Urban legends, modern man’s workaday mythology, thrive in all metropolises. Most of the stories are geographically interchangeable, of course, but many of Gotham’s are unique to the City. Is it the frightening crime-ridden place portrayed in Law and order? Are all New Yorkers snobbish and rude? Experience should tell you by now that you can’t trust
everything you hear. Here are 10 myths about New York City that you need to stop spreading immediately, since they’re totally not true.
New York is the priciest city in the world
This is not true. Many things in NYC are cheaper than they are in Europe or other big cities. There are lots of things to do for free including museums, botanic gardens, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Staten Island Ferry. Food can be high end and expensive, or cheap, ethnic and delicious. NYC also have a great food truck culture. And, the subway get you everywhere for a reasonable price. According to Worldwide Cost of Living Report 2018 Singapore holds onto the title of the most expensive city in the world. New York City is not even in Top 10.
New Yorkers are rude and self-centered
Not even close! Yes, many New Yorkers do go the distance to avoid any
contact or conversation, but that’s usually because they don’t want to get stuck in an awkward situation or prefer to mind their own business. But when you need rescuing, New Yorkers will actually be there for you. They will accompany you to the emergency room in the middle of a workday. They will offer you water when you nearly pass out in Union Square — and not merely any water, but a jumbo-sized plastic bottle of Pellegrino. Strangers here run into burning towers and jump onto subway tracks for each other.
New York City is dangerous
New York City may have earned a pretty nasty reputation in the 1970s, but the New York of today is safe and sanitized! New York City is also one of the safest big cities in the world, according to Business Insider. Many crime fighters and the police are working together to make it a safe place for everyone. Visitors can now enjoy wonderful things that the New York City has to offer without worrying about their safety.
NYC has very little green space
This is wrong! In Fact, New York has 19.5% of city land dedicated to parks. That’s the most in the United States according to the Trust for Public Land. New York City is actually home to some of the best parks in the country, and the world (Hello Central Park!). There is a park in New York City for nearly everything from picnic areas and skate parks to viewing the sunset and relaxing on the lawns. Whether you are looking for a calm spot or want to watch summer movies in a park, New York City has it all.
NYC is not really a coastal city
When you describe a coastal state, perhaps you will think about women on their bikinis, hot sand and warn sun. Well, New York does not have such characteristics, so it is often considered as not a true coastal city. But the fact is, New York has actually a longer coastline compared to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami combined. It has a coastline that measures 520 miles that provides the city with great views.
A penny dropped from the Empire State Building could kill someone
According to myth, a penny dropped from the Empire State Building can kill someone below. Mythbusters tested it out. They made a gun that can fire a penny at 64.4 miles per hour — the same speed at which a penny dropped from the top of the Empire State Building would hit the ground at.
They launched it into a ballistics dummy and found that it only caused a little damage. Then, they shot each other with the gun, and while it stung, it didn’t really do any harm — certainly not enough to kill someone.
Apparently the myth is simply not true. A penny just can’t gather enough velocity from the top of the Empire State Building to do any real harm.
There are alligators in the Sewers
Everyone knows this one: in the grips of a fad, city kids bought baby alligators as pets and flushed them into the sewer system, where the reptiles were free to propagate (blind and albino in some accounts). While that never happened, there are, oddly enough, shades of truth to the story. There have been sporadic newspaper accounts of sightings, including the most famous one, published in the February 10, 1935, edition of The New York Times, about an 8-foot-long gator that was pulled from a Harlem manhole by some excited youths who subsequently killed the beast.
Of course, the notion of them lurking aboveground in New York City isn’t so far-fetched, as the NYPD discovered one being kept as a pet in Brooklyn not too long ago. And more than a dozen have been reported since in suburban New York, on Long Island.
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New York City is only Manhattan
If you’ve ever watched Sex and the City, Seinfeld, or friends you can quickly get the impression that all of New York is Manhattan. Here’s a fact, all of New York is 790 sqm in total, Manhattan consists of only 59 sqm of that. There are five boroughs that make up New York City. They are Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx. All of these areas have their unique communities, architecture, and culture, so there’s plenty to see off the island.
Cabs are the main mode of transport
No, everyone does not take cabs in New York. Despite the fact that people in movies only seem to use cabs to navigate New York, they are not the most popular mean of transportation. As convenient as taxis can be when you are in a rush, most New Yorkers would rather hop on the subway to avoid sitting in traffic. And cabs are also more expensive!
There are 8 million rats living in New York City
You see them ducking under the bushes, scurrying along subway tracks, or crawling around the bags of trash that are stinking up the curb. Legend has it that there’s a rat for every person, more than 8 milllions rats in New York City. But this urban myth was already debunked. In 2014 statistician Jonathan Auerbach decided to test that idea. Auerbach used a method called capture-recapture estimation, developed by ecologists. The numbers, when Auerbach ran them, were far lower than 8 million, the stuff of urban legend. His number: a paltry 2 million.
