It’s been a while here; I’ve been having far too much fun to have any time to write about it. But I thought I’d quickly share a few off-the-cuff tips for people looking to visit, stay in, or move to the city.

Buy the monthly Metropass. Nobody tries to drive here, and taking a cab everywhere would be extremely expensive. The good news is, the subway system is fantastic in both coverage and service. I went the first few weeks paying per-ride, and it was terrible—it’s much more relaxing to be able to hop onto the train for a few blocks and then hop out again, without having to worry about having burned $2 on the ride. Also, compared to Toronto, it’s much easier to do the hop-on-hop-off here, since many of the lines are literally right underneath the road. No tramping down three flights of stairs when you can spit through a grille in the sidewalk and hit the top of a train.

Take cabs uptown and downtown, not cross-town. Nearly every surface road in Manhattan is one-directional. This is superb for keeping traffic moving, especially as the avenues all have timed lights. If you have $10 to burn, it’s great fun to jump in a cab and be taken forty or fifty blocks in a few minutes. On the avenues, they can weave around and stay in motion—on the streets, you’ll pay a fortune while they sit in traffic waiting for the lights. (Cab fare is a flat rate plus a distance factor plus a time factor…)

Jaywalk. You look ridiculous standing there waiting for the light to change. If there’s no traffic, walk. You only need to look in one direction, right?

Street first, avenue second. When you talk about a particular corner, say the street number first, and the avenue number second. It’s the convention, and it makes sense. Also, north of of 14th, all the one-way streets that go eastbound are even numbers, and all the ones that go west are odds. This can be useful to get your bearings.

14th Street is a dividing line. Living in Manhattan at all takes a certain level of snobbery, but there seems to particular hostility across the line of the 14th. South of 14th is all the people who are too cool for the theatre district and all the trappings of tourist-centric Midtown. And north of 14th is all the people who won’t come this far south because it’s “scary”. Fortunately, I live right on the border of cool, at 13th and 1st.

TKTS and Theatre Lotteries. Playbill has the best list of Broadway shows. But don’t drop $110 each on tickets unless you simply must have a particular day. If you go to TKTS in the morning, you can get half-price day-of tickets to many shows. Even better, most shows have a lottery policy of making a handful of tickets available for dirt cheap, a few hours before the performance. You sign up, they maybe call your name, if they do, you got a pair of front-row tickets for $25 apiece.

Bank cards. In Canada, there are only a handful of major banks, and the major banks have agreed on the Interac system for handling debit transactions. So you have an Interac debit card with your bank account, and a separate MasterCard or VISA. Well, it’s not like that here. Here, the “debit” is provided by the same companies—MasterCard and VISA. So when I got my bank account with Chase, I was given a bank card that is a VISA debit card. This means I can use it online, I can sign for it at restaurants, and although it’s debit rather than credit, it functions just like a credit card. I knew I wanted to make several major purchases while I was down here (to avoid taking the exchange-rate hit and then making them in Toronto) but I was dreading the process of applying for an actual credit card. Turns out it’s no big deal.

Stay away from the pretzels. On practically every street corner, there are guys with carts hawking pretzels. Don’t bother. Even after you rub off all the salt, it’s still just a $2 piece of disgusting.

Everything’s expensive. With eating 2-3 meals a day at Google, I’ve basically just been shopping for food prep on weekends, and the occasional quick dinner. But even that has been kind of a scary experience. One person described it as like “grocery shopping at an airport magazine stand.” Obviously there are ways to get stuff cheaper, if you’re willing to travel a bit, or maybe get farmers’ delivery, but it’s not hard to see why many people here pretty much eat out every meal. Once you factor in the time and convenience, it’s barely a loss. This is made even worse by stores like Whole Foods, which sell exclusively organic stuff… that may be great for giving you warm fuzzies, but $7 for a gallon of milk? Yikes.

Take the Chinatown bus lines. If you’re using New York as a hub to travel up and down the coast, definitely take advantage of the so-called Chinatown bus lines. Sites like GotoBus aggregate the fares and schedules and make the data searchable. The operators of these lines are ruthlessly competitive, and it shows—their prices are cheaper than Greyhound by 50-80%. I took the Fung Wah bus from Boston back to New York a few weeks ago, and it was $15 with them, versus $30 with Greyhound. I’ll be taking the buses again to Philly and DC in the near future; if I have any problems, I’ll certainly update this entry with my complaints.

Go walking at night. Some things are open late, other things 24/7. There are cops everywhere; it’s perfectly safe. Can’t sleep? I’ve wandered into Union Square in the wee hours, for a slice or pizza, or to browse the discount racks at Virgin.

Dance. Just had to throw this one in. Considering that New York is the birthplace of swing, the scene here is actually kind of sucky. But the best dancing destination in the city is Frim Fram, on Thursday nights. It’s DJed music, unfortunately, but the crowd is great; the beginners from the NYU and Columbia clubs tend to hang at the front of the studio, with the rest in the back area. It’s a quick tempo and a crowded floor, but the people are super-nice. Also check out Swing 46 on Tuesdays and Fridays, but be sure to bring your own partner… it’s a much smaller floor, and more pairs than a mixer crowd. If you want to take lessons in the city, I cannot enough recommend Mickey & Kelly for their utter patience and extraordinary instructional ability. Not to mention complete humility, despite being easily among the top swing couples in the country.

So there it is. New York is a great place to be!

Mike

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