Day to day life in New York is dreary. By American standards it's a filthy city. It smells and will always smell because trash is collected on the sidewalk. It manages to be both too hot and too cold. On summer days, a blanket of pollution hangs in the city air. The waterways are toxic after rainfall because NYC expels raw sewage into them. Most any place of business worth visiting will have a long wait. There are lots of delightful people in the right areas, but the many wrong areas are filled with throngs of really awful people. The amount of cat-calling, homophobia, and racism I experienced on the train or just walking around was an order of magnitude more than I've witnessed anywhere on the West Coast. The cost for living this privilege are some of the nation's highest taxes.
I don't regret my time in New York, but I do think it's one of the worst cities in the US in terms of livability.
From Joan Didion:
> All I mean is that I was very young in New York, and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not that young anymore. The last time I was in New York was in a cold January, and everyone was ill and tired. Many of the people I used to know there had moved to Dallas or had gone on Antabuse or had bought a farm in New Hampshire. We stayed ten days, and then we took an afternoon flight back to Los Angeles, and on the way home from the airport that night I could see the moon on the Pacific and smell jasmine all around and we both knew that there was no longer any point in keeping the apartment we still kept in New York. There were years when I called Los Angeles “the Coast,” but they seem a long time ago.