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I was in high school there during this time and every day was a new tale of who ran into her before school/during lunch. Many people would check with friends in earlier lunch periods to get the word on where she was for the day so that they could pick a place for lunch on a different street.

I'm like 90% sure I was spit on by this woman during a week long business trip in 2018. I ignored it and kept walking. Figured she just didn't like the cut of my jib or something, but I guess it makes sense that it'd be a regular occurrence and I feel slightly less bad about it now.

> Also this fascination with NYC and it's trash situation is such a tired and frankly disingenuous dig at the city. While it is expensive, no argue there, it is not dangerous or filthy. You'd think after having lived there for 15 years you'd have some pride in becoming a New Yorker (lord knows I do and weep for the fact I no longer live there) but maybe the city is better off without you.

So you just assert it's fine and continue with an ad hominem argument?

Allow me to retort: maybe it's a trash pit of a city because of apologists like you? NYC reeks in a way I've not encountered outside of the US.

There's no point in trying to convince people who already come into the discussion with such charged language as "filthy", "disgusting" or "trash pit". Their minds are already made up, sadly, and yes, the city doesn't deserve such disrespect and slander, especially from someone who claims to have lived there for 15 years. Shameful. The sanitation system in the city is near the bottom compared to other issues like the MTA; anybody making an argument to the contrary either has never lived in the city or is willfully ignorant.

> Also this fascination with NYC and it's trash situation is such a tired and frankly disingenuous dig at the city

If only trash was the only issue.

Walk around Chinatown on hot days and you can smell the fish juice the stores dump into the streets/sidewalks baking in the sun. Then yes, you have the huge piles of garbage bags on the streets everywhere.

But really what I was referring to was the infestation in many buildings of some combination of mice, rats, cockroaches, and bedbugs. This includes Manhattan and the outer boroughs and includes buildings where you're paying $3k/month to rent a tiny apartment.

The rat problem in UES is particularly bad. They're everywhere.

Of course there's the homeless pee all over midtown that you get to randomly get a nice whiff of as you're walking around. Or the upscale neighborhoods where everyone owns a little dog (so there are hundreds of them on the same small set of sidewalks) covered in pee every morning.

I'm actually amazed that anyone who's lived in the city would deny that it's filthy, it's so obvious to me that I didn't expect that to be controversial.

You are catastrophizing relatively small and isolated issues. In my time in NYC (7 years), I know of 1 person who got bedbugs. Never met anybody with a mice or rat problem. I've seen more rats in Chicago than I ever did in NYC. They primarily confine themselves to the subway, where in Chi they're running around the alleys.

Either you're in that relative minority or you are completely blowing the problem out of proportion.

It’s not my intention to be argumentative but we’ve somehow just had completely different experiences.

I’ve had many friends, and personally experienced, the problem with mice and cockroaches in buildings.

The rats tend to be outside but they’re not confined to the subway. They’re in the bushes in all the parks, in the trash areas in front of almost all buildings at least in UES, under outdoor dining decks, everywhere. I kicked one by accident while walking down the street one night.

It may also be a time period thing. When COVID began the rat problem was already bad but for some reason got much worse since.