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[quote=Rachael84;1506862]In the outerboroughs it's easier to have a car.
Not so in my Brooklyn neighborhood because street parking is precious, especially on weekends, and local subways & buses are decent. However, in places like Staten Island's south shore, a car is essential. My inlaws live north of Bloomingdale Park. The only local transit is about a mile away. There are only express buses into Manhattan. Exacerbating this problem is that many households in the community have 2-3 cars, so street parking can also be problematic.
I drove through Brooklyn before and didn't have too much of a problem with traffic. The worst experience I had in Manhattan was on a side street. I was on 17th and 3rd and we were just sitting there for like 5-10 minutes and not moving. Everybody got irritated and when one car started honking, the next thing I know, everyone that was lined up on 17th was honking for like 1 minute straight. And why did the city waste their time posting those "don't honk" signs, I don't get it. Nobody pays attention to them.
Here's a curiosity, coming from a transplant in a large southern city.
As congested as the city sidewalks pretty much stay, I was wondering if people at least stay attentive and don't walk into people coming the other direction there. People in Atlanta can be irritating as sewage during events when downtown is congested, and God forbid they have more than one friend with them. They seem incapable of not walking abreast across the whole sidewalk, and tonight, I had to actually get in this chick's face and suggest she move out of my way ~ as if I was supposed to step into the gutter for her?
Yeah you definitely have to have good peripheral vision in places like Grand Central, major subway stations, Penn Station etc during rush hour because people are coming in every possible direction and it doesn't stop. You have to learn how to time your steps so you don't bump into anybody and eventually it becomes a refined skill. I really get annoyed when anyone stops where there is any heavy human traffic in Manhattan, like they assume no one will be behind them - this is New York, there are always 10 or 20 people behind you at all times unless you're up against a wall. I also hate when tourists from Florida or Alabama ride the train and lean on the pole like no one else needs to hold on to it when it gets crowded, but alas this is a topic for another post.
As for an urban feel, the outer boros can still be very dense, hectic, noisy and urban. I live in Woodside, Queens and my balcony overlooks the BQE, Roosevelt Ave, 3 tracks of 7 trains and the flight path for planes landing at La Guardia - my neighborhood makes Times Square look quaint. Clubs on the ave are always blaring music, car alarms are always going off, police sirens can be heard all the time, plus the trains are always crowded all the time, you definitely feel like you're still in New York in the outer boros.
It depends on where you are in NYC. I find that Downtown to be much more calm then say Midtown. The Outer-Boroughs have their own feel. Take Queens for example. Queens is so huge, that it really feels more like a county then a Borough (well it is...in a way....but I digress) Some areas of Queens like like Flushing, Jamaica, Woodside, Jackson Heights, etc are very urban. While some areas like Forest Hills, Dougleston, or Bayside, feels more like the burbs.
This is hard when you're not familiar with the area. Particularly at certain times of the day or year, midtown Manhattan is very crowded and hectic. Check out Grand Central or Penn Station at about 5:45 PM. More residential parts of Manhattan less so but still pretty busy.
Much of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, while less hectic than midtown Manhattan, are still a lot more urban than almost every other city in the US. Brooklyn or the Bronx are similar to Philadelphia or Baltimore and the urban parts of Boston. Outside the older cities of the northeast and Chicago or maybe San Francisco, nothing else in the US can really compare to the density and the number of pedestrians you'd find even in Brooklyn. The outer boroughs are only "quiet" relative to Midtown Manhattan.
Staten Island is a more suburban but has heavy traffic so there's a different kind of hectic. Like an LA hectic.
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