Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Just returned from a trip to New York.  It has been many years since I visited the biggest city in America.  A lot has changed since then in my eyes.  The traffic is still horrible.  I had to rent a car to go upstate to attend a wedding.  It took an hour and a half to just get the rental car.  Are there that many people going out of the city?  I don't think that many people want to drive in the city, do they?  Then it took forever to drive out of the city.  The wedding was only 80 miles from JFK but it took about 4 and a half hours to get there, including the delay at the rental office.  It was almost as long as the flight time from LA to NY!

When I got back to the city, I found the transportation with the subways and buses were great.  The subway trains and buses are free of graffitis, unlike the last time I was there.  The subway stations were clean.  I didn't see any rats.  The trains were on time and not as crowded as before.  Interestingly, there were very few beggars and homeless people in the streets.  This is in contrast from what I saw before and what I have seen in LA and SF lately.  It seems to me that NY is doing a better job of getting rid or housing the homeless than the big cities in California.

I also find the people in NY have better manner than before.  I did not run into any rude people the entire week.  Whenever we asked for help, even strangers on the bus or on the subway, they were polite and helpful.  The diversity of NY is amazing, even more than California.  I must have heard about 20 languages spoken in just the short time we were there.  Of course, we did not test the manners of the NY taxi drivers who were mostly rude the last time I was in town.  Now we ride in Uber or Lyft, and those drivers are polite.

The most glaring difference to me, however, was the lack of honking in NY.  Before I would turn around to see what was going on if I DON'T hear cars honking.  Now there is practically no honking at all.  I thought the people couldn't have changed that much, could they?  Then my wife's cousin told us that there is a law that if you honk and is not an emergency, you can be fined $350!  Now, I don't know how they would enforce it.  There are no cops watching to see who is honking, right?  Even if there are cops, how can they know who is honking for sure, given the heavy traffic.  But I guess if you have a law, most people will obey it, even if they know you are not likely to get caught.

There was also a lot of police presence everywhere.  Obviously at Trump Towers there were lots of police.  But subways, Central Park, JFK and ordinary streets are staffed with what seems excessive number of cops.  Well, it did make me feel way more safe than in the past, especially walking at night.

So overall, my impression of NY is that it has made a lot of improvements.  Maybe people are more mellow after 9/11?  I don't know.  But at least on the surface, NY has outdone LA and SF as far as I can see.  LA in particular, with its homeless problems and lack of good public transportation, needs to learn from NY.