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Guess you missed this line

"That doesn’t mean entirely ignoring places like NYC, Istanbul, Seoul, or Tokyo. Some cities are so important they can’t be missed, and every city is a confederation of very different neighborhoods. NYC is as much Dyker Heights as it is Upper East Side.

That makes where you stay in a city more important than the city itself. "

right before this is a section about how ho chi minh city is a big tourist city but suggests real or authentic vietnam is in hanoi. then a comparison between that says ho chi minh city is nyc, that people should visit indianapolis for a true american experience and that nyc is full of the cynical take i quoted above.

That quote "doesnt mean ignoring ...nyc..." reads more like NYC is a great show, go their for entertainment and spectacle of what it is, but somehow that's not real america.

No. The intent was go to Dyker heights, Hunts point, Jackson Heights, Sunset Park, Jamaica, Crown Heights. Not just Upper East Side or Times Square.

Nowhere do I talk about Real or Fake or whatever. Everyplace is as real as any other place. Its about who you want to meet. How fancy you want stuff to be. How packaged.

The articles title is saying this is how to be local. When you say do this not that, the other is some how not authenticaly local

>reads more like NYC is a great show, go their for entertainment and spectacle of what it is, but somehow that's not real america.

Well, statistically it's true. I've visited most of the US, and NYC is very different and not represenative. If you want to see how "the other 96%" lives, better visit elsewhere. The same is not true for most if not all other states: they have their unique culture and might be rich or poor and so on, but not is as different to the rest as NYC. Not even Los Angeles or Miami.

I get what he's doing and why and even agree with some/most of it. But a subtle pervasive holier-than-thou attitude in the writing just turns me off.

>> They’ve got such a strong self-image, a strong desire to be seen as special, that many residents have become actors playing NYC, or LA.

>Then claim your traveling like a real local, i cant help but feel your kind of full of it. If this is your take away, you didn't travel like a local, you didn't meet enough new yorkers.

Similarly in LA. Anytime someone says that "everyone in LA is fake," I find that reflects more poorly on them and how they spent their time there than it does LA. Big cities are different, not inauthentic.

I lived in NYC for 20 years and wrote a book about the Bronx.

NYC, LA, and Chicago are bubbles. They are not reflective of the rest of the US in my experience. They are much more cosmopolitan and are the top destinations for tourists, migrants, and other people looking for opportunities. You can find a little bit of the rest of the world within 30 sq. miles in those cities. I can't really say the same for the rest of the major American metropolises. Boston, DC, SF, Seattle come pretty close, though.

Where I do diverge in opinion w/ the article (and agree with you on) is the whole idea of traveling "like a local", as a lot of traveloguers like to call it. I think the best most travelers can expect is maybe some curiosity from the community they're visiting, but they'll never have the full local experience. Only locals get that experience. You could live in a foreign city for years and even learn the language, but you will always be an outsider to the people in that community. You will never gain the years of culture and context that comes with having grown up in the area you are visiting. The best you could ever do in that situation is accept it and be gracious and courteous to the people in those communities.

> NYC, LA, and Chicago are bubbles. They are not reflective of the rest of the US in my experience.

I'm from the US. Having lived for years in each of New York, LA, Seattle, and 6 other metro areas, towns, and census designated places in the US ranging from ~3000000 to ~300 people in the American South and West, I pretty strongly disagree. All places are bubbles to a degree - that's what makes them definable as places.

Having lived outside the US for the last decade, and for months-long stretches over the decades before my current (indefinite) expatriation, it could not be clearer to me that - as people within the larger place (bubble) of the USA - the median New Yorker, Angeleno, or Chicagoan each has more in common, culturally, with the median Dakotan, Alaskan, Alabamian, or Puertorriqueño than with the median Irish, Bedouin, Xhosa, or Punjabi.

And I cannot but reserve the deepest contempt - truly - for those who would exclude city dwellers from full citizenship within their national polities. The combined metro areas of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago alone are about a sixth of the total population of the USA. Add your examples of Boston, DC, SF, Seattle and you're at 20%. As of the 2020 census, 55% of Americans lived in a metropolitan area of greater than 1 million people. The "real america" narrative is an 'othering' trope, used in the service of dehumanization for political ends.

America's cities are real America.

"Real America" is a narrative to understand the (mostly) White, Christian, blue collar, small town folks.

> Real America is a very old place. The idea that the authentic heart of democracy beats hardest in common people who work with their hands goes back to the 18th century. It was embryonic in the founding creed of equality.

This Atlantic article from last year puts "Real America" into a frame with 3 other narratives: "Smart America", "Just America", and "Free America".

"How America Fractured Into Four Parts" https://archive.ph/r5udO