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Comment by CurrentB | Hacker News Reader

Agree on most counts except the homebody thing. I'm mostly a homebody and moved here to NYC 8 years ago and love it. I like that I can just go on a walk and get a coffee or groceries or something, and just the liveliness of all the people out and about gives me some sort of energy. Other cities (US at least) feel desolate.

I still do normal social stuff sometimes, and yeah there are exceptionally great opportunities for that here. But even knowing they're there waiting for me when I want to do them has value to me on the 90% of days I'm just at home.

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Yeah, I would second this: I'm a generally social person, but I spend plenty of weekends alone by choice. It's not uncommon to see people just go out and walk in NYC; I like to walk through my part of Brooklyn on Saturdays and make a general circuit of all of the farmers' markets, watch the chess games, &c.

I suppose that's not exactly the same thing as a homebody, but just to say that you can live and thrive in this city without being an extreme type-A extrovert.

I used to do walks in Nyc and sf regularly when I lived there. I think the SF walk was a lot more interesting to be honest. The views are amazing, the architecture is always interesting, and there are weird shops throughout (note this was SF 20 years ago). NYC was interesting but it lacked the “oh wow I will just keep going until I hit water” drive for me. Also I found doing walks in Brooklyn can be more scary than Manhattan - I did a walk through Brownsville and it did not go well.

I actually won’t dispute this — I spent an afternoon walking around SF a few years ago, and it is a consistently beautiful city in a way that NYC is not. There are beautiful parts of NYC, but the city as a whole doesn’t have a unified architectural theme or street culture.

That being said, it’s a much larger city, and you can walk an entire SF’s worth without leaving Brooklyn. The things that I like during my walks are maybe a little bit more muted than architecture and making my way to a waterfront: I like seeing the streetvendors, chess players, people picnicking and, particular to Brooklyn, how the streets have been cut up by two centuries of transit changes.

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