I lived in New York City for four years and then moved away in part because of some of the negative experiences. Now I live in the SF Bay Area and visit NYC fairly often, but am happy not to be living in NYC fulltime anymore. I definitely appreciate a lot about the city but prefer it in small doses. Here is why:
1. A lot of frictions: these come up in different ways. For example, it is a nightmare to deal with rentals. Just to move into a one bedroom apartment in a good building may require things like references, showing your tax returns and bank statements, paying tons of fees and deposits -- money, time, and stress. In California, you can just see a quote online, pay a few hundred bucks deposit, and move in that very day.
To put it another way, NYC is great at the big things -- like access to art, music, fine dining, people with various nationalities and education. But the small things are stressful. I found that I went from not "sweating the small stuff" to gradually doing more of that with more time spent in NYC.
Take a situation where you need to get a few organic groceries, stop by a boutique furniture store, and take your Mac to the Apple Store for repairs. In most of the US, this would take 1-2 hours at most - you get in your car and go directly to 2-3 destinations. In NYC, a whole day can be spent on simple errands, having to get taxis everywhere and sitting in traffic adding so much deadweight time. (This is getting a little bit better with Uber, minus the traffic part, and getting online deliveries -- unfortunately, many of the businesses that do online delivery in NYC are not the ones that have the highest quality items.)
Frictions in NYC extend even to nightlife and entertainment. NYC has a lot of cool stuff to do like live jazz, dance clubs, bars, comedy clubs - but with much of it, you don't just walk in, pay a fee, and have fun - there are long lines, or you have to deal with sleazy promoters to get on some silly list. As an example, one of my favorite places in NYC has been the Comedy Cellar -- a great comedy club where many up-and-coming and established comedians perform. The cover is only $20, so it's a nice deal to see the talent. However, every single time you go, you have to wait outside -- in freezing cold, often -- for 30-40 minutes before getting in. Why these kinds of establishments don't just use an OpenTable-style system where people add their credit card to hold a spot is beyond me.
2. People can be too direct and judgmental, quick to put you into a box.
I used to experiment with this and tell people different things about myself when doing an introduction -- saying either, "I am a trader", "I manage a team at a hedge fund", "I do math", "I am Russian" or "I graduated from Harvard" -- all true, but people often treated me totally differently depending on what I said and made assumptions. In California, the reaction is more often like, "that's cool, tell me more about that" regardless of how people perceive you.
This extends to business as well as personal life. For instance, at a typical financial company in NYC, it would be common for a manager to say, "Go out and hire ten programmers" -- as if talented developers are a dime a dozen and easily replaceable. This isn't specific to finance or development -- just in general it seems like NYC business just don't care as much about things like culture and talent development and retention.
3. Weather -- bad for most of winter and summer. Fall and spring are beautiful but for half the year, you really have to spend a lot of time inside -- or get out of NYC. Over time, this got to be really taxing.
So these are the three themes that I felt like were negative about NYC. They are also somewhat causal: the bad weather often can lead to more frictions, and frictions can lead to other people being irritable, which leaves them with less bandwidth to be open minded and kind to others.
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