You aren’t harmed , you aren’t in danger , you’re honestly safer here than with your intimate partner
What you want is a fantasy land where everyone and everything values you being here more than … oh anything else
And if you can’t navigate a city without entitlement you aren’t savvy
Reposted from
Christopher Mims
A lot of people are hating on this but I think it's a pretty eye-opening account of what it's like for non-NYC-savvy travelers (aka most of the country) to experience the city
The subway can be intimidating for folks who have only known suburbs
www.businessinsider.com/first-trip-n...
The subway can be intimidating for folks who have only known suburbs
www.businessinsider.com/first-trip-n...
Comments
She goes to London, Paris, and Tokyo pretty often and knows them well, so it works out. The hilarious bit is she can't read a map and gets lost all the time, but people usually are going to major tourist things she knows.
The whole point of travel is to experience new, unfamiliar, even uncomfortable things.
To find something unexpected.
I’m in THEIR space … I gotta make myself useful and entertained
Sometimes that means I got be on a random street that while safe .. I ain’t got no clue where I am
But with charged phone and MANNERS
I can thug it out
We are afforded so little opportunity for adventure in the modern world! Feels crazy to me that people want to travel just to find out that everything was as they imagined.
I walked Manhattan from Canal Street to Times Square, many times-- never felt intimidated.
& the NY Subway is AMAZING (SO cheap back then too-- also PATH trains).
My time in NYC helped prepare me & I wasn't intimidated (much).
Plus Prague metro is so simple.
Public transportation is foreign as hell to me. But the people I met in NY have been so helpful every time I've come and I feel super safe. I went 5xs last year. She buggin
I've helped tourists find their way around. She didn't even recon before she got to the city? 🤦🏿🤷🏿
It's technically travel, but...
I made a dumb mistake and hopped a train heading the wrong way - via wrong set of stairs - and had to swap at the next stop.
Other than that (not the first time I've made such a mistake!), it was fine. Wayfinding isn't optimal, tho.
I thought it was spectacular-- do people use it now?
I like the NYC subway too, but it definitely ain't pretty. Vibrant, diverse, inspiring, engaging ... yes.
My first trip to NYC was w/ a bunch of fellow student activists from Eastern NC.
The first guy we asked for help heard our accent & was so friendly & generous w/ his time!
But then, I've found that almost anywhere/situation where you humbly ask for help, people will be kind.
Except Paris 🤣
She didn't leave midtown for 4 days because apparently asking for directions is too hard. She deserves mockery.
Suburbanites are the worst.
It's not that hard. Even a middle-aged Church Lady can navigate it.
lol and this is a feature of the city? not the people in the suburbs? you know, the ones nervous about the "inner city"? perhaps there's some history and research and theory here that could help 0:
To this day I cannot leave a building without first stopping to pee.
The uptown traffic would get brutally slowed because they would close it to open the crosstown route for his limo—but they didn't know his exact schedule.
I was at one of the last stops, so full busses would pass us.
Yikes. Leave your comfort zone for 10 mins & maybe have a real experience!
That said, I didnt take the subway for a LONG time after Covid hit. But that is germ thing, not bc of fear of the subway itself!
That’s a whole experience water to water
This lady spoke English and didn’t try
You try we gone meet you halfway
99% of the time if you don’t understand what comes out of the speakers there’s someone around you who can help.
A common thing is for a NYer to help someone with their stroller on stairs, and disappear into the crowd afterward, never having uttered a word.
and I’m not judging the transit I live in Philly 😂
I'm an advocate.
Mid-sized European town transit maps: F-22 electrical wiring diagrams in Swiss-German.
This is a skill issue.
I get SO claustrophobic, plus it's so expensive.
I identified w/ the character in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in the Underground.
Hey, I'm from the rural South.
The town BUS would deliver Pop Eye's to the driver's friend, mid-route (& only ran every 2 hours from 10 am to 5 pm).
Yes, Asheville isn't a big city but it IS a city.
It was the perfect opportunity.
They've been trying to get light rail in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle for 40 years.
Used to take me 90 minutes to go 25 miles to work betw Raleigh & Durham at rush hour.