I was speaking to some friends in New York City over the weekend and they said to me, “you know what Brandon, we don’t really go out at night anymore. It doesn’t feel safe. There are homeless people everywhere and they’ve started to get very aggressive, particularly against Asians.”
They live in a good neighborhood in Manhattan.
I was somewhat surprised to hear this, but at the same time, I don’t think for one minute think that New York City is dead. But some do, including James Altucher. James moved to Florida because of the pandemic and recently penned an article in the NY Post called, “New York City is dead forever.”
That didn’t sit well with Jerry Seinfeld and so this morning he published a rebuttal op-ed piece in the New York Times. It has been making the rounds online today with people responding from both sides of the fence. Richard Florida responded with this tweet thread.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know where I sit on this topic. I love technology, but sitting at home all day going from Zoom meeting to Zoom meeting is not the kind of life I aspire to live. I agree with Jerry. There’s no energy. In fact, it sucks the energy right out of me.
With that, I’ll leave you with some more words from Jerry Seinfeld:
There’s some other stupid thing in the article about “bandwidth” and how New York is over because everybody will “remote everything.” Guess what: Everyone hates to do this. Everyone. Hates.
You know why? There’s no energy.
Energy, attitude and personality cannot be “remoted” through even the best fiber optic lines. That’s the whole reason many of us moved to New York in the first place.
You ever wonder why Silicon Valley even exists? I have always wondered, why do these people all live and work in that location? They have all this insane technology; why don’t they all just spread out wherever they want to be and connect with their devices? Because it doesn’t work, that’s why.
Real, live, inspiring human energy exists when we coagulate together in crazy places like New York City. Feeling sorry for yourself because you can’t go to the theater for a while is not the essential element of character that made New York the brilliant diamond of activity it will one day be again.
Photo by Florian Wehde on Unsplash
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