Not only did I find my apartment on Craigslist but I frequently buy and sell bike parts on Craigslist and pick up items from Craigslist's free section. I've been a New Yorker using Craigslist since high school. Being savvy ≠ "some inside connection."

RE the foodie scene: Consider Brooklyn Grange a foodie startup. We also have great initiatives like Windowfarms (http://www.windowfarms.org/) which is sponsored by Eyebeam (http://eyebeam.org/). This illustrates food, tech, and art intersecting.

(ACE has worked just fine for me. If I need wood, I go somewhere that provides lumber.)

You complain that New York is too expensive, but you were living in a doorman building in the Financial District? Is this some kind of joke?

It sounds like you had a bad experience at a shitty job, hung around with total assholes, and then blamed the city for all of it. Then you relocated to a new place, did a different job, hung out with new people, and conclude that the entirety of New York (none of which, judging by your post, you've ever seen) is doomed because every one of its 8 million residents is a back-slapping MBA. Give me a break.

LOL at "Craigslist never caught on in New York".

Compared to SF? You have no idea, guy.

Craigslist never caught on in New York? FALSE.

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