Was born in a rural area. Moved to Manhattan in the early 2000s. There is nothing inherently -better- about living in New York City. Here is what living in New York City is actually like:
1) You spend the first time your here staying in a $400/night hotel (early in life, when you're making $50k/year) in order to be led around by an apartment broker showing you terrible apartments that range between $1500 - $3000 / month.
If you're lucky, midwestern rube, you get a good apartment broker. Extremely lucky, because otherwise you'll get a guy who promises you $1200/month 1-br, who then insists that one just rented, but he's got these other $3k/month ones to show you instead.
If you're even more lucky, he won't waste your time by showing you an apartment (not lying) without a shower or stove. Also, apartments fill up quickly, so your apartment hunt starts six weeks before your move date.
2) You found an apartment! Lucky you. Bad news, you can't move yourself into your own apartment. You have to hire a moving company. Why? Building owners don't want you damaging their building when you move in.
So, you either have to have $3k - $5k cash in hand as a damage deposit, or you don't move in that day. Moving companies have that.
3) You found a moving company! Great, they'll give you an estimate over the phone. Then you should promptly throw that estimate away because they always find that you have WAY more stuff than they were expecting. Then they'll load your stuff in a truck.
4) You get to your new apartment. Great! Your probably Russian movers arrive. They tell you what their normal tip is with your stuff still on the truck. Their normal tip is about $150 per guy. So, you know, give them that so they don't drop a bunch of your stuff. Or drive off.
5) Hopefully you signed a lease for more than one year, or else you get to do this all again next year. That's, of course, unless you want to pay your new rent rate, which will almost certainly be 10% more than your sign on rate.
6) Did I mention on the day you move in you owe a security deposit, a month's rent, and a broker's fee equal to a months rent? The renter pays for the broker, so your $2500/month apartment just cost $7500 to move in.
7) You start your first day of work. You get on the only 24/hr train service in the country. Plagued by delays, six stops somehow takes 30 mins and you pay $121/mo for the privilege. (Full disclosure: not having to drive to work is awesome. This is the best part about the city).
8) You get your first paycheck. Did you know New York State has a pretty hefty income tax and New York City takes a cut, too? Bonus, neither of those are probably tax deductible for you anymore.
9) You're surrounded by the best food in the country. You sure are. Daniel Boulod's places are right over there. Just expect to spend $400 on your meal. Plus tip. But at least you have Seamless, right.
10) Pizza & bagels are great. So's Chinese, sushi, & Thai. However, outside of that, you're fooling yourself if you think you're going to "just go to Queens" to get dim sum. Queens is an hour away on the train on weekends if it's running. You worked 70 hrs last week. Fuck Queens.
11) Then you do that, every day for a decade. You're promoted (if you're good. Remember, you're surrounded by the most competitive people on the planet) and you make more money than you ever expected.
12) You meet someone. It can happen if you're lucky. Most people I know who came to the city single are still single. Relationships are hard and time investment seems silly when there are 4 million other options. You still have time, until you don't, but let's say you did.
13) You think about having a family, look at "nice school districts," and realize "nice school districts" are wildly overcrowded and can be redistricted at any point. Also, by "nice school districts" you're actually being "wildly racist" but we all nicely pretend that isn't true.
14) Also, you only have control over elementary. By middle school, kids test into good schools. So you might get stuck in your shitty neighborhood high school or, more likely, send your kids to a private school that cost $15k/year. Check please, up front, like the other parents.
15) Around all of this, New York City is only slightly worse than Las Vegas for separating you from as much of your income as possible as soon as it can. $50 Uber here, $30 cab there, $60 Seamless order over that way. Like a band? Good news, they're going to play here.
Like sports? Take your pick. Nothing's better than ditching work to take the train to a baseball game on Opening Day. Or any day. What's that? Mets season tickets package start at $1500?
16) So you've moved farther away from work, sit on the train with homeless people, and hope that today isn't going to be the day the homeless guy decides to snap or the kids doing "Showtime" kick you in the face by mistake.
17) Why not drive to work? Or anywhere. Because driving here is miserable. When you're not dodging cabs or buses, you're sitting in traffic. That's before the tolls. My EZ-Pass bill is about $100/quarter... before the ones I pay sitting in Uber.
Just don't tell your co-workers you use Uber instead of Lyft. Then you may have to sit through a diversity lecture on how Uber is socially ill. Make sure you keep up on current liberal orthodoxy.
Long story not short: nobody romanticizes living in New York City because it isn't fucking romantic. It's a hard, terrible, stressful grind in which you are largely surrounded by criminals and scammers, and must also become a scammer (in some ways) to survive it.
All your interactions are clipped (NYC's famed rudeness is just the social understanding that I don't waste your time with pleasantries and you don't waste mine).
The only people who romanticize living here are people who don't live here. They have vacation eyes or television eyes. Carrie Bradshaw did more damage to women than maybe anyone in history.
The city is a tool, and its use is to work for 10-15 years to build enough resume fodder to get the fuck out.
Does it have its good points? Of course it does. City kids are probably better socialized than most suburban kids. The private schools are top notch. Having ubiquitous cabs after nights out is fucking glorious.
But people romanticize "not the city" because there is almost nothing objectively better about living in cities. Is the occasional $200 tasting menu awesome? Of course it is, but that's like one day a year.
The rest of the day is like any other shitty day, except surrounded by hundreds of people at all times and hoping your train doesn't stall under the river and make you two hours late for work.
And also hoping today isn't the day your family member who works in Times Square isn't at the wrong place when someone decides Times Square is a good place to attack (again).
You know what I romanticize? Trees. A backyard with a pool and a fence and trees and 72 full hours without interacting with a stranger. The ability to know when something is 10 miles away, it'll take 20 minutes to get there, without sitting in traffic for 5-100 additional minutes
And jack holes like Tom can't comprehend that their shit ideology is the reason I had to live here - that encouraged Wal-Mart and Target and CVS to eat any fucking store someone could open to live a life outside of these shit-bag places.
You know what I'd like to have been? The local pharmacist. It seems awesome. That's a romanticized job. Driving to my pharmacy every day and knowing everyone in town and giving a shit about my neighbors and going to their funerals and weddings. Not a fucking employee of Rite-Aid
Instead, I spent 8 years living in a 43 story building in which I knew zero other people. But, yeah, cities are awesome and healthy.
