What’s the one thing I’ll always remember about my weeks spent in New York as a European? It’ll probably be the capers. I went through jars of the things over my five weeks there. I never want to see capers again, for as long as I live.
It wasn’t really the takeaway I expected when I landed, but I had no other choice. I went on a supermarket trip on my first day and my eyes popped out of my head, like a wolf in an old Disney cartoon.
Everything was violently, hysterically expensive. Cereal cost £7, chicken fillets £12. Let’s not even talk about the cheeses. What could I do? I went to the tinned food aisle and made peace with the choice I was about to make. On that day I bought cheap tuna, to have with pasta. I did the same a week later, then again the week after that. I was in New York for work, but if you were trying to save on holiday by booking a self-catering apartment, you’d be in the same boat.
I’m in my thirties and earn a reasonable salary for London, but in New York student staples were what I had to fall back on. Well, a glammed-up version of them. Hence the capers. They were a step up from what I ate when I was 19 and made me feel a bit better about my cooking.
Another tool in my arsenal soon became happy hours, which you get in more or less every bar in the city. One small chain across Manhattan — Bar Veloce — offered £5 glasses of wine until 7pm — down from the usual £11 (winebarveloce.com). I conducted most of my social life there, like a mafia boss with his shady hangouts. It had been a decade since I’d run to the bar with minutes to spare in order to secure another cheap round, but it did make me feel young again.
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You may be wondering, at this point, if all this scrimping was worth it. Is New York really that much fun compared with London? Annoyingly, it probably is. For a start, all those happy-hour bars will only consider closing at about 2am, instead of the dour 11pm-on-the-dot we’ve become accustomed to in the UK.
It is also possible to eat much later. A favourite spot of mine — the Fly — will let you sit at the bar at 10pm and order half a roast chicken (£15) to go with your cocktail. The first time I went felt like a happy hallucination (theflybrooklyn.com).
Despite New Yorkers’ reputation, it should also be pointed out they are endlessly charming and friendly. On one notable occasion I asked the man at my local deli where I could find the garlic. He looked around then apologised and told me they’d run out. The cook, standing nearby at the sandwich station, overheard the conversation and popped up to offer me half the bulb he’d been cutting. You’d struggle to picture this happening in the UK.
Then again, where the highs are high, the lows must be low. Earlier that week I had, entirely accidentally, gone to take a seat on the subway that a middle-aged woman was already walking towards. It was an honest mistake. Still, she turned to me and hissed, “Are you f***ing kidding me?” with such venom that half the carriage turned round to look at me. I briefly considered forcing the doors open and jumping out there and then.
In fairness, it probably wasn’t her fault. Spending more than a month navigating the New York subway made me want to kiss everyone involved in the running of TfL squarely on the mouth. We love to complain about the Tube, but we really don’t know how good we have it.
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• I spent 24 hours on the New York subway. How scary is it really?
Our peak-time trains do not run at 17-minute intervals. In London we do not have stations that have the same name but, for some godforsaken reason, are actually four blocks away from each other. Victoria Line drivers never announce, as if it were a casual aside, that they’re going to miss the next seven stops because it is now an express train. Comparatively we live in public transport heaven.
On the bright side, though, navigating the city above ground couldn’t be easier. The grid system means that it is incredibly hard to get lost, even if you’re trying to make do without using mobile data. Just memorise the number of blocks you must walk down and eventually you’ll get there.
Sometimes I adopted musical mnemonics for the numbered streets. Early on in my trip I was due to meet a friend in a bar on 96 Street. In an effort not to forget I took the 1966 hit 96 Tears from Question Mark and the Mysterians and softly sang, “You’re gonna cry, [on] 96 Street!” all the way there.
• 13 of the best affordable hotels in New York
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It was a welcome distraction as the streets can, to a European mind, feel curiously empty. There are noticeably fewer people walking on the pavements, as well as fewer shops, especially in areas that don’t attract tourists. New York may be less car-centric than most other American cities, but there is still a feeling that many parts of it weren’t designed with loitering pedestrians in mind.
Blatant, heart-wrenching inequality can also be hard to ignore. In my corner of Brooklyn, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, it was impossible to leave the house without seeing multiple homeless people, many of whom clearly suffered from mental health problems. All those extortionate wine bars and small-plate joints often sat yards away from shelters and dilapidated houses.
We may, on our side of the pond, jealously glare at the much higher salaries of New York’s white-collar professionals, but not everyone is benefitting from their healthy economy. It is probably one of the reasons why I would struggle to move to New York permanently. It is hard to walk around and have a lovely life there without feeling some degree of guilt. The cost of living crisis has been dire in the UK, but the complete lack of safety net in America just feels too jarring.
Oh, and the bangers are terrible. One grocery store I went to stocked “sweet Italian chicken sausages”. None of these words should ever be seen together. That’s what I’ll try to think about when I head back to JFK, reluctantly making my way back to London. New York is a delight, but it doesn’t quite have it all.
What are your top tips for living like a local in New York? Let us know in the comments below
Things to do: Five tips from New Yorkers
1. Make the most of free hours
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New York’s museums are often extortionate but many of them have free slots every week or month. A personal favourite is the Whitney Museum of American Art, which is all about 20th-century and contemporary works, and is free on Friday nights and every second Sunday. Book a ticket in advance (whitney.org).
2. Get into private views
If you fancy a glass of free fizz and a bit of contemporary art, follow Thirsty Gallerina on Instagram. They’ll tell you when and where to be for private gallery views, district by district, and, if you time it well, you can even go on a gallery crawl, probably in downtown Manhattan (instagram.com/thirstygallerina).
3. Spend a day in Red Hook
Not served by the subway, Red Hook is a charming, quiet neighbourhood by the water that feels unlike the rest of the city. Spend an afternoon there to recuperate from big city life, eat some seafood and have a beer at the large Strong Rope Brewery (strongropebrewery.com).
• 28 of the best things to do in New York
4. An ideal day in Queens
Often ignored by tourists, Queens has plenty of charm if you know where to go. A great way to spend an afternoon is to eat at one of the many wonderful Greek restaurants in the Astoria neighbourhood then walk down to the Noguchi museum and look at Isamu Noguchi’s abstract sculptures there, before having a drink by the river nearby (£13; noguchi.org).
5. See the library’s treasures
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The New York Public Library has a remarkable — and remarkably free — permanent exhibition of some of its most extraordinary items, including Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Dickens’s writing desk and Christopher Robin’s stuffed animals (free; nypl.org).
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