I'm writing a character who's from New York. He works as a journalist for the New Yorker Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn and he commutes to work every day via his own car. Does this work so far? Based on the salary of a journalist, is Brooklyn realistic or would New Jersey be better? Where would he go through in his commute to the office and what famous sights would he see? Do people actually drive their own cars to a place like One Work Trade center (the New Yorker HQ) or would it be better to go with the subway? Do a significant number of people in New York read the New Yorker? Generally, do you happen to know what kind of people work for and what kind of people read the New Yorker? What are some famous bars/restaurants where New Yorkers with a mid-level salary go to unwind? Also, is it realistic to say in NY snow sticks to the ground for weeks and turns gray from the smoke of cars?
He would probably take the subway, bus or taxi/Uber. He wouldn't see much, just the subway platforms, hear the rattle and squeal of the trains, and would smell the piss smell. Depends on how good he i$ and where in planet Brooklyn he live$. If he's in Jersey he may drive to a commuter lot, then bus or train from there. He couldn't afford them (unless invited or on assignment), so would go to the newest trendy spot before it gets too well known and to pricy, then move on to the next trendy spot before it gets too well known. As a writer who knows NYC, he's probably ahead of the curve, at least most of the time. Maybe he's even one of the trend setters. Snow does not stick around, it takes up too much precious NYC real estate, so is plowed, piled and melted ASAP. Yes, snow gets dingy and dirty from the auto exhaust, mud from the wheels and other things, but isn't around long enough, unless there's been a substantial snowfall, too be all that noticeable.
He does not commute in his own car. He can't afford to park the car in New York City. Either one will work. He will take the subway -- which means he won't see any famous sights, because he will be underground. I have no idea what people in New York read, and I can't afford bars or restaurants in New York so I can't comment. No. Snow in New York City never stays around for me than a few days.
I used to commute from Jersey to the city every day. I own a car, but would never have taken it to work. Parking is too expensive. The bus was how I got to and from work. No idea who reads the New Yorker. It’s probably sitting in every waiting room in the city.
Did you see any famous sights during your commute from New Jersey to New York? What was the commute like? I know it gets boring after a while but did you like it? Also, would it be possible for someone to take the bus from Brooklyn to Manhattan? If this journalist is successful and has been working for a few years, still he won't be able to afford parking in Manhattan?
Of you're writing about a place you've never been to before and need visuals (i.e. "what famous sights did you see"), i'd use Google Earth street view. Thats my go to! I will plan a route my MC would take and then "walk" that route via Google Earth, panning the camera as i go to get a sense of the place. That may help you with your visuals. As someone who does not and has not live in NYC, ive gone and stayed various days for track events and school events. I took the train to Fordham University (it was waaaay to rickety for me....). I had track meets at the Armory and took a bus to and from the venue from where we stayed in a hotel in Jersey. New York has a lot of bedrock (i think thats whats its called). Black rocks that stick out almost everywhere. Idk why, but to me that was the most interesting thing. That and the pigeon population. We stopped at a red light and i watched a pigeon wait for traffic before crossing the road with the rest of the pedestrians like it was human
NYC rats, pigeons, and raccoons are highly evolved, sophisticated creatures. How long would it take to drive a car from Brooklyn to downtown Manhattan? I guess shorter than uptown since the bridge dumps you near city hall (i think), but that's gotta take an hour or so, right? I can't get from one side of Providence to the other in less than 20 mins during the commute rushes.
Interesting stuff. With respect to parking, how expensive is it? I mean how much per day? I searched and traveling with bus from Brooklyn to Manhattan would take 1 hour whereas with car it would take 19 minutes! Isn't it better to pay for the parking and save time?
$600/mo. At the cheapest. The bus is likely the best option of Jersey, within the city though, the subway would be the way to go.
Where did you search? There is NO WAY anyone can drive from Brooklyn to lower Manhattan (where One World Trade Center is located) in 19 minutes during rush hour. And, as others have mentioned, an ordinary journalist cannot afford what it would cost to park a car every day in Manhattan. The big-name, famous anchors on the television networks could afford it -- but they all get driven to work in limousines.
Yeah, I was also going to mention that 19 minutes sounds reasonable for about 10 o’clock at night. During rush hour that same trip will take upwards of an hour. NYCs roads are very efficient, jams are rare, it’s just the sheer volume makes it slow. Public transport within the city is almost always faster.
This is strange: I was sure I'd gotten an alert that someone had mentioned my name in this thread, saying that I read the New Yorker, and that it was politically liberal. Either I dreamed about an actual thread I wasn't previously aware of, or someone thought better of it and edited the comment, likely deciding it was OT. Anyway, I do a bit, yes, nowadays mostly to keep an eye on the fiction. I'm more a fan of old-style New Yorker articles like this superb one about the past and future course of the Mississippi River: The New Yorker: Atchafalaya — The Control of Nature (2/15/1987). Absolutely classic New Yorker writing, and over the years I've recommended it to a number of people. I doubt that any of this is helpful background for the project at hand, but it's all I have to contribute. The last time I was in the city was 9/7-9/10 of 2001. Just happened to have a flight home on the 10th. For me, my one-time fondness for the magazine began before the Gingrich Republicans' declaration of secession from the political process in 1994, and the subsequent era of politics' ubiquity, indeed domination of our everyday attention. (Americans not all that much younger than me have never lived in an era when politics didn't intrude on every adult's every single day, but there was a period when that was so.) So it wasn't the articles' politics that attracted me, it was their intelligence and highly uncommon depth. I'd just as likely have been reading the National Review, if it'd had anything even anywhere close to such fascinatingly cogent research and exposition of topics of timeless significance. I suppose it's fashionable to say one was more fond of the magazine before the Tina Brown years, but I haven't looked at it through the lens of editorship. I simply think that to my detriment, I have less attention and patience for thorough articles today — I find myself skimming even CNN web articles — an endemic problem with attention deficit even among "normies" in the digital age, to whom I reckon myself.
