I love cities. I’ve moved a lot throughout my adult life for jobs and school: Chicago and Delhi, Lusaka and San Francisco. I’m working on an essay about Queens, New York, which is incredible to me, in part, because it is like so many of the places I have been:
Western Queens is the only place I've lived that reminds me of everywhere I've lived; the red-brick streets of Boston; the street food and bustle of Delhi; the 7 rumbling overhead like Chicago. Walking down Roosevelt Avenue is a strangely lucid experience, like it is everywhere I ever have been or will be, and I am everyone I have been or will be. After Queens there is nowhere on earth that would not feel strangely familiar; and places I had almost forgotten as dreams are suddenly alive again.
I love cities. So it bothers me when fellow young professionals, who have the privilege to choose to live and work in a world-class city, complain about said city for reasons that are within their control to change.
To be clear, this is only about large cities, and certain types of complaining. Complaints about legitimate problems like Boston’s racial inequality, Chicago’s gun crime problem, or San Francisco’s connected crises of unaffordable housing and homelessness, make a lot of sense; as do complaints by people who do not have a choice of living in a place. Life is difficult, and complaining about circumstances that are beyond our control is sometimes a necessary part of dealing with these circumstances.
When I complain about complaining it's from people who have the money and opportunity and freedom to live elsewhere, and yet regularly complain about things that can be personally addressed with effort that requires no money and sometimes little time. Things like:
"Boston is awful because there's no Asian food."
"San Francisco is awful because everyone is in tech."
And yet, 11 percent of Boston is Asian and still eats, and more than 80 percent of San Francisco doesn't work in tech. So why do things like this come up?
Cities do have different hardships and characters, and complaints like these often do have some basis in reality: it’s true that Boston has worse Asian food than Los Angeles, and San Francisco has more people working in tech than Milwaukee. And because of these differences in realities, moving to a new city that doesn’t do what you’re used to quite as well as where you’re from, or doesn’t have the family and friends that you’re comfortable with, can be a painful experience.
The difference in realities can become compounded and seem extreme to the complainer: the fact that there is less Asian food than at home, and maybe you don’t know any other Asians, can make it seem like there’s no Asian food; the fact that the only people you know are your tech coworkers who aren’t showing their full personalities at work, while at home you had family and friends with different backgrounds and interests, can make it seem like everyone works in tech and has no personality…
When a person’s experience in a city becomes lonely and painful, the pain can subsume the entire experience of being there: it becomes their reality of the city, regardless of the factual realities of the city itself and all it has to offer. By projecting this negativity onto the city, they’re able to make sense of their experience, but if the complaining continues indefinitely, it can both further degrade their own feelings about the city — by causing them to think that it is the objective truth, and nothing that they could do could ever change it — and also annoy the people to whom they are speaking.
Voicing frustrations can sometimes be cathartic, but if done too much, it can create a damaging spiral of negativity. My suggestions — things that have made my life better as I’ve moved — to those who may find themselves in this situation and would like to change, would be to:
Try to seek out the good, even if it requires a little movement beyond the neighborhoods you’re used to or the social circles you most naturally fall into. See what people do for fun; go to small coffee shops and bars and become a regular; join a community or sports or volunteer group. Every large city has many cities within it, many hundreds of thousands or millions of people living their lives, and if you are looking for a different experience than the one you have found yourself in by default, you can probably find it. (A note: here are some of my favorite Asian restaurants in Boston. San Francisco’s western and southern neighborhoods, and the East Bay, are amazing and not particularly tech-y!)
Try to keep in touch with the people you love, both outside and inside the city. Feeling stuck a place can create a bad mental feedback loop, and keeping time to talk to family and friends far away can both be a helpful reminder of the things you love in life, and take you briefly away from the place you are frustrated with.
Try to see the good, especially when you’re talking about it to the people who call the city home. They may love the city. They may also not like certain aspects of the city, but they are from here, or they live here — and they might not have the money or freedom to move with ease.
Try to frame complaints in a way that distinguishes your personal preferences from others’: others may be very different from you, have different connections to a city, and like different things.
Even after all this, not everyone will like everywhere. You may have to move somewhere and you explore and you give it every chance and it's still just not your place. If a city is simply not your place, one legitimate option is choosing to move. In that case — if you’ve already moved, my opinion — you may disagree — is that in most cases it is most beneficial for yourself and others to let it go, to not constantly remind yourself and others of the things you hate. I’m confused by the number of people that, when I mention I’m from Boston, bring up that they hate it. It makes me wonder if they ever gave it a chance.
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They say that what annoys you about others is what annoys you about your past or present self. There is one great American city that has historically been my target of this particular type of ire:
I used to say:
“DC is awful because everyone is in policy.”
It’s false and I was being annoying.
DC is an amazing city. It has some of the world's best museums — all free — a world class food scene, and the most incredible parks I've seen on the east coast, ranging from the manicured monuments to essentially wilderness within the city limits. The architecture is gorgeous. The metro is very clean and the bus system is quite good. It also has its legitimate problems like crime, and a general feeling of unsafety in the central business district after everyone leaves at 6 pm. And, like many northern cities, DC is very segregated.
It's apparent to me, even as someone who doesn't know the city well, that there's little interaction between transplants, mostly there for policy or politics, and locals. This is similar to the disconnect between locals and transplants in Boston (academia) and San Francisco (tech) but I'm actually from Boston, and San Francisco was easy to move to as a fourth generation Chinese American. Unlike those cities, I'm not part of DC's historical cultural communities. I don't have family there. And I'm not from the South, so I am confused by this culture where people say hi and open the door for you. There's not a natural point of entry into DC's social scene for me, well, outside of being a yuppie policy person. I like my coworkers a lot, and some of my best friends also work in policy (and we talk about things that are not policy); but I really value having parts of my life completely unrelated to work.
And it would be legitimately harder for me to live a life outside of work in DC than it is in other places.
But could I? Yes I could, and pretty easily! It's a major city, there are plenty of inroads and neighborhoods and groups and volunteer organizations I could join; limitless things to do. Last month in DC I walked out the door to go for a run and I came across a run group and joined them. They were nice and invited me back, and also invited me to cheer with them at the NYC marathon when they were in town. Serendipitous new friends, outside of my policy circle, and all I had to do was walk out the door.
I try not to say I dislike DC anymore. Now, I guess I dislike that I haven’t been a big enough person to give DC more of a chance.
Thank you as always to my editors!