I’d heard all kinds of things about NYC from people who lived there, were born in one of the five boroughs, or had visited there once or with frequency. I didn’t find anything that I had heard to be true.

1. People are not friendly

• There could never be something more far from the truth. People in the hotels, people on the street, people in restaurants connected with me and helped me
• A young man approached me at La Guardia and told me where the taxi stand was and offered to take me to where I was staying for a flat rate which included all toll fees. (I tipped him well because he was the sweetest. He was handsome and charming and I kept hoping that in 5-years that will be how my kid is.)
• I got in very late, checked into my hotel at 10, and my room was 61-degrees and I called downstairs and the concierge told me how to turn off the blower. Then he called me back. Then an engineer from facilities came upstairs to check on me
• I got lost a lot. Everyone helped me
• I needed recommendations, and everyone offered one when asked
• I fought with a Citi Bike to get it in the back in the rack. I couldn’t get it to thread and a man born in Rhode Island who has been a transplant now in NYC for 30-years helped me get it in the clips
• The lesbians were friendly, made conversation and were so affectionate

2. NYC is expensive

• The prices that I paid for meals were like those in Santa Fe, Denver and less than in Boulder
• Portions are so huge that you can take them with you. I ate Asian style ribs, skirt steak with excellent Chimichurri and yellow rice because LA who met me at the end of my trip didn’t finish it. I didn’t have to eat gross and overpriced airport food when I was flying home

NYC is dirty

• I have never seen workers pressure walking sidewalks with that much frequency. Everywhere I’d go in Manhattan, I would have to dodge hoses because they were making sidewalks pristine
• All of the garbage from giant apartment buildings and brownstones are bagged and collected constantly. There are not plastic bottles or bags anywhere in the gutter, and I stayed on Times Square!
• People sit out on their stoops and if they’re smoking or vaping, they collect what belongs to them and put it in a napkin or the like and throw it out in the metal garbage cans that are everywhere

NYC has tons of crime

• Ok, truthfully I was in Queens and Manhattan; however, my step count for the trip was 110,680 and I was walking after 4 am twice, and once was alone! I also used the subway, and have never felt safer. (Times that I’ve thought that I could die have been in Jacksonville and Las Vegas.)
• There are police officers everywhere. They’re pretty stoic; however, they’re at work in one of the largest cities in the world, so I understood lack of eye contact and business-like natures. When we tried to take the subway from the theater district to Little Italy for the San Gennaro festival, a police officer got us through the turnstile because we were heading the wrong way out of Manhattan and he called another Police Officer at different subway station to let us through the turnstile and not the scanning gate (He didn’t want us to pay again.)
• You can see cameras on the streets, on businesses, and there are private security guards near shopping districts

I just hope that if you’ve heard these myths and not visited, you’d consider NYC. It is a wonderful place to visit because you have art and performance. It’s also a friendly, reasonably priced, safe and clean city. I guess that now I understand “I love New York.” I think that my turning 50 there will leave a lasting impact on me and my life going forward. Don’t believe the myths.