I had a subscription to The New Yorker back in the '80s, for the fiction and the cartoons, mainly. But I never lived in NYC. Is there a particular reason you want to take note of famous sights your POV character might see? Do they come into the story, or will it just be local color? If you have him riding the subway, some of the stations are kind of cool--- old tilework and mosaics and such--- though they go by pretty fast. He might see some famous sights on his walk from and back to the subway stop, though if his train goes right into the new WTC, you might be out of luck. If he lives on Staten Island and takes the ferry, that gives a great view of the skyline. The great thing is Google Street View. Decide his route, and look it up from there. I'm with everyone else, however--- don't have him driving across a river and parking in Manhattan. Too damn expensive. Not just the parking, but the bridge tolls. Oy, pricey! No one will believe it. Besides, if someone's driving in NYC, he's not gawking out the window at the scenery, he's paying attention to the traffic and the lights. Or he should be.
It is funny that you ask the question about living in NY and everyone assumes it is the city. I live in up-state where the main form of employment is farming, logging/lumber, tourism. My little town
Let's say a person wants to go from Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan. Is there a subway station in Brooklyn called "The Brooklyn Station"? Does the train stay underground throughout the entire trip? If it comes up, what would that person see? Also, would he walk up the stairs to get off "The World Trade Center Station"? (I'm talking about that fancy new station which has a bird-like structure).
You’d see nothing, the entire trip is underground. I’m not sure of the names of any large stations in Brooklyn, but very few people actually enter much of a station. Every few blocks along the train line there is just a staircase in the sidewalk leading down. There are automated ticket booths, but most people carry a metro card that they refill, then a turnstile, then the platform. The ride will consist of stops every minute or two in Brooklyn, then a few minutes underwater between the Burroughs, then more stops every few minutes. Depending on where exactly you’re going, you may need to switch trains once or twice. You can find a good map of the subway system online and I’m pretty sure most GPS systems let you put in a starting and ending location and tell you exactly what trains and stops to use. Wait… I might be wrong about underground the whole way. I seem to remember some of the trains do come out and then ride above the street. That might be Brooklyn, I’m pretty sure I can picture a huge track crossing right by the Brooklyn bridge. I’m certain 100% of tracks in Manhattan are deep underground though.
I'm a New Yorker! From Long Island and I used to commute to NYC for school by train. Brooklyn is almost all urban, so you are not likely to live in a place that has a free garage or driveway. My aunt and uncle live in queens and have a garage attached to their house that they rent out for $500 a month - in Queens! I don't know much about Brooklyn except I've walked across the bridge several times and it had a real bad rep when I was a kid, but has become real trendy in the millennium and therefor expensive. New Jersey is definitely not trendy. I dated a guy who commuted from Jersey City and took the bus, it would dump off at the port authority terminal - an immensely crowded transportation hub outside Times Square and you could get downtown by subway right from there, probably the N to Cortlandt. There are definitely buses from Brooklyn. I usually thought of the bus as a "I gotta get a couple of blocks over" kind of ride, but there are commuter busses. It's typical to just go by the street name you get off at. "Getting off at Cortlandt". It's a hub, so most trains that will get on there, you have to walk through an underground maze to get to their platform. (I can enter the WTC hub to get to the ACE line for example, but still have to walk several blocks to the chambers st platform. If I exit from the A,C,E- I can exit right away onto Chambers st, or follow the tunnel to exit at the WTC station.) I haven't been to this station since whatever it was a decade ago. There's YouTube videos with people who film their city walks where you can probably see that. I used to drive to New York every once in a while for "an adventure". Part of my adventure would be to find street parking, snaking wayyy up town (into the hundreds) which would take up an hour but as a bonus, the boonies of way up town are unmetered. There is no free street parking downtown, except Sundays, and you might literally be wandering for hours before you find an open space. Some of my favorite writers have been contributors to The New Yorker.
Yeah, I drove a car to New York once. Never again. $40 a day to park at a hotel that was already $300 a night. Stooooopid! I can't even imagine negotiating street parking. That's a bitch enough in Providence, which is the size of like two residential blocks in Manhattan.
I'm pretty certain there is NO on-street parking in lower Manhattan, anywhere from Central Park down to the tip where the World Trade Center is located.
I stumbled across this article this morning: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-parking-nightmare-kingsbridge-heights-bronx-20220327-ojigaxes5zbvldzqoazmaaj2w4-story.html The Bronx is one of the five boroughs of New York City, much like Brooklyn. If parking is this scarce in the "outer" boroughs, you can imagine how much worse it must be in Manhattan.
There is parking all over Manhattan, you have to drive around and find it (or get a parking app). Parking spots aren't going to be on major roads but will be found on side streets where busses don't run. China Town has loads of free side street parking, west and east village streets are lined with free parking, Financial district has scarce parking, but there are meters on water street, and along Battery Park.
Do apartments in Brooklyn usually have a separate kitchen with its own door? I can imagine the layout would vary from one apartment to another but is it possible for a journalist to rent a place with a separate kitchen?
Do you mean a kitchen that isn't within his/her own apartment? So he or she would have to leave the apartment and enter a separate space to be in the kitchen?
