The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

About New York

Jun 22, 2025

It’s raining outside. My window is open upwards just a few inches. Warm, fresh, humid air blows in. I can hear the humming of aircon condensers. I can see the small, rectangular windows on the opposite side of the same building and the fire staircases that we’ve been warned not to go on.

Of course, I wanted to write about New York while I am here. I wanted to talk to people, to pay attention, to listen and then to share with you what I learned. New York feels inexhaustible. It’s a place that so much has been written about and still I am finding it hard to choose my words.

You just kind of have to see it for yourself (I’ll make a great travel reporter, hey?). But I have been here for four weeks now, and though my impressions might still change and I have had limited time to explore, I wanted to share with you the New York that I have seen so far, the good, the bad and the ugly…

The bad:

It smells like weed absolutely everywhere. I was very surprised by this. It’s because weed is legal in New York City (though not on Columbia’s campus) and people are just puffing around as casually as if they were smoking chocolate wafer sticks. I’ve never smoked weed in my life, mostly because knowing myself, I think it would just make me paranoid. What’s making me paranoid now as I walk the streets of NYC is that I’ll get a contact high (yeah, yeah, I know people say that contact highs are BS, but I think they’re lying). So that means that every couple of minutes when the pungent smell catches my nose, I hold my breath or breathe into a cloth and release right before I suffocate. This does not make for the most relaxing of strolls.
It’s very expensive. I knew it was expensive. People told me ‘it’s very expensive’. It was what I was expecting. And still when I first walked into a supermarket I was like ‘How is it so bloody expensive?!?’ A bottle of water costs $4.99 (it’s ‘smart’ water, but it’s still water). A pot of Greek yoghurt costs $9.99. A pilates class is $50. Your part of the dinner at a restaurant (no wine), $57. When I lived in the UK, I used to tell myself that the prices were the same as they were in Bulgaria, but rather than in lev, they were in pounds. If a coffee in Sofia costs 6lv, in the UK it costs £6. But here, for most things, it would be double that and in dollars.
Also, they don’t include taxes in the prices (in all of the US, not just NYC), but I had forgotten about this. So all the prices that you see displayed in shops have an additional $2-4 that you don’t learn about until it’s too late.
You have to tip everywhere. Like you actually have to. If you don’t, people look at you like you’re a rude cheapskate who just ate their breakfast (which you probably did). It’s accepted to leave 20% and the least you can leave is 18%.
I guess some could see this as a positive thing, but there’s definitely a paradox of choice here. In fact, there might be no place where it’s more severe. The ‘paradox of choice’ is a concept developed by psychologist Barry Schwartz that posits that the more choice we have, the less satisfied we are with our decision. Here there’s so much to choose from that it feels overwhelming (I am someone who very easily feels overwhelmed by choice, but trust me, here, it’s not just me). The other day, it took an hour of rigorous academic research to choose a Thai restaurant to go to. In Sofia (where I’m from), there would be two Thai restaurants at best and the choice would be relatively easy as one of them would be shit. Here, the paradox of choice applies to everything: restaurants, skincare products, cereal, books, partners. I was chatting to a girl last week about the dating scene and she said, ‘Guys are terrible at committing here! They always think they can just get the next best thing.’
Stuff is very far apart. This also should not have come as a surprise. And in a way, I like it because it also feels more… spacious? Like, it’s very hard to feel claustrophobic. Except when you’re in your room. It’s very easy to feel claustrophobic in your room. Mark Twain is known to have said: ‘The only trouble about this town is, that it is too large. You cannot accomplish anything in the way of business, you cannot even pay a friendly call, without devoting a whole day to it – that is, what people call a whole day who do not get up early.’
Old taxis are gone. Honestly this had me heartbroken for a week. Apparently Ford has stopped manufacturing the Crown Victoria, the iconic car model historically used for taxis. (Curious fact: it was the last car in history to have a cassette player as a standard.) In 2020, the last Crown Victorias left taxi service and sedans have been replaced with hybrid SUVs such as the Toyota RAV-4. The change was done because the new cars are more efficient, able to accommodate wheelchairs and meet new regulations (such as that cars can’t be more than 7 years old). They plan for all taxis to be electric by 2030. Still, heartbroken.

The Good:

The food is absolutely incredible or ‘terrific’ (a word people use here a lot). I was told it might be ‘shit’ and by shit I mean ‘unhealthy’ and that might be the case in other places around the US, but that hasn’t been my experience here. And maybe, even when it is, it looks and tastes so good that any diet concerns go out the window. There’s every cuisine you might dream of trying. I am sure out there is a restaurant that offers food indigenous to Mozambique or Vratsa. New York is smaller than London, both in land area and population, but there are actually more restaurants here. According to Google Maps, there are approximately 18,000 of them. The only issue, as I said, is choosing where to go. But if you give up, cooking at home is also much easier (veggies come chopped, Italian/Korean supermarkets just down the street, etc.) and because of the variety of ingredients and spices available you don’t have to flip between two meals on the roll constantly, but can unleash your inner Julia Child. All in all, the culinary scene here is a foodie’s wet dream, a busy bachelor’s happy place and the orthorexic’s place to heal.
The people:
a) Firstly, they all seem super interesting (can I get away with saying ‘cool’ again?). Like they live in an art studio, listen to Joni Mitchell, read Albert Camus and write poetry with their paint-stained hands in their spare time. They value culture and art and that’s why they’ve chosen to be here. You want to chat them up, ask them questions, invite them to your birthday party. They are dressed stylishly – perhaps a vest, perhaps white socks and loafers – but also effortlessly, because clothes are just clothes, and there’s too much going on to waste time on trivial things. If you want to go out in your pyjamas for the day, you can totally do so and no one will judge you. It’s the best place for people-watching. There’s an anonymity about the city that, can make you feel lonely at times, but at others it’s most freeing.
b) They are…nice? There’s this stereotype that the niceness of Americans is smarmy or insincere, but again, that hasn’t been my experience here (I don’t go about asking them for their passports, so I don’t know who is American and who isn’t, but I am talking generally about the people who live here). They would stop you on the street to compliment your tattoos and ask where you got them done. Strangers will say good morning or good night. People on the subway will sing happy birthday to someone they don’t know. They will meet your stare with a smile and happily give you directions. And even if it’s fake, who cares, if it makes you feel better? It’s better to live among insincerely polite people than sincerely rude ones.
There’s complete anarchy. Nobody crosses the street when the light turns green. They cross whenever they want. Nobody really follows the rules. They do whatever they want. One of my professors told me that once when he was younger, a cop caught him and his friend drinking beer while driving. He stopped them, emptied their cans and wished them a nice day.

The artistic and cultural scene and heritage. I have come to realise that the people who don’t get the buzz about New York are simply not as inspired by this or it doesn’t mean the same to them. And it makes sense. Not everyone feels the same way about having everything Joan Didion ever wrote at their fingertips, being in the place where Nora Ephron wrote Heartburn, or in the city where the distance between an author’s keypad and the reader’s desk is the shortest. Here, you can rent up to 50 books at the same time from the public library! You can go to the jazz club where Ella Fitzgerald used to perform, you can see street graffiti by Jean-Michel Basquiat, you can go to Broadway, where ‘the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world is represented’ and see Tony Award-winning shows and watch Nicole Scherzinger perform live. You can eat at Costello’s where Hemingway and Steinbeck were regulars (now called Overlook Lounge), you can go to the restaurant at the Algonquin hotel where Dorothy Parker used to hold her round table or sit at a bench in Central Park and have Sloane Crosley sit next to you.

Signed copies of books in Strand Books in Brooklyn.

There’s just so much cool stuff everywhere. In the shops: Porcelain vases that look like cartons of milk. Bookmarks that look like jewelry. Stickers that spell out your innermost thoughts. But out on the streets too: books left at random places with inspirational messages. Billboards for rats. Machines for affirmation cards. People use their attention to detail and creativity to try and help others live more beautiful and inspired lives even if in tiny, small ways.

I am surprised how much nature there is in a city that is famous for its concrete, bricks and buildings made of steel. Central Park is twice as big as Regent’s Park, which explains why it feels a lot less crowded. You can find an empty meadow in sunny weather. New York has approximately 30,000 acres of parkland and about 35% of the city’s area is covered with greenery (tree canopies, lawns and grass). NYC is also just under two hours away from the Pine Barrens which is one of the largest forested areas in the eastern part of the United States with its own unique ecosystem, plant species (some of them endangered) and diverse wildlife. This rural land also provides the cleanest drinking water in the country. In the wildest parts of the area, there are only fifteen people per square mile, whereas in New Jersey (20 miles away) there are around a thousand people per square mile. When I learned of the Pine Barrens, I was fascinated that there was such a sacred piece of verdant wilderness right next to some of the most densely populated cities in the world.

Another thing that has had me spell-bound are the twilights. Just before dusk, from the tops of the trees to the middle of sky, the hues spill into one another seamlessly from peach to yellow to pale blue. The sun is often red. I had wished there was a romantic explanation for the vivid color of the sun, but unfortunately, it’s because of air pollution and a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering. Small particles in the atmosphere scatter short wave-lengths of light (like blue and purple) more effectively than longer wavelengths (like red or orange). The more particles there are, the more the light is scattered. There is another phenomenon unique to New York that has a slightly more romantic explanation: it’s called Manhattanhenge. It is when the rays of the sun align perfectly with the grid of the streets, so there is no pavement that is shadowed and the views during sunset and sunrise are spectacular! It happens twice a year around 28^th of May and 12^th of July and the anxiety for the best Insta shot is real.

There are four distinct seasons in the year and a full blown-summer (but no mosquitos). I don’t think I could happily live somewhere where it’s hot all the time (even at Christmas?!) or where there’s a perpetual sad drizzle (what place could this possibly be??). Each season has its charm, and the universe has made it so that they switch right before we get tired of them and so we can appreciate them again next time they come around. You can’t experience this everywhere, but you can in New York. Also, unlike London where summer does occur but totally by surprise and can last anywhere between one hour and a couple of weeks, New York has a steady, reliable warm season, when you can wear gingham dresses, complain of the heat and go for picnics in Central Park. Also, no mosquitos (thus far) and a nice wind.
This city truly never sleeps and for once in my life, I am among kindred spirits.

The ugly